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My Porcupine Tomato (Solanum pyracanthum), four varieties of Callisia repens, and my tropical pitcher plant (Nepenthes alata) all share a board that now has a tray on it for them to sit in. Also, the Porcupine Tomato and the Callisia repens drink a LOT of water, so having to water them regularly, the tray now keeps me from having to deal with excess water draining from the bottom of their pots and making a mess. |
| I did some checking up on how to properly pollinate my Porcupine Tomato and learned that it, like edible tomatoes, are both self-pollinated to a degree, but also “buzz pollinated” – also known technically as “floral sonication“! It’s a co-evolutionary strategy whereby when bees visit the flowers and make a vibrating action with their wings or bodies, the anthers (the yellow parts that hold the pollen) will shoot out a little puff of pollen, coating the bee. So simply vibrating the stems causes the release of pollen through the anther tips (circled in red) and enhances pollination. |  |
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My Pineapple (Ananas comosus) top has produced several nice fresh leaves over the past few weeks and will soon take the place of the nasty, short, half dead original crown leaves. It is doing so well that I’ve decided to just leave it growing in the Mason jar of water for the time being. It’s certainly not hurting anything. Besides, it will take as many as three years before it ever produces a pineapple of its own, so what’s the rush, right? |
| I replace about a third of the water it’s growing in weekly with more distilled water to keep it fresh and oxygenated. The pineapple roots definitely don’t seem to be bothered by being submerged in water. I will likely begin giving it a few drops of plant food every few weeks starting soon. I am giving the top a tremendous amount of bright light, but adding a little nutrient to the water will likely make it more robust and green. |  |
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The stumps of my Pink Polka Dot Plant (Hypoestes phyllostachya) are putting forth quite a lot of pretty new fresh growth. I haven’t checked the cuttings yet to see if they have started to root, but I’m sure it won’t be very long until they do. |
| The stumps of my White Polka Dot Plant are growing out plenty of new growth just like the Pink ones. I didn’t take a photo of the Red Polka Dot Plant stumps because they’ve not shown nearly as much growth for some reason. It’s growing, just not as fast or robust as the Pink and White ones. |  |
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After noticing the leaves burning on my Balsam under the 10,000 Lumen LED lights (discussed further down), I decided to move everythng I was growing under the 10,000 Lumen LED lights to the 7,000 lumen LED lights instead. That includes my Four-O-Clocks (Mirabilis jalapa) and my Russian House Tomatoes. I thnk they will all fare better now. |
| More and more of my Pregnant Onion (Ornithogalum caudatum) bulblets are starting to show signs of life. However, there are still at least 25 yet to start growing. So these are just gettting the party started for all the others to soon follow. Once each has multiple leaves and has increased in size a bit, I’ll begin transplanting them into individual pots and soon afterward I’ll begin offering them for sale. After around four months they should begin bulging out and making bulblets of their own on their sides. |  |
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As mentioned above, I happened to notice that my young Balsam (Impatiens balsamina) plants are burning from the intense light two feet under my 10,000 Lumen LED fixture. So I moved the plants today to grow under my 7,000 Lumen LED fixture. Hopefully this awful burning of its leaves will resolve itself quickly. The seedlings seemed to do ok, but as they are starting to reach maturity and will begin blooming soon, they appear to have less tolerance for the bright light. |
| I have three Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica) seedlings that germinated today. They’ve been on damp paper towel for three weeks, but it wasn’t until I scraped their seed coats that they immediately germinated.They will be (as they always are) a lot of fun. I never get bored touching the tips of the leaves and watching the leaflets fold up one after another moving up the leaf, sometimes even seeing an entire leaf fold and droop down. I never had much luck in the past getting them to produce seed, but hopefully this time with three plants in one pot, maybe things will be different… |  |
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Here are three seedlings of my Telegraph Plant (Codariocalyx motorius) that germinated within 24 hours of scraping their surface. I had them on damp paper towel in a plastic bag for five weeks and they lay there dormant. I then decided to scrape them against a piece of sandpaper and within 24 hours they all started to germinate. These plants have curious little leaflets that jerk and rotate all day long, and do it so quickly that you can sit and observe them doing it. |
| I don’t know what I have been thinking the past three weeks, but my Coleus seeds germinated and now the seedlings seem stuck in a kind of purgatory. I must figure out how to fix this and I have a few ideas. Since you can see that they have delicate roots spread out over the surface of the paper towel, I think I will cut around them, place the entire sheet with the seedlings on soil, and very lightly begin scattering finely sifted soil over the paper towel. Hopefully, as the Coleus plants grow, I can eventually have the paper towel fully covered with soil and the paper towel will disintegrate. Though the plants will be way too close together, Coleus is one of the easiest plants there is to root from cuttings, so I could easily propagate and separate the young plants by cuttings. |  |
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I know. I know. I broke the rules. I said yesterday that since the Pygmy Sundew (Drosera paleacea) gemmae cannot be moved once they put down roots, they need to be spaced out and placed where they will stay. And now I placed these five really close to one another. But after I gave it some thought, I felt it better to keep them together than in individual pots that each need to be monitored and maintained. Later I can propagate them by gemmae as well as through leaf cuttings. But for now it would be easier to keep them all in one pot. |
| I still have a lot of space, but the shelves are slowly starting to fill. Once I begin taking large numbers of cuttings and they become established, then things will really start to take off. In the meantime I’m enjoying the rather leisurely way things are progressing. It insures that I feel neither underwhelmed nor overwhelmed – making this a truly enjoyable and satisfying personal hobby. |  |