A place to post and chat about plant pics...

Hi Chhaya,

Have you got snow already. We have had gale force winds here and lots of torrential rain and Tornados which did a lot of Damage in the neighbouring County of Derbyshire yesterday. Its very mild though 15 degrees, but my garden looks like a bomb has hit it. I have just dug up my late potatoes for cooking later.

Nath

 

Thanks Chhaya.


Ughhhhh - snow! Ours hasn't arrived yet thankfully, but it will shortly, no doubt.


: (

 

Well have a Happy CROSS BORDER Thanksgiving

Since moving to Canada I had to get used to a load of things like wishing my US friends Thanksgiving to early and now repeating it here.

So now we cook two times Turkey and call it "CROSS BORDER THANKSGIVING" wishes. :-)

May 2010 bring you more love, joy, happiness, health all fueled by good healthy organic safe home grown veggies and flowers to give thanks for.

I still have one white Clematis popping open in this nasty wet weather. Also wanted to ask about these yellow flowers ? Can I just dry them now (as I am doing)
and then put the whole center ball them in the soil or must I brake it up.
Will each little ball on it a separate plant? I think its called Helenium Automnale...
there are many types like that with petals yellow and yellow and red etc..
Here is the pic attached.

Here is also the beauty of a Banana leaf in its last moments as winter takes its stride
I love the pattern.

QUESTION:
Than I did cut down my ornamental grasses that are in terra cotta pots as I was told
the pots will crack up with the frost when they are wet.
I put them under a swing where there will be away from the rain but it will be cold
(not enough space in the garage) in the garage it would not rain either
Will they survive there? If I put them inside the house in the basement my cats will chew up ever inch of the top and dig the earth ( nothing I want to contemplate)
Do I need to water them sometimes lightly ? or not at all
Are they 100% dormant the whole winter?
and do ALL ornamental grasses need to be cut down before winter?
I still have a few
DANA. I will reply your mail.. We had a leak in the living room and had to put up a new roof.. so headaches to solve lately. sorry4that.

Forgot to share a book I was advise to get it cost me 1$ in soft cover on abebooks dot com
The color dictionary of
Flowers and Plants for home and garden
by Roy Hay and Patrick M Synge
published by
The Royal Horticultural Society
it has 2048 color photos and answers many ( not all) questions
A REALLY GOOD BOOK to have at home.

 

I had a nice surprise when I got up this morning, I had a second Stapelia seedling and also one of my passiflora seeds has sprouted, i hope the rest in the pot do well. My Brugmansia seeds are taking their time though despite being near a warm radiator.

Vic I always leave my ornamental grasses of which I have many in the ground and let them turn to straw and create a layer on the ground which protects the corms or bulbs underneath. In 8 years they have never been killed of by severe frosts and they have expanded outwards so much that I have had to dig them back a bit to contain them as they were taking over my beds. I have a couple of variagated types that really flourish no matter the weather.

Nath

 

Well,
Things sound tough all over, weather wise hey?
Yes, I too have been up in the attic with all the rains of late and with shingles being blown off the roof during our high winds. Tho the new materials await application - up there! Maybe we'll get a clear spell next week which is when the tenants who did not inform me that their garage roof was leaking but I saw it and cleared the drain on the little flat roof and all is well there now......they are moving out this weekend ! whew! With the surprise baying hound of the Baskervilles pup too! A nervous Weimeraner.
Supposed to snow next week! So all will be well with the tender plants I wish to winter over as I will use the rental unit which has a lovely big window.
So, as always there is some good mixed in with the bad, if only we can concentrate on the up side of things. ;) yah.

Hah! Got my new computer to figure out how to network with the old one etc. Steep learning curves growing on here all right!

D

 

Vic I always leave my ornamental grasses of which I have many in the ground and let them turn to straw and create a layer on the ground which protects the corms or bulbs underneath.

Hello Thanks for your advise but as you see my grasses are NEW and in pots. So that does not answer my query :-)
There was a big sale this year so I bought many types as I have no ground to plant them in the ground and love POTS I was given a gift of nice terra cotta pots.
Anyway thanks for the effort

 

Vic as with any new enviroment it pays to experiment a litle. I work on the 50/50 percent rule, if I try different things with 50% of my stock and meantime molly coddle the other 50% then I cn't reeally lose because if something works I've gained and if it deosnt adapt I have learned a valuable lesson and still have 50%to keep safe in a different enviroment maybe indoors to enjoy and learn more about. Its a rule of thumb that has helped me surpass many a dissapointment. Grasses are a classic case as you can often split them into 2 or 3 or 4 or more and try different things and still have some left over.

Experiment! Live a little and enjoy the gardening experience!

Nath

 

Any new pics or updates anyone?

 

Some pictures:

I got a cute little Venus Flytrap (first three pictures), Nepenthes judith finn (fourth picture), and crown of thorns (sixth picture), and my moon cactuse (fith picture)

:)

I got a new light for the plant room, a 100 watt florsent light, which onley uses 21 watts. ;)

 

G'day,

This is my first post here and i thought i would put a few photos up of a few of my plants.
First are a few pachypodium.

 

Very nice, everyone! Some of my shots may come later...

Happy New Year!!!

: )

P.S. Thanks for the xmas cards, Blake, Penny, and Katalina!!!

: )

 

I'm waiting for Sherry's tomatoes to sprout, then I'll have pics!

Happy New Year, everyone.

 

Happy new year everyone

No problem about the card HB , glad it got there.

 

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. Please forgive me for not sending cards to you all as well...

Woops - forgot to say thank you to Lorax for the lovely homemade xmas card she sent me. I thanked her on another forum but thought I would here as well. Very special getting a xmas card all the way from Ecuador! The seeds were terrific too - thanks again Beth.

Here's Lorax's beautiful homemade card...

: )

P.S. A bunch of those kumquat fruit seeds I was telling you about sprouted for me a couple days ago Beth, but I am still waiting on a number of others. I am sure they will be up shortly. Last shot shows kumquat seedlings...

Some seeds have an uncanny way of knowing it's winter, despite my best efforts even using a heat mat. Certain types just won't be fooled, and won't show themselves until March, regardless. We'll see...

 

Oh the card is a beaut!

I want one lol

Hmmm..I tried to fool nature last jan/feb with Calendula, almost went through two pkts trying till it dawned on me the seeds knew the time was'nt right lol

I sowed again in march/april and all was well.

I should begin earlier because I have a tin full of different seeds from alover. I also want to sow the one seed I have of that awesome Tenerife palm.

I have Tenerife cuttings too under a blanket of snow...oh my gosh, how are they, did they root?

 

Kat, if you want a card from me, offer to send me some seeds....

 

What do you want Lorax, what will grow there?

It would be nice to recieve after the swap an Easter card.

I could send loads of seeds. Its for sure I shan't use them all, after this season they will start to decline.

I wonder will the chocolate sunflowers be ok. Also an unusual Scabiosa which is almost black...black Poppy?
Deep blue shrub seeds.

Calendulas from Selengor, Malaysia. Although I got some of HBL these are NOT they. I did two trades in Malaysia last year.

The other Malaysia trade was Cape Daisy from Petaling Jaya which is on my blog..

Oh a beauty I forgot I had. Plumeria Frangipani. Bleeding Heart but not like the English pink and white versions, these are a dainty white flower with an orange center.

 

Seeds remind me of people...

some are easy going and are not too hard to please, whereas others are high maintenance, stubborn, and never satisfied!

I find sweet woodruff seeds are especially fussy and will only sprout for me in late April/early May - as they prefer 12 degrees celcius to pop.

Anyway, nice to hear from everyone...good luck with all your seed germinating this coming late winter. I am pretty excited about it, myself.

: )

 

Anything you'd like to send me is wonderful, really. I collect Calendulas, and I'm also always looking for new varieties of Hops. What would you like in return? My list was over in the seed trades thread, but I'm not entirely certain that it still exists, so here goes. These may be solarium plants for you, especially with the white winter you've been having this year. I'm so glad I'm in the tropics - I was reading on the BBC that parts of Scotland went down to -22 over the new year's weekend.

Kombucha squash, a giant green-skinned orange-fleshed thing with the best flavour outside of perhaps a Hubbard.
Two or three kinds of Papaya
Naranjillas
Tree Tomatoes
Dwarf altitude-hardy citrus (limes and mandarins)
Dwarf altitude-hardy pears
Cloud Plums, of the black variety called 'Mirabel'
Guava
White Pineapple
Framboyan trees (Delonix regia)
'Inca Giant' watermelons

and probably a host of other stuff that I'm forgetting.

 

"Just because you've only got houseplants doesn't mean you don't have the gardening spirit - I look upon myself as an indoor gardener" ~ Sara Moss-Wolfe


Looking forward to getting some new seeds shortly - will look for the ones you were interested in, shortly Beth - didn't forget, have a list. Placing orders soon.

By the way...

This card was given to me by one of my closest and dearest friends this Christmas. It is especially nice because the silver ribbon on the gift box turns an array of beautiful bright rainbow colors when the sun hits it in a certain way - which you can kinda see in the pic. Kind of special - like the friendship...

: )

 

Thanks Lorax,

A card with nice hummers will be fine. I will frame the card.

Maybe a Papaya.
Thanks!

Hops. I am unsure what they look like. I have some seed that looks like grass lol What it was when I bought twice off Malaysia he said I give free seed for two orders so he sent me free seed, you can have all of those.

Yes in Lancashire we have terrible snow. I can only go out in a taxi, take the taxi back so I don't fall...I have a fear of falling since last year when I damaged a knee.

-7 here, yep. -22 in Scotland.The danger is when it snowed all day last week big lumps like pennies it snowed on top of compacted ice making it extremely hazardous under foot.

We have run out of salt, run out of grit. No side roads are gritted, some roads are ungritted.The roads that are gritted its frozen as it made contact with the snow.

If you go to Wikipedia the worst year like this was 1963 in England when even telegraph poles froze.

There was a time in the late 60s when my late hubby and I had icicles on the inside of the bedroom windows, no central heating then, and an outside toilet.

Third pic is my mates road, taxis will not even go there for fear of sidding..

Today and all week you can't even see the front lawn like you can in the third image.

 

Looking awfully Canadian, there, Katalina. I'm very glad I'm not in a snow zone, myself. Although if the temps drop another couple of degrees, I will be.

Yuck.

Hops (Humulus lupulus) are a plant used in brewing; they're a vine with heavily veined leaves and fragrant flower cones. Very ornamental, as well, but I'd be using them for brewing.

 

Yeah - reminds me of London. It's only been here a few weeks and I'm sick if it already! Can't wait for it to be gone - good riddance...

: (

 

And feeling it Lorax when I venture to the bin.

Will it ever go?

I just want this freeze to end then I can shop normally again.

Still have the garden pots looking like huge ice cream cones this morning.

 

haha, move down here.... No snow :D