Yasaibatake's Blog
Yasaibatake's Blog
Last Post 168 days, 11 hours Ago
Feb 6, 2008 | 6:14 PM PST
Tags: winter , strawberries , aphids , Button , pine tree , apple sprout
I'm just plain tired of winter by now. The ice, the snow, the wind…it doesn’t help that most of my winter clothes (and my long coat) are buried in boxes somewhere in the back of my parent’s storage shed. Yes, they’re still there. They’re so far in the back, I couldn’t get to them without unpacking the whole shed, and that simply wasn’t going to happen. At least I have American Idol to pull me through.
So, the garden. The reason we’re all here. Well, honestly, not that much has happened. The strawberries are plagued with aphids, and have been separated from everything else in an attempt to keep the little buggers from spreading. My folks moved some of my plants around for a showing (house goes on the market officially on Monday) and no one remembers where they put the tiny Button seedling, and I have yet to find it. The poor baby is surely wilted and starved by now! Seriously, how do you misplace a plant? Anyway, the one pine tree seedling was thrown out on my mom’s request (it was in her pot, after all, and it was basically dead) and one of the apple seeds (at least, I’m assuming it was the apple seeds, and not a sudden appearance by one of the lemon seeds) has sprouted! It’s nice and strong, standing just under an inch tall and topped with two teeny tiny leaves. So...yay!
Dec 3, 2007 | 10:03 PM PST
Tags: NaNoWriMo , NaNoFiMo , baby pine tree , apple seeds
Well, NaNoWriMo is offically over now. Do I feel sad about this fact? you betcha. Can I wait to start editing my novel? Not in the least. Is it done yet?.....nope! so, what should I do about this?.....that's right! Join NaNoFiMo, NaNoWriMo's little brother (or is it a sister? I haven't the slightest)! (www.nanofimo.org) AKA National Novel Finishing Month, December challenges us to write 30,000 words minimum to finish our novel! (and yes, if you want to join but didn't do a NaNoWriMo novel, that's fine too. We're not too picky, as long as you get your 30,000 words in, of course!)
Anyways, you all want to hear about the garden and not the novel, right? :) Well not much has changed. Padre and I gave the poor struggling pine baby some of that root stimulator, and he seemed to be doing well for like a week and now he looks even worse. I'm not sure if I dare try it again...i don't want him to look good for a week and then be dead the next! I also planted a few of those apple seeds just for the fun of it, but I haven't seen anything yet. Not so sure I'm giving them the right conditions or anything, but, eh, live and learn, right?
Nov 21, 2007 | 11:54 AM PST
Tags: snow , Bachelor's Buttons , strawberries , lemon seed , white pines , nanowrimo
I'm baaaaaaaack! Did ya miss me?
November is a hard month for me to get anything done, for one reason and one reason only: Nanowrimo! For those of you who don't feel like clicking the link, let me explain (briefly, I promise): Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Participants have from 12:00 am November 1st to 11:59 pm November 30th to write a 50,000+ word novel. You don't have to finish it, as long as you reach the 50K mark by the deadline. This is the first year I've done it and I didn't even start until November 5th, plus I'm crazy far behind on word count right now, but by golly I'm going to make it if it kills me! Which it feels like it just might.
Anyways, I know you are not here to read about my faaaaaaaaaaabulous novel, but about my little garden! My strawberries are doing fantastically, as I stated last time...a little too fantastically, to be honest. Some of the plants are so tall, they're tipping over. My tallest plant is actually horizontal for about five inches before turning upwards (all told, it's around 8 or 9 inches tall...er, long?) My dad told me quite seriously that I should think about a stake for the poor thing. Who ever heard of staking a strawberry plant??? I'm thinking about getting a slightly bigger pot so I can kindof mound some extra dirt around it and hopefully hold it upright; the pot it's in right now is a little small for that sort of thing.
The one Bachelor Button seedling is doing smashing as well! He put out a new set of leaves and is just fabulous. I think I'm going to try one more time to get him some little Button buddies, and if that doesn't work out, well, maybe he's just a loner.
The pine trees are 2 for 3 right now. 2 of the little babies are doing fantastically, putting out new growth and just generally doing awesome. The third (the smallest one, too) is really struggling. He hasn't put out any new growth, and some of his needles are starting to turn brown. He has pretty darn close to the exact same conditions as the other two, but for some reason he just hasn't caught on. I read on the internet that he might like having some dirty fish water (you know, from like fish tanks when you clean them out) because it's full of ammonia which equals nitrogen, so I gave him a little bit from my beta fish, but that was like a week ago and it hasn't seemed to help him any. I thought about asking if I could gank some of the neighbor's pine needles too, the ones that fall at the base of his trees you know? but those would take such a long time to decompose that I don't think that would help much either. My dad's going to bring me some root simulant to try and help the poor guy out, but if that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do.
The lemon seeds look like they won't sprout. The only change that's taken place is that they are now covered in black. yay for mold. I haven't thrown them out yet because I figured the mold might help it break out of that hard shell (might break it down a little) but i'm pretty sure it's more or less a lost cause. Ah, well, I'm making Swedish Apple Pie with my mom for Thanksgiving, so maybe I'll plant some apples in the lemon's place! Bwahahahahahahahahaahahahahaha
!
Oh, yes, and even though I didn't really talk about it, the title is correct - today is the first snow of the year! It's pretty thin, as usual, but it's still the unoffical start to winter, IMHO. Let the holidays begin!
Nov 4, 2007 | 9:24 PM PST
Tags: Bachelor's Buttons , strawberries , pepper seeds
subtitle: The Failures, the Successes, and the Daydreamers
I haven't the slightest what is going on with those silly Button seedlings! I lost another one today and a third one is still refusing to stand up. Only one of them is nice and tall - just put up the second set of leaves! Though mi padre said the first two leaves weren't really leaves for whatever the reasoning was, so I guess it's the first set of "real" leaves. I have half a mind to get the biggest pot I can find and plant all the seeds I have left in it just to see what happens - how many sprout and how many of the buggers stay alive and upright!
But I have to share - my little tiny strawberry plants, the little babies that were so tiny and fragile and half-dead just a month ago...if only you all could see them now! They've litterally doubled in size and are so nice and tall and green and leafy and...and...beautiful! I must admit, they've caught me off-guard; I was hoping they would look this way by spring. Though, as I'm thinking about it, why wouldn't they grow? They have warmth, lots of sun, good soil (versus clay), pleanty of water, no weeds to combat...much better conditions than in my parent's backyard! Makes me wish I'd potted more than four plants...
Then again, if I had as many strawberries and little baby trees and flowers and other plants as I wanted, I would quickly be out of room on my windowsill!
On that note, I do have more pepper seeds (from my co-worker again)....I forgot, did I already say that I got more peppers from her? Well, I did! Both bell peppers and banana peppers. I held off on processing most of them because I was sick, but felt pretty good today so I stripped them all of their seeds and froze their hollow green bodies :) I have more banana pepper seeds than I know what to do with! So maybe I'll plant some of those too.....you know, just to see.
Goodness. I'm unstoppable!
Oct 30, 2007 | 8:27 PM PST
Tags: sick , Bachelor's Buttons , lemon seeds
Sorry folks, I'm just too used to the small type I guess :) Though sometimes it's too hard for me to read when my contacts are acting up! Thankfully I just got a new box in, which means I have at least three months before battling the overly dry, itchy, blurry contacts again...anyways is this size better?
And another apology for being gone for...what now, a week basically? I've been sick. Again. What is this, the 8th time? In just a little over two months? The OT assured me that all new teachers go through this, and that after a year or two I'll build up such a tolerance for the common classroom germs that I will practically never get sick. I sure hope she's right, because this is driving me crazy! I need to buy stock in Halls cough drops or something....
Anyways, very little has happened. My Buttons are kinda tipsy...they like to fall over, but the stems are intact. it's like they are suddenly top heavy and there isn't enough dirt to hold them up or something. I'll try transplanting them into another pot (which I'd been looking at doing anyways, if you remember....well, if i remembered to tell you! now i can't rememeber) and maybe i can get them a little more stable then.
My grandparents were in town this past weekend to visit with my brother since it's his senior year of high school. They both grew up on farms and they were the ones that had the big ol' garden to feed all 6 of their kids, so they were very interested to see my little pots. They weren't really sure why I would grow only four little strawberry plants ("that won't be enough for even a handful of strawberries" they said, puzzled at my space-saving logic) and were equally impressed with the white pines....I think, since they have really only gardened/farmed for the sake of feeding their families, they didn't really understand why I wanted to grow a tree that would produce nothing they would eat. But they were trying to support me, and I appreciate that fact at least.
I do have one new addition! well, two, kinda. My boy and I went out eating with my grandparents and my granddad pulled the lemon seeds out of the lemons that came with his water. He gave them to me and told me that I could grow just about any seed, no matter where it came from, so I should try growing those two seeds. I thought I remembered reading about someone on here who had done this before, some night when I was reading lots of blog archives, so I decided to try it. They're currently sitting in wet paper towels in a clear glass on my windowsill...you know, like how you used to sprout seeds in elementary school science class? I figured why make a whole new pot with dirt and everything if they aren't even going to sprout, right? So I'll let them sprout there if they want to and then I'll put them into a pot.
Oct 24, 2007 | 10:20 PM PST
Tags: Bachelor's button , peppers , seeds
Exactly!
So my Button seeds sprouted a second time...only one of those three came up. And the one stem hasn't changed at all. I'm kinda sad about it, but I think I might try and transplant the three seedlings tomorrow anyways and maybe I'll add in another pinch of seeds, just to get a halfway-decent pot going here. Silly little things.
In other news, the co-worker who brought in all those banana peppers brought in a ton more today! Banana peppers and bell peppers and some red peppers that she lost the tag for and couldn't remember what they were called. Kinda look like chiles of some sort, in my humble oh-so-intelligent opinion! I have a ton load more than I had last time, and I just barely finished those, so tomorrow I will probably freeze most of these new ones and save the seeds - ignoring the float test this time! I don't work tomorrow or Friday so I have pleanty of time.
Other than that...it's been a slow couple of days! The baby trees are all looking pretty good...the strawberries have lost a few leaves but are looking nice and strong...I kinda want to plant those pumpkin seeds *now* but I know I have to wait like a good little girl...maybe tomorrow while I'm transplanting those Buttons I'll plant a few pepper seeds straight from the pepper, what do you all think?
Oct 20, 2007 | 1:58 PM PST
Tags: Louisberg cider mill , pumpkins , apples , Bachelor's Buttons
Uh, I typed out this whole thing and then forgot to copy it before posting. Of course, I was logged out :( Okay, how about a list summary...because I'm too lazy to type all that out again.
-Friday was a field trip day for our LIFT class! We went to the Louisberg cider mill/pumpkin path (in Louisberg, KS, just a touch south of us).
-We went through a corn maze, saw farm animals including the most adorable black piglets I've ever seen in my life, and generally tortured the LIFT teacher, who is a city slicker to the extreme and was totally lost/grossed out being in the country.
-The pumpkin patch was a huge disappointment. It was pretty much just a spot where a bunch of people litterally threw their extra pumpkins; at least 85% of the pumpkins were smashed open and rotting. But since we only have 6 students, we managed to find enough good pumpkins that everyone got one. The speech path ran around putting the good ones in clear spots so that the kiddos could "find" their own. It was so bad, the OT gave me a few (read: 4) pumpkin seeds one of the kids had picked from an open pumpkin, saying, "You should grow these so we'll have some good pumpkins next year."
-The cider mill was nifty and smelled great! One of the other paras asked me if you could grow apple trees from the seeds inside apples from the grocery store, and I had to admit I didn't know for sure, never having tried it, but that it made sense. I know there are some things where the grocery store foods can't produce viable seeds or something to that effect, but I couldn't tell you what produce that was or even where I heard that. So I guess I can't really say I know that, eh? Details.
-One of the Button seedlings toppled. About halfway up the stem, it looked like it suddenly got smashed - paper thin and more white than green. Mi padre suggested cutting off that part and leaving the bottom of the stem, which is still healthy, and waiting to see if it will come back, so I did. (Is it obvious yet that I have no idea what I'm doing? but that's half the fun) I planted three more seeds in the same pot to make up for the smashed one and the two that didn't sprout. When those sprout, I'll probably move all of them to a bigger pot, as the two survivors will be fairly big by then and I don't want to crowd them in too much. It is, after all, a pretty small pot.
Oct 16, 2007 | 9:20 PM PST
Tags: banana peppers , float test
A little while back, a co-worker gave me some banana peppers from her own garden. I pulled the seeds out of there and let them dry and whatnot. My dad, who grew all the produce for his family when he was growing up (there were 6 kids, so that meant a lot of produce!), said that if I dumped all the seeds in a bowl of water, the viable seeds would float to the top and the duds would sink. What would make a dud seed more dense than a viable seed? I have no idea. But I dumped everything I pulled out from the peppers into a big bowl of water, and sure enough, some of them floated and some of them sank. I totally should have planted some of the ones that sank, you know, like my own little science experiment, but I didn't think about that at the time and only saved the ones that were floating. Meh, I'm sure that wasn't the last time I'll plant anything from seed, lol!!! :) Anyways so I planted two of the floater seeds today (yes, only two...I replaced the two Buttons that didn't sprout...figured if the other three sprouted, those two should have as well. I should have put them in my bowl of water too!) and am quite curious to see what I'll get. You know, it probably would have been a whole heck of a lot smarter if I had looked up banana peppers to see if they require the same sunlight and everything that Buttons do...
Oct 13, 2007 | 6:54 PM PST
Tags: baby pine trees , bachelor's button , triplets
Okay, so I just had to write, because today I managed to get both of my questions from yesterday answered!
1) I was right - they are white pines! They were going to be Christmas trees, but apparently they were very poor Christmas trees because the branches were too flexible and bent under even the lightest decorations. So they never came inside and have just grown up there.
2) Padre was more than happy for me to take the baby tree, as long as I gave it to him when it grew up. I started to protest when...
Upon taking a closer look in the general area, I found not one baby tree, but three! The other two are a little shorter and don't have nearly as many branches, but there they are nevertheless! So I uprooted all of them, being careful to leave a lot of dirt around them (I read somewhere on the internet today that white pines have some sort of symbiotic fungus that grows in their roots? Two years of being a biology major warned me that if this was true, I had better leave it there, so I took as big a chunk of dirt with the seedlings as I could without having to beg my dad to overturn the path or anything like that). Madre y Padre (7+ years of French, and one semester of college Spanish, and which language do I use more often? *sigh*) can have one of them - maybe even two, I'm feeling pretty nice today - but I get at least one! They're just so darn cute...little more than twigs at the moment (the tallest one is 4 inches tall) but that's exciting! I am loving the idea of growing these trees from such tiny babies! I just hope that I can keep the darlings in their pots until I graduate and can afford a house with a backyard to plant them in. Trees grow pretty slow, right? And if I can get big enough pots, they'll stay happy in there for some years, right? *crosses her fingers* I mean, I don't graduate for two and a half years...
Oh! And my Bachelor's Buttons are already beginning to sprout! I found two little green curly-ques poking up today...I was very surprised! I didn't except them to pop up for a week, at least. Plus I only planted five because it's a pretty tiny pot. Here's to hoping the other three come up soon! WHEEEEEEE!!!!
ETA: (at 1:09 am) It really is a day of triplets! I showed off my trees and the two Buttons to my boyfriend earlier this evening. He was getting ready to leave when my mom asked him to show her how to work Powerpoint on her laptop...I made one last check on my plants for the night and I had three little Button sprouts! Je suis excited! :) Yay for French too!
Oct 12, 2007 | 4:42 PM PST
Tag: baby pine tree
Hello again...
I have exciting news today! In the back corner of my parent's yard, they have a mulched flower bed with some rose quartz stepping stones. I enjoy hopping from stone to stone, peering at all the flowers and buggies and whatnot - makes for a nice study break! Anyway so I was poking around, avoiding my 8 page "poverty in the classroom" paper, and found this tiny baby!
(Sorry for the fuzziness. My parents' camera is really old and was having a hard time focusing.)
I'm guessing he came from my neighbor's big ol' pine trees. I don't know for sure what their trees are...I know just enough about identifying trees to be dangerous! I'm thinking they're white pines - they have these wonderful long, soft needles that I just adore. There are five needles to a bunch, spaced opposite each other on the branch, and have a bit of a bluish green tint to them. I'll have to ask if I'm right or not. Anyways I'm super excited about the baby tree! I'm kinda torn between wanting to take him with me - hey, he's just a baby, he could do well in a big ol' pot for a little while, right? - and also knowing that I can't uproot the entire backyard just because my folks are moving. I'll have to ask mi padre what he thinks....but I'm not-so-secretly hoping he'll say I can take it :)
Oct 10, 2007 | 5:02 PM PST
Tags: strawberries , Bachelor's Buttons , beginning , Norcal little blue pot
Let's start with an offical disclaimer, eh? "The author of this blog has no idea what she is doing, and has admitted to making it all up as she goes. Any advice or examples given hereafter should be treated with great skepticism unless validated by legitimate outside sources." ;) Funny, yes, but also true. It's also a pretty decent first-impression-maker. So here is your offical warning: I am a rambling fool! Except lots of stories, random details, obscure allusions, jokes that aren't funny to anyone except me, and other cross-categorical nonsense.
Okay, so now that introductions are out of the way, let's get down to business, shall we? I'm restricted to container gardening, as I live in an apartment and therefore have no lawn to dig up. My apartment doesn't even have a balcony, so I'm further restricted to a (admitedly very long) windowsill until I can be creative and think of somewhere else to put my plants without management kicking me out onto the streets. As of today, I have a grand total of three pots hanging around: two pots with two baby strawberry plants each, and one much smaller pot I just finished planting with some Bachelor's Button seeds. I haven't decided if I'll plant anything else tonight, but I might. I have tons load more to plant, mostly seeds, and more space, but I'm trying not to go too crazy all in one night, lol! I'll try and borrow my folk's digital camera sometime soon so I can try and get some pictures of my cute little strawberry plants posted too!
ETA: I broke my favorite little blue pot today. I tripped over one of my mom's dogs and dropped it on the patio. After a little pouting, I figured out it was made by a company called Norcal. I guess I bought it as a part of a set, because I have three others that are the exact same except in different colors - yellow, green, and pink. Hopefully I can find one online or in a store to replace it...and then maybe buy an extra set too. You know, just in case.
