Sorry about the lack of content-

Hello All-

Apologies for the recent dearth of material. A combination of graduate school, a handful of trips, and life in general have conspired to prevent me from posting some of the new and exciting developments in plant life in my apartment. Much has happened and over the next few weeks I hope to catch the blog up. In short, this page is emerging from its (not so) brief hiatus.

Most recently, I dug up the Purple Heart (aka a Wandering Jew, or a Purple Queen) which I had planted in the spring under my neighbor's window, potted it, and brought it into my new office. Why dig it up now? It frosted just a week later, a rather dramatic shift in temperature to which the plant would not survive. Why did I plant it under my neighbor's window? Underneath my window is asphalt, which is used 7 Saturdays each Fall as parking for tailgaters.

Over the next week, I need to pull up the garlic that has managed to struggle through the season, before the frost deals it a permanent blow. It will be interesting to see how the bulbs have developed, as the plants were prematurely cut down by overzealous weeders sent by the apartment managers, and are in their second bloom this season.

Thats all for now-

K.G.K.

Plant Counter!

No new pictures tonight, but I have added a 'widget' to the blog to count the number of plants under my care. Its broken up into a few subcategories:

Bonsai are normal trees cultivated for aesthetic form while maintaining a small size.

Pre-Bonsai are plants currently being transitioned to bonsai.

Succulent plants are water-retaining plants adapted to arid climate or soil conditions. Succulents store water in their leaves, stems, and roots.

We define cacti as a subgroup of succulents, that is all cacti are succulents but not all succulents are cacti. Specifically, Cacti have spines and evolved in the Americas, while the rest of the succulent category evolved in the Old World, mainly in Africa.

The tropical plants are a catch all group to describe ferns, palms and other leafy indoor plants.

Terrariums are small collections of moss and ferns held in glass containers.

Outside plants include herbs, bulbs, and other hearty species we have planted in the flower beds outside the apartment.

Hopefully I will get to posting some more pictures over the next week. We have purchased some new cacti that I am eager to document.

-KGK

Even More Bonsai-Ginger Ficus

Here we have before and after pictures of the newer Bonsai. As it is a very healthy tree, I felt confident in reducing the leaves rather aggressively. These photos were taken two weeks ago, and we already have several new stems growing directly from the trunk and full new leaves on the limbs.

After Reduction, June 2010

Before Reduction, June 2010

The Ginger Root Ficus, June 2010

The Tiger Bark Ficus is also responding well to this summer's leaf and limb reduction. Both bonsais are misted several times a day and receive light waterings in the morning. With continued proper training, I hope to see some nice structure forming by the end of this summer.

More Bonsai-Tiger Bark Ficus

Some more pictures of the most senior bonsai in my collection, the tiger bark ficus. Over the year I have had it, I have allowed it to grow up and out instead of focusing on developing a good trunk structure and overall shape. As a result, the branches have become long and spindly, with relatively few leaves growing on each branch. This summer I decided to focus on encouraging growth closer to the trunk and the formation of larger groupings of leaves. To achieve these goals, I need to prune much more aggressively than last summer and hope that the bonsai will persevere. The results of a first round of pruning can be seen above and below, and should be compared to images from before. While the reduction may seem drastic, it is an important step in training the growth of a bonsai. In less than a week, we are already seeing new shoots emerge on the lower branches, a sign that the pruning was not too severe. If all goes well and the tree continues to thrive, the next step will be to trim the leaves to half their size to encourage the growth of smaller leaves.

-KGK

Not quite time for the Garlic Harvest

My landlord has a large plant bed comprised of poor soil and weeds directly across from my apartment window. Last spring, I had tried planting some nice flowers. Unfortunately, they were promptly covered in weedkiller and perished. This year, I upped the ante and planted both daffodils and three different varieties of garlic, a mild, a spicy, and an elephant variety. You can see the mild garlic growing in the rear of the bed. I planted the garlic in the bed after weeding it by hand and covering it with a nice thick layer of mulch. The plants have up to now done fairly well, with the daffodils blooming in early spring and the garlic sending up scapes, that we harvested two weeks ago, which were quite tasty to boot. Unfortunately, the landlord's yard care company has been spraying the plants with weedkiller, which I believe is starting to turn the plants a sickly shade of yellow. On Saturday, I pulled one of the elephant garlic bulbs out of the ground and found it, unsurprisingly, immature. The one bulb should provide good cooking material, but we have decided to leave the rest of the plants in the ground for the time being. Hopefully the large rainstorms that have been sweeping the area recently will help to wash away unwanted herbicides while not drowning our bulbs.

Here is the healthy elephant garlic, with scapes still attached.

Thinking that we would pull out all of the garlic plants, we went to the farmer's market on Saturday morning and purchased a good collection of mint, two varieties: Chocolate (Mentha piperita cv.) seen below and Vietnamese mint (persicaria odorata). The thought was that we would pull out all of the garlic and replace it with the mint and a selection of Poblano and Anaheim peppers. Mint is typically an "aggressive plant," enough so that the farmer's market vendor warned me as I bought it to be careful lest it spread and take over the entire garden, a trait we hope to take advantage of to help the plant stand up well against the poor soil and overzealous application of herbicides. As we decided not to harvest the entire crop of garlic, the mint and peppers were unceremoniously placed among the wilting stalks.

Bonsai: The Before Pictures

At the moment, I am growing two bonsais, a Ficus retusa (Tiger Bark Ficus) and a Ficus microcarpa (Ginger or Ginseng Ficus). The Tiger bark tree (nicknamed Yggdrasil) I received nearly a year ago as a birthday gift from my wonderful significant other. Sent as a pre-bonsai from DaSu Bonsai Studios, in Ames Iowa (seen at left), we wired up the roots, after stripping and annealing copper electrical wire, into a nice flat pot with a good porous soil. After a month, we cut back the leaves toromote smaller growth and then allowed it to grow for the rest of the summer, with one minor reduction of the branches in late August. Unfortunately, I let the branches get too long and spindly (as seen in the picture from last weekend at right). So, this last week, with a clean sharp pair of bonsai shears, we performed a major reduction to promote growth closer to the central trunk. Once it stops raining here I should be able to get a good picture of the tree in its current state. It is still spindly and now has few leaves, but some new growth is starting to appear.

The ginger ficus (as of yet, no nickname) I bought at the Des Moines Farmer's Market a little over a month ago. It was already planted in its current pot, and while the soil doesn't seem porous enough, I have yet to transplant it. At the same time we reduced the Tiger bark, we cleaned up the bark on the main tree (as the previous owner had carelessly left a number of small stumps as they removed branched from the tree) and reduced the canopy to encourage a more spherical shape. The picture below is from before the work. Images of the bonsai in their current state will be post soon.

-KGK

Working on Some Images

Just started working on uploading images of houseplants and bonsai. The Hydroponic design is currently in progress, but going slowly. Thankfully, the local library has recently purchased two new books on hydroponics which should be helpful in design, construction, and maintenance this summer.

Here we have the first official image for the site. It is a Fairy Washboard (Haworthia limifolia) propagated from an older plant back in 2005. It has started blooming for the first time and then should start growing new plants of its own.

New Bonsai pictures should be coming up in the next day or two.
-KGK

A First Post-

Hello world.

I have started this blog to chronicle the plants growing in my apartment. At the moment, I have over thirty plants sharing my living space, plus a handful of rogue gardening efforts in the plant beds outside. This site will follow the progression of these plants growth. Photographs should be up within the week. Additionally, I plan on building a hydroponics array this summer. Notes on the progress will be forthcoming.

-KGK