spiceoflife's Blog

Seeds are in and Plastic is On!
Oct 29, 2007 | 8:00 PM PST
Tags: plastic , small greenhouse , pumpkins

Hello friends and readers,

I've planted all of my rhambutans (4), longan berries (10) and pomegranate seeds (53), now it's up to them.  The coconut still has another couple of days of soaking before I pop it in a pot.

We had a pretty good frost this morning, but it only froze on my car - the plants in the beds were fine.  :-)  Thank you micro-climates!  So when I got home from work this afternoon I put the plastic on my little green house/row cover/cold frame, call it what you like.  Pictures are in my album if you would like to take a look.  A couple of people seemed interested in what I did with the greenhouse after seeing the pictures, so I'll be posting a materials list, dimensions and some basic instructions.  I'm actually going to be covering another one of my beds, so I'll take some pictures as I go, too.

My son took one of the pumpkins with him to his mother's house.  Boy was he proud!  We didn't get a chance to carve one here at our house this weekend.  My niece and nephew didn't come down as planned, so I have some extras.  And I let the neighbors know about the pumpkins in the pumpkin patch so they can bring their grand kids over.  They seemed pretty excited about it.  :-)

 A new friend sent me some osage oranges that I have been craving ever since I came across them while trying to identify a plant that Meska had posted in the Mystery Plant forum.  I opened the box with my son this weekend.  They did sort of look like "green brains".  I have to take some time this week and figure out the best way to get the seeds out.  I'm thinking of trying a couple of different methods.  1) brute force - cut them open and pick the seeds out.  2) leave one outside under a pot to see what it looks like in the spring, since they will need to be stratified (exposed to cold for a period of time to mimic the change of seasons and allow the seeds to germinate).  3)  Put one in the ground and see what happens.  I'll spend some time researching it online, too.  Of course, if anyone has any additional info I would love to hear about it.

On a down note, when I brought in my plants, I had some hitchhikers - spider mites.  They were positively feasting on my bananas and elephant ears.  They don't seem to like anything else.  I picked up some pyrethrum spray for houseplants at the local Agway.  It seems to do a good job against the spider mites and the fungus gnats that also come in this time of year.  I tried watering less frequently to get rid of the fungus gnats by just keeping the soil drier, but all I got was thirsty fungus gnats.  ;-)  I had also tried using one of those clove oil sprays, but my plants didn't like it, and it didn't seem to be effective.  It didn't bother the gnats at all.  So pyrethrum spray it is.

Also, thanks to everyone who is reading my blog.  I saw that it's now ranked second.  :-)  If there are any gardening magazine editors reading this, I'm also willing to write articles for money, too.

Regards,

Robert