Ann's Air Gardens

Yellow on Yellow

Cucumber blossoms look quite pretty on top of a bowl of egg salad and taste good, too.  I harvested some of the oregano that basks in the light from the Aerogarden mini which is currently home to Amaranth. 

  How could I not eat this?  

Also enjoying the lumination from the grow lamp are various cuttings, including Creeping Charlie from a neighbor's shaded porch.  It is actually Swedish Begonia, I think, meaning the edible houseplant with the Latin name Plectranthus australis.  It is also called Swedish Ivy, not to be confused with Ground Ivy aka Creeping Jenny.    I was searching for information online to collaberate my experience that Plectranthus australis (a coleus) flourishes in sun or shade.  Naturally all the hits that came up spoke instead of ways to get rid of a noxious weed that takes over any part of your lawn if you have one and let it.  But that would be the aforementioned ground ivy which is Glechoma hederacea. 

Swedish Begonia is edible, I believe--at least I eat it, but the medicinal herb that was much aclaimed by ancient scientists would be the ground ivy. 

They are both in the Lamiaceae (Mint) family.   

    So is the oregano:

 Here is my Creeping Charlie Grow Log:   Not the Weed

Here is my Cucumber Grow Log:  Cukes

 

Flowers on the Lantana Clones

Finally the lantana cuttings I took in July are blooming:
 

Just glad to know I can do it and will post more photos, time allowing. 

Lavendar Roses

No, I did not grow this:   

But what a nice holiday gift a dozen of them would make. 

Grower's Flowers sells them HERE . 
 

Evening Glories

That is what my brother calls moonflowers.  I love them.  The best of all worlds is having the blue morning glories blossom in the morning and then the white moonflowers coming out at night.

This photo is 20 days after planting.  I sprouted the seeds in the Sproutman's Hemp Bag that the aforementioned brother gave me for my last birthday.

 

Why didn't somebody tell me what a fun houseplant these moonflowers can be?
 

I Did It!

For the longest time I have been wanting to get around to making a few passive hydroponic planters out of glass.  The plastic ones described in previous posts work well, but glass is more attractive and also easier to clean.  Having located short and tall tumblers with the same diameter, and a glass cylinder just the right size to nest them in, the next step was drilling holes.  For more on that and to see a full-length photo of my first glass planter, please go HERE.

  
Some of my "easier" passive hydro plants are sitting inside tall bottles with no drain holes.  I just shake them once in a while to aerate the roots.  That works OK with spider plant and pothos, but I like to keep my edible plants really clean.  For me that is the main purpose of doing it hydroponically.  That and no bugs!

Mystery Plant Identified

 

For several months I have been trying to find the name for this shrub:

 It is Plumbago auriculata, also known as Cape Leadwort.    This pretty plant has many bloggers exclaiming that they wish they had discovered it sooner.  I agree. 

 

The plumbago, also called Skyflower because of the sky blue color of the blossons, fits all my requirements for the near perfect desert landscaping shrub.  No thorns, roots from cuttings, easy to grow, hardy, drought-resistant, and tolerates heat and sun.

  
The skyflowers I am nurturing are destined to go out front, where they will not only be decorative, but also provide a little shade from the relentless Palm Desert sun.  Until they get established, though,  I need them in a more protected area, so a little planning was in order.  By nesting a pot filled with each plant into an identical empty one buried in the ground I will be able to move the plants around without having to dig them up.  It will be easy to lift them up onto the potting bench where they can be tended at a comfortable height.   Also, using this method I can go ahead and prepare the larger holes now for when they are ready to transplant to bigger pots. 

 

A clay saucer can go over the top of the empty pots as they are awaiting future plants.  That will keep them from filling up with water or debris, and smaller plants can rest on top of the saucer.   If we get a cold spell, I can just lift the plants out and move them into a huddle all together in a sheltered place instead of trying to protect them individually. 

 

Soon it will be cool enough to plant some Swiss Chard.  I'll start it indoors in an AeroGarden and then move it out back, using the same pot in pot method in a raised bed.  We'll see if that keeps the rabbits out. 

 

 

Oops, This is not a fig.

Suddenly I am "mom" to a grapevine!

My sweet cousin tried to dig up some fig tree suckers for me over at my late uncle's backyard.  I am trying an experiment to see if I can clone some fig trees from what we used to call "slips" back on the farm, but wanted backup in case that didn't work.  So there were all these roots near the little fig trees, as the parent plant although laden with fruit had not gotten much care for about ten years.   He got some of the gnarly straggly root stuff up out of the ground and I happily took it home and stuck it in the ground, watered it well and waited.  Some of the dried out stem stuff was sticking out of the dirt and when a neighbor came by, she ran her hands over it and pronounced it dead.  She did not say it was NOT a fig.  She just said that no way was it going to grow. 

Well, it grew, but it was not a fig:

I haVe very little experience in dirt gardening and never grew any kind of tree before except for a ficus benjamina we had rescued from the dumpster. Everybody thought it was dead, and to tell you the truth we were just intending to recycle the dirt from that plant, as we thought it was a goner, too.  This was in autumn, and then we got busy with other things and  set it aside where it was forgotten until spring.  When I finally picked up the pot to take it back to the dumpster, surprise, by then there were two tiny leaves peaking out from the base of the stem.  It grew like wildfire and after a few years, when it got too tall to stay on the porch, we put it out near our carport, The following spring we saw a couple birds building a nest in it and before long it was home to cheeping babies, a scenario which repeated itself every year for a couple decades thereafter. 

That tree was like a  treasure to us until the new management of our apartment complex got the brilliant idea of disallowing any live plants in the carports.   We moved and tried to take the ficus with us, but it did not like its new home and soon expired at the new location.   Died of sadness, I think.

I don't know what kind of grape that is in the picture above, nor how to care for a grape, but as it is "family" I will learn and do my best to keep it alive and flourishing in my new plant-friendly community.   

No Bees in my Home Please

I brought some cuttings from a friend's white morning glory indoors to root and they are so pretty that I decided to leave them indoors and grow them hydroponically.  Initially I was concerned about whether they would cross-pollinate with the gorgeous blue ones that are flowering in abundance next door.  Like laundry, I wanted the whites to stay white and the colors to stay bright...and the bees to stay outdoors.
 
Ah, but these are moonflowers!  They get up late, like me, so I can watch them open.  It does not take long either, as they can  go from being as pictured at the left to being like the one at the right in just one minute.

The leaves are heart-shaped, whereas the leaves on my blue morning glory have triple indentations. 

Update on the moonflowers:

I saw a seed packet of the Ipomoea alba  at WalMart for 99 cents and decided to see how fast they would sprout.   After nicking a few of the seeds on the side with a nail clipper, I soaked them overnight, and put them in the Sproutman's Hemp Sprouting Bag.  Two days later they were ready to plant.  Yes, in the dirt!  This is something new for me as I normally only grow things in water. My rules were these:

1)  It has to grow in water, and

2)  It has to be edible.

The genus Ipomoea is neither! (except for water spinach, more on which later...)

Blame it on the fig tree.  That, and my recent move to Southern California, to a place with a yard.  Yes, it is the size of a postage stamp, but big enough to grow a fig...in a pot, as those guys send roots out forever, and probably the gophers would come and gnaw through them.   

Thai Basil--Sweet and Holy

I've been wanting to grow some Thai Basil for a long time, but put it off for one reason or another until our local WalMart recently added it to their live plant offerings.  I came to a screeching halt and plopped one in my cart before you could say "Cheaper than a Seed-Pack!"

Naturally, the first thing I did was to snip off some slips to root:

Here, in the 10 ml glass vial to the right of the Million Bells blossom, is the smallest cutting I ever rooted.  The detail of the healthy roots is a bit blurred through the glass, but I will replace it with a better picture as soon as I get a chance.  This is Ocimum basilicum, or Sweet Thai Basil, not to be confused with Holy Basil aka Tulsi, which Dr. Mercola and others tout as a prevention against Swine Flu.  Tulsi is Ocimum tenuiflorum.  

Upside Down Tomato

I have to be the last person on my block to have an upside down tomato planter, but I'd been wanting to make one for quite some time, and although this one is not hydroponic, it certainly fits the theme of "Ann's Air Gardens." 

  You may remember this plant when I put it in a milk    carton here.   

 The roots and soil are held in place with a chunk of the same open-cell air-conditioner foam that I use as plugs in the AeroGarden's grow baskets.  The foam also helps keep soil from falling out through the opening when the plant is watered. 

I'm hanging it indoors in the shade until I get a fabric cover sewn.   I'm still thinking about the design, as I'd like the cover to come off easily for inspection, but also to protect the dirt from drying out and/or getting direct light. 

My theory is that the roots, which may have already adapted to water since this cutting was rooted in water and spent the first month of its life in liquid nutrient solution, will adapt to potting soil if I harden the plant off properly before abandoning it to the desert heat.  But I should note that the soil that I am using (Scotts MicracleGro Moisture Control) contains coco-noir, so that should help.

I'll add a picture when I get the cover made, and hopefully again when tomatoes appear.  There are buds on the plant now, but the shock of being converted might cause them to drop off.