Saving Geraniums Over Winter

Geraniums can be brought inside as houseplants over winter, they don't thrive like outside but do fine and continue to flower all winter.

House Plant Trellis

I've been trying to figure out how to shade the african violet from the south sun. Came up with the idea of using some scrap wood and two sided tape to make a trellis, shade and a place for the Ivy to grow.

Harvesting Ginger

Ginger is easy to grow, you basically take a fresh rhizone you get at the grocery store and stick it in the ground and water it.. Do not refrigerate before planting however or it won't grow

Ginger rhizomes pulled from the container

Ginger after being dug and seperated, the different colours indicate how old the rhizomes are. The 2 green stalks in the plastic bag I'm going to plant inside over winter and put them out in the spring for new ginger.

Some of the ginger went right into a stir fry.

Pulling Amaryllis bulbs before Frost

Might be frost tonight so I decided to bring in the amaryllis bulbs and pull them from their pots for the first time in years. Once they have had their dormant period I intend to replant them and treat them better so hopefully the bulb size will increase.

Beans Grow Fast

Some beans planted in August have mature pods on them



Trying Some Herbs indoors

Close up of Germinating Daylily Seeds

Some Random Pictures

Ginger(with some unknown sprouts)

Four O'Clock Flowers(looking a bit ragged because of bad soil)

Ripening Tomatoes

Anthurium Looks Good



Failed Watermelons LOL

The watermelon plants were a failure, only 2 little watermelons grew



Two Strawberry Seedlings

These are a couple of strawberries I have growing, the one on the upper right is a commercial strawberry started from seeds collected off a store bought berry, the lower right one is a wild seedling I found growing in one of my flower pots, who knows what it is or where it came from.

Fertile Looking Compost

The compost bin looks pretty fertile, some discarded seeds are growing like crazy. The white fuzzy blob is a mass of fungus. The compost bin is just a large storage bin with a piece of screen on top to control the flies.



Transplanted Daylilies Update

These are the Montfort daylilies I planted from this post , a lot of the original foliage has died back and new sprouts are growing in their place. Underneath the soil there are a ton of new roots growing, that's a good sign.

Growing Daylily Seeds

I've bought some hybrid daylily seeds from unknown parents.

Below is the seed packet, they look like tiny raisins. They have been dried and chilled in the refrigerator for some weeks(stratification)

I planted some seeds in 16oz beer cups, these are mostly the second batch. The soil is 2 parts Miracle Gro Enriched Potting Mix to 1 part Composted manure. The seeds were soaked(floated really) in water for one day except the tag that says 'peroxide' they were immersed in a very weak peroxide solution for 2 days before planting, we'll see if that makes any difference to germination.

Three seeds from the first batch of 10 seeds have sprouted today, its been about a week. Below is the largest sprout.

Some Tomatoes Harvested and On the Assembly Line

The tomato assembly line plant below.

Poppy Bunch

Large bunch of poppy plants sown in spring, I wonder if they will flower next spring?

Homemade Pizza

Simple Italian style pizza with sausage.

Blooming Geraniums

Blooming geraniums in the rain, I should have taken a picture yesterday before the rain knocked so many of the petals off.

Daylily Planters

The planters I made for my new daylilies out of 65 liter storage bins. I added holes to the side for companion plants, there is very little space to work with here. A 2 inch layer of recycled styrofoam was added to the bottom for drainage and aeration. There are also filler holes leading to the airspace where the foam sits to allow watering from below during hot periods. The ground is a mix of composted manure, peat moss and humus, with some black earth on the bottom for filler.

New Daylily Plants

I decided to grow some fancy daylilies, these were ordered from a nursary Hemerocallis Montfort in St.Sauveur Quebec. I had some second thoughts about having spent $50 on plants but the what they delivered is impressive and healthy, all of them are clumps and/or multiple plants even though they only promise 2 'fans' (shoots), these will come up great in spring. Thumbs up for this nursery. they are in my growing zone, it's always a good idea to order from a place with your climate, ordering from another climate could suck.

Arctic Snow

Layers of Gold

Masked Phantom

Nordic Night

Strawberry Candy

Strawberry Rose

Vine Geranium

This is a great plant, it has grown and produced constant flowers for many years. Indoors in winter , outdoors in summer, cut back when it gets leggy.

Garden Salad

harvested today.

Big House Plants

Late Watermelon

Probably not going to make it big before frost but it tried.

Rooted Tomato Clippings

Rooted cuttings from the tomato plant in the previous post.

18 Tomato Bunch

This is on a tomato planted quite late, I planted a few seeds right out of a store bought tomato, so it's a commercial variety. It has proven to be very robust, resisting insect and fungal damage, it also doesn't seem to mind the heat much and grows fast on a thick stem, great plant to grow as a sure thing in the garden.

Zebra Mallow

This is some Zebra Mallow planted in spring, it's in constant flowering mode right now.

Souvlaki on pita with vegetables from the garden