I've been spending a lot of time in recent weeks on the treadmill, which means I spend a lot of time looking at the terrarium -- which is on the table in front of the treadmill.
I've got a couple of things to update you on. First, I recently put some lettuce cuttings into water after reading that you could regrow lettuce this way.
Recently I talked about trying to decide what seeds to order from home-state company Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and that's when my neighbor let me take whatever seeds I wanted from his school's collection. Although I found a few that I wanted to try, there was still one thing I wanted to buy from Baker Creek...
One thing that makes the cold days of winter something to actually look forward to is citrus. When those fruits start arriving in big numbers from Florida and California, it's a time of delicious happiness.
We had a wonderful day here in St. Louis yesterday, with the afternoon turning sunny and warm: temperatures were close to 60ºF (15ºC). I took the opportunity to get out and take a look at the bamboos, to see how bad the damage really was.
I've talked about plant markers or labels before, and how my favorite is using a strip of vinyl window blinds written on with pencil. It's a fantastic solution for potted plants, but I've wanted something that I could use to label some of my in-ground plants: shrubs, bamboos, roses, etc.
I don't remember paying much attention to winter before I started gardening. Sure I'd notice the extra-cold days, or if we got an impressive amount of snow, or if an ice storm took down part of a tree in the neighborhood. The day-to-day details though, well, I just didn't notice.
I saw an article recently that was one of those "10 things..." type of lists that are so popular these days, as if something isn't worth learning about until it's in a list, but I digress. The article was something like "10 vegetables you can use and grow again forever", and since I already have experience with this sort of thing with my kitchen counter green onions, I eagerly read through the list.
It's mid-January, with single-digit temperatures (F) arriving again later this week, so what can I do in the garden on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon? Why, plant lettuce of course!
Hopefully everybody reading this has experienced seed shopping from those winter-arriving seed catalogs. The excitement of discovering new plants, imagination working overtime trying to envision the lush tangle of wonder you'll have in your garden next year, left brain figuring out how to fit everything into your space.
Looking out the window yesterday, sunlight brightening the afternoon, I realized that the bamboo looked so wrong. Still greenish, but too light, the normally fine-textured foliage looking a bit too thin.
One of the things I like most about having a blog is that it introduces me to lots of like-minded people: experienced gardeners, beginners, plant-lovers, bamboo growers, and sometimes companies. Yes, marketing departments sometimes find me and request that I take a look at some product or another and post about it. My criteria for this type of "opportunity" is that it really must be something that I'm excited about and would actually use in my garden. If not, I politely decline the offer -- which is what almost always happens.
Like most gardeners, winter for me is a time of poring over seed catalogs and choosing what to grow next season -- mainly for edibles. With limited growing space, I need to choose carefully. Oh to have room for rows and rows of food someday!
The plants under the lights are doing quite nicely, even though I'm still battling aphids and mealy bugs.
Back at the end of November I did some major houseplant pruning when I hacked one of my lanky Dracaena into pieces.
As I've hinted at a few times already, the recent cold snap has caused some damage to my bamboos. Although I won't know the extent of the damage for a few months when the leaf buds start to swell (or don't because they've been killed), it's easy to see that most if not all of my larger bamboos will be losing the majority of their leaves.
One thing you can't deny about our recent snow and dangerously cold weather: it makes for some beautiful mornings!
I like to do a wrap-up of my favorite self-snapped photos of the past year in January. For some reason I forgot to do it last year, but I did it in 2011.
 |
| January: art deer |
As I write this, the temperature outside is -7ºF (-22ºC) with a windchill of -20ºF (-29ºC) or so. This is cold and windy enough to not only kill all of the leaves on my bamboos, but it may also kill all of the leaf buds too. This means that I will definitely see lots of blonde bamboos soon, and I may be cutting down lots of dead bamboo culms in the spring.
As you've noticed during this holiday season, I've not been as diligent with the daily posts as I have been. For almost four years I've managed to post something almost every single day, but I've finally realized that it's no longer possible.
With the coldest air in several years moving into the area soon, I wanted to take a quick survey of the bamboos to see how they've handled the winter so far.
After a couple of really mild winters, we're back to a "normal" winter in St. Louis, with alternating periods of warm and cold weather and snow. Temperatures over the last couple of days were in the mid-40's F, but forecast lows in the next few days could reach -5ºF (-20ºC) or lower.
Although it's quite common on many kitchen windowsills -- even those belonging to non-gardeners -- I've only been growing Aloe vera for about a year.
My posts about:
© Blogger template Shush by Ourblogtemplates.com 2009
Back to TOP
