Ann's Air Gardens

Bubblews Referral

How exciting!  I just joined Bubblenews last night and my first referral has posted this and earned $1.07 already:

 

Please join Bubblews here as you can earn, too!

I Can't Look

OK, I went away for a whole week (gosh!) and my friend called to say we had a nasty frost and all the plants are dead and brown.   Poor waist_high fig cutting now 3 years old may be a goner, as it almost died of thirst when the automatic watering system went off last summer. Then it started leafing out and was hurt by a December frost. Then it started leafing out again and now this. I haven't even gone over to look.

 

Here, 6 miles away, the Camelias are opening up and looking gorgeous again and we have hundreds if ripe lemons.

Pomegranates are Wonderful

 

No, I haven't planted a pomegranate tree yet, but they are selling these beauties at the 99 Cents Only store.

Mulberry Clones

I cut these twigs off a local mulberry tree which bore what I thought was particularly good fruit last spring.  In October I took lengths about 8" long and removed all the leaves from them, putting the down end in a glass of water filled about 1/2 way to the top of the twigs, and leaving this in a not very bright place.   About 6 weeks later, when I checked to make sure the water had not all evaporated, I was delighted to see little leaves starting to form about 1/4 way from the top.

So I cut off the top and drilled holes in the bottom of a SmartWater bottle, filled it with hydroton clay "rocks" stuck the twigs into the rocks, then nested the bottle into a larger bottle 1/2 full of water.  will add a picture of my contraption when they start growing roots and leafing out some more.

This was how I started a beautiful fig tree a couple years ago.  Mulberry trees are rather messy, so I am not sure how good an idea it is to try to grown one indoors in water, but it promises to be a fun experiment.

Sprout Farm

The Sprout Farm is my favorite way to grow sprouts.  In addition to admiring the little plants, all I have to do is sprinkle seeds in the trays and then pour water in often enough so the reservoir does not run dry.

This is what we saw by the second day:

After that the "farm" really takes off:

AdHItz Test Two

See if anything shows below:

 

Testing AdHitz

I think I want to put this ad on my other blog, but need to test it somewhere first, so here goes:

 

 

OK I inserted the 125x125 ad block above, but not sure if it is showing yet.

A "Green" Basket Made from Recycled Yard Waste

This hanging planter is made from morning glory vines.  It hasn't shrunk yet, nor do I have any idea what it will look like after it dries out.  The back yard yielded about 40 lbs of vine stems which we rolled up like a carpet and lifted out on a bedsheet.  Before going to the trouble of cleaning and harvesting the stems I wanted to see if I could make a basket at all and if it would be an enjoyable activity.  It was fun and presumably my next basket will be better.

So tomorrow I will start stripping the leaves off my big pile of stems and coiling them to dry for later use.  

Here is what the bottom of the basket looked like at the beginning.

Here are the live vines taking over my yard before we pulled them out.

Another Berkeley Botanical Garden

When traveling one of the things I love most is visiting botanical gardens.  Recently, I remembered that having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area 40 odd years, I somehow managed never to have visited the wonderful garden in Tilden Park atop the Berkeley hills.

It has charming paths and bridges and stepping stones going up and down and around the attractions which include a tropical rain forest, among other habitats.

I think I could spend a whole week in Tilden and not be bored.  On the way up you might want to stop and see the Berkeley Rose garden as well.  Of course, the flowers there are most prolific in May, but I took this photo in August:

 

 

Toonies

My favorite plant experiment this summer involves a $1.49 batch of purple petunas I bought in distressed condition from the Grocery Outlet Store.  I put half of them in a 3-hole Aerogarden planter with a years old lamp that is not optimal, but still puts out some light:

The other half I put in dirt in the inner chamber of one of my hydroponic planters indoors.  This was to ensure drainage. The widow sill is rather dark, so I did not expect much from that half of my experiment.

Surprisingly, the plant in dirt flowered first, within just a few days, 

 

 

It took the Aerogarden plants several weeks to flower, as I had to pinch them back  because after the transfer to water all the bus withered and turned brown.  But once they started, they just kept going whereas the dirt plant slowed down, although they do still have a few blossoms.

As you may know, petunia flowers are edible, so part of my experiment involved a taste test.  There was no difference in flavor between the water grown petunias and those grown indoors in dirt.  Petunia blossoms are not particularly tasty when eaten alone, but I think they are a good complement to egg dishes.  After trying them with different kinds of foods, I decided that they go best with chocolate.  Peanut butter works, too, especially chocolate peanut butter. By the way, here is a photo of my French Toast with Strawberries and Petunias.