Gardening

Gardening

My Misadventures in Gardening: (Almost) Everything Update No. 2

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It's been a while since we've gotten any interesting fruits, so I don't have a cool new post about harvesting seeds and planting them. I do, however, have a bunch of plants that are growing that could do with another update! Here we go~

Here are a few mango seedlings I have going: SAMSUNG CSC

This is the youngest. It's just now starting to unfold its little leaves, how cute!SAMSUNG CSC

Here's the middle one. It's leaves are growing at such an uneven pace, it's so weird. That huge one is so long its touching the dirt under it, and the tiniest leaf on the plant is on the level right below it.

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And here's the oldest one, the big one! It kind of stalled out for a little bit, but recently it started to show new leaf growth.SAMSUNG CSC

You can see the teeny tiny new leaves on the top here.

Here are my many pomegranates:

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I feel like they've kind of stalled out. I'm telling myself they're just putting all their energy into growing roots, but we'll see. There are two or three of these guys that are doing really well.

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This is the best looking one. Besides the cotyledon leaves, it currently has three levels of leaves.

The tiny kiwis:

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I ended up transplanting them from the egg crate soon after they started sprouting because mold was developing. I tried to clean off as much as the moldy dirt as I could, stuck them in new dirt and hoped for the best. They seemed to have taken it well!

My teeny forest of dragonfruits:SAMSUNG CSC

These things are growing so fast. I noticed many of the seedlings were starting to touch the plastic wrap that I put on them initially to create a greenhouse effect, so I had to improvise to come up with something that would still create that effect but would also let the light in and let them grow taller.SAMSUNG CSC

This is what I came up with. I grabbed some glass cups and they ended up fitting inside the plastic cups perfectly.

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Here are the zip locked little guys. Man, the other ones are doing so well I'll probably have to just throw these ones away. Ugh, I'll feel so bad!

And here's the one I'm the most excited about - the mamey sapote!

SAMSUNG CSCYay, it's finally shown some growth! It has split open more and you can see the gigantic fuzzy stem in the middle!

SAMSUNG CSCSeriously, look at that thing. It's like the width of a pencil already. It's like a small creature is inside of it, hah.

It's funny, I look at my plants and get frustrated that barely anything has happened and then I come on here and look at my last post and realize there was actually quite a bit of growth happening!

 

Gardening

My Misadventures in Gardening: Dragonfruit with a bit of Kiwi

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Oh look, yet another interesting fruit that I'm going to try to grow! My fiance and I had decided a while back to periodically buy fruit that we've never had before in order to expand our fruity horizons. Not long after that I got bit by the gardening bug and I decided to attempt to sprout and grow each fruit that came through our house. This was limited to the fruit I managed to find at our local grocery store, but last weekend I discovered our local Asian supermarket and, oh man, I was in exotic fruit heaven. They had jackfruit (yes, whole ones), mangosteen, rambutan, lychee, the terrifying yet intriguing durian and many, many others. We ended up just buying one type of fruit that day - the dragonfruit. SAMSUNG CSC

Aw yeah, look at that. So beautiful. I did some research and apparently these guys come from a cacti! And not just any old cactus, but a tropical one. What. How weird.

SAMSUNG CSC Here it is cut in half. Man, it's so striking! I always assumed every picture I've seen of a dragonfruit was edited to make the colors brighter, but it actually is that vivid in person. So pretty. To harvest some of the seeds I just scraped my knife across the flesh a few times and it ended up removing quite a few seeds.

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I spread them out onto a paper towel and used another paper towel to scrub the seeds to clean them.

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I ended up with over 100 seeds. Yeah, I actually counted (up to 100). I prepared two cups with soil and sprinkled 50 seeds in each cup. Since I couldn't bring myself to throw the rest away I decided to do the tried and true ziplock bag method to germinate the rest. SAMSUNG CSC

For the cups, I used a rubber band to attach some plastic wrap to help with a greenhouse effect. I figured I may as well try to grow all of them because whenever a fruit comes with a lot of seeds I assume most of the seeds won't sprout so there's no harm in trying to grow as many as I can. Well after I did all of this I looked up the germination rate and apparently it's pretty high. And fast. Oh boy are they fast. Before I went to bed that night I looked at the zip lock seeds and there was ALREADY signs of growth. About half of the seeds were already split with a small white root just starting to poke through. And just one day later the cup seeds started poking through the soil. Amazing. It was very satisfying to watch these things grow over the week. And that brings us to now. Here's one of the cups as of today:

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So cute! And the zip lock ones:SAMSUNG CSC

They've grown so much! I'm probably going to have to just toss these guys out though since the seeds that I threw in the soil are doing so well. Sad, but it was still fun to watch them grow in the bag!

These guys were the perfect fruit to try to grow for me. I'm so impatient so germinating slow seeds is like torture (I'm looking at you, avocado and mamey sapote). But these guys sprouted so fast, it was fun to wake up and see how much growth had occurred overnight. Now I'm hoping that they don't stall out like my pomegranates did.

And before I finish up this post I wanted to include a photo of my kiwi seeds I briefly mentioned a few weeks ago.SAMSUNG CSCI planted at least one seed in each section of the egg carton. I was surprised I got that many seeds to sprout (as of today the count is 10). These guys took about 3 weeks to start sprouting. Quite a difference compared to the dragonfruit.

 

Gardening

My Misadventures in Gardening: Everything Update

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I haven't planted anything new so today's post will be a updates on all my plants! So far I've been very lucky with my little growing experiments and have had a pretty good germination rate. So in no particular order, I shall show off my plants! Here are some of my pomegranates:SAMSUNG CSC

They're so cute!

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So a few days before I planted the seeds in the egg carton, I threw a few seeds into a zip lock bag with a damp paper towel just to see if they would germinate like that. I ended up loosing hope because some of the seeds molded up, but rather than throwing the bag away, I left it pinned to my cork board because I'm lazy. One day, however, a few days after I had transplanted the egg carton seedlings I realized some of the zip locked seeds had sprouted! I'll have to plant them in soil soon.

My wedding flowers:

SAMSUNG CSCHere are some of the ranunculus. They're getting so big! They're still new sprouts emerging from the soil every once in a while. SAMSUNG CSC Here are the freesia. These things took forever to start coming up, but now there are quite a few poking through.SAMSUNG CSC

Oh yeah, here's my first mango tree! It's about 5 inches tall right now. It was growing really fast for a few days and then it stopped growing tall and started putting it's energy into the leaves. They went from somewhat transparent greenish/reddish/brown to an opaque vibrant green.

I actually ended up planting a couple more mango seeds. Here's how one of them looks as of right now:SAMSUNG CSC Cute.

And last but not least, the mamey sapote:SAMSUNG CSCNothing to see here so far. I'm not sure if you can tell but the seed has cracked a bit more than before... Hopefully it'll start showing some more visible growth.

 

Gardening

My Misadventures in Gardening: Pomegranate Update

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Here's a little update of my pomegranate seeds that I posted about a few days ago! I actually started these seeds about 10 days ago. If you read my mango posts you'd know that I'm extremely impatient with growing things, so I'd check up on it every day, which is probably not the best for the poor seed. With the pomegranate seeds I was actually able to keep them out of my mind for the 10 or so days it took for these guys to sprout and grow a bit. When I finally did check on them, I was excited to see a few had sprouted and one or two were actually touching the plastic already! I decided to transplant all of them at this time. SAMSUNG CSC Here's the carton before I removed the plastic. Can you see the little sprouts?SAMSUNG CSC So cute! It doesn't seem that the scarification technique I did to half of the seeds really did anything. There seemed to be about the same amount sprouted on each side.SAMSUNG CSCI ended up transplanting the seedlings into plastic cups. I poked some drainage holes into the bottom of a cup and then stuck that one inside of another cup, filled it with soil and popped the seedling right in! I simply just tore apart the carton by each section and stuck it straight in. SAMSUNG CSC Like so. And then I added a bit more soil on top.SAMSUNG CSCHere they are all planted! Ultimately 8 of the 12 sprouted. I think the other seeds would have also sprouted if I gave them more time, but I decided 8 was enough. I still might end up with more seedlings anyway because I used the soil from the four that hadn't sprouted to top off some of the cups.

I'm kind of considering taking one of these seedlings and going down the bonsai path with it. Assuming I'll be able to keep them alive long enough to do that, fingers crossed!

 

Gardening

My Misadventures in Gardening: Pomegranate

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Here's another grocery store fruit growing experiment! I love pomegranate and usually end up buying some when I can find them at the grocery store. I recently bought one, and after eating some of it, I decided I should try to grow some of the seeds. Pomegranates have a lot of seeds so unlike the mango and sapote I could plant quite a few of them and if some don't grow or some die off it won't be such a big deal. So here we go! First, obviously I cut up my pomegranate. I highly suggest watching this video to see how to cut up a pomegranate correctly. No water necessary and it doesn't make your kitchen counter look like the scene of a crime afterwards.SAMSUNG CSC SAMSUNG CSC SAMSUNG CSC

Look, no mess and all the seeds are in tact!

So to germinate them I actually tried two methods, the zip lock method and the egg carton method. I actually started the zip lock ones a week earlier than the carton seeds, but nothing happened and then they got moldy. So, here, I'm showing the more successful endeavor.

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Here are the seeds I harvested and dried overnight along with the recycled-cardboard-paper-pulpy egg carton. I cut the top and the little flap on the other side off of the part that holds the eggs. I just threw away the little strip but I stuck the egg holder part into the top to help strengthen it, because after you water everything, the water will soak into the cardboard and it'll all get soggy. You could use styrofoam egg cartons if you don't want to deal with the sogginess, but it's kind of nice after you've got seedlings going because you can just rip the carton apart and plant it straight into the new pot.

SAMSUNG CSC I threw in a little soil into each section, poked a small hole with my finger, dropped in one seed and covered it with soil. Obviously I had way more seeds than I actually planted. I just threw those extra seeds into a bag so I had a backup plan if these seeds didn't work out.SAMSUNG CSC Here they are all planted! I saw that some people did seed scarification to their pomegranate seeds so I thought I'd try that out with half of these guys. I just used a file and filed them lightly. I'm not sure if you can see it well or not but I marked off half of the carton with a pink sharpie to show where the scarred seeds were planted.SAMSUNG CSC Watered them pretty good.SAMSUNG CSC And I wrapped them loosely with saran wrap in order to create a green house effect.SAMSUNG CSC Here I put it in the windowsill next to my awesome Aquafarm, which is the only thing I've been able to grow herbs in, hah.

I actually started these guys a while ago so within the next few days I'll post an update where I transplant the ones that ended up growing. I should also mention that I started a few kiwi seeds in the same manner as these pomegranate seeds a couple days ago so hopefully within the next week or so I'll have something to show for those guys!

Gardening, Misc-

My Misadventures in Gardening: Mamey Sapote

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When I was at the grocery store the other day I noticed some huge rocks among the mangoes and pineapples in the fruit section. These things were actually a fruit called mamey sapote. My fiance and I like to try weird new fruit, so I grabbed one and continued on with my shopping. When I got home I researched a bit about this weird fruit and found out it's supposed to taste like a mix between a sweet potato and pumpkin. Interesting. I also found out that you're supposed to let it sit on the counter for a week or so to let it get good and ripe before you eat it. I'm impatient so right when the week mark hit I cut this guy open. I probably should have waited longer. SAMSUNG CSC SAMSUNG CSCSupposedly when the fruit is good at the store, the flesh inside should be bright pinkish red when you scratch off some of the skin. If the flesh is yellow or green don't buy that one; it was picked too early. After that you wait for the fruit to get good and ripe before you cut into it. Apparently you're supposed to wait until the skin holds an indent when you poke it. Of course I didn't wait that long.

SAMSUNG CSCAt this point I realized I really should have waited longer. In videos I watched I people easily cut into the fruit but for me it was very hard. SAMSUNG CSC

Cracking this thing open.

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And here's the inside! With the huge seed inside! When the flesh is really ripe you're supposed to be able to just scoop it out with a spoon, but since mine wasn't ripe the texture was more like a sweet potato. There was a tiny area where it was soft like that so we got to taste test it a tiny bit. It was... interesting. It was pumpkin-sweet potato-melon all at the same time. Very strange. All in all, if I found one of these at the store again I'll buy another one just to try one more time since I really know now the importance of letting it get really ripe before you try to eat it.SAMSUNG CSCBack to the seed: oh yeah, look at this guy! It was already cracking open (you can't tell in the photo. It's cracked on the dark brown part of the seed). You know I'm going to attempt to grow it. I did the zip lock method, the same method as the mango.

Speaking of my mango plant, here's a little update:

A few days after I planted the seed, a little sprout started to emerge!

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And only three days later it's already this big!

mango2This thing is really taking off. Super exciting!

 

Gardening

My Misadventures in Gardening: Wedding Edition

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Oh gosh, this is going to be a good one. So I'm currently planning my wedding, which will be at the end of March. I've been trying to figure out ways to help keep the cost down, and being an avid crafter I'm planning on doing a lot of diy (but hopefully still nice-looking) stuff. Surprisingly (to me anyway) a big expense would be flowers. In true fashion, I thought, "Psh, I could do that." And a little while later, I was anxiously awaiting my package of assorted flower bulbs from easytogrowbulbs.com that I was totally going to grow.

If you read my first gardening post, you learned that I'm absolutely horrible at growing things. So why did I think I could do this? I have this weird cycle where somehow I start believing that I have a green thumb. I go and try to grow plants and then inevitably I end up killing the poor things. It happens every time.

I just so happened to be researching the cost of flowers while I was in the beginning of this cycle and everything came together to form the perfect storm. I'm trying to be optimistic about my chances this time and I made sure to so a lot of research for these flowers so hopefully I'll finally break the cycle if not just for the wedding, for the rest of my life! Also, I totally sent a few backup bulbs to my mom and future mother-in-law because they're much better at this whole plant growing thing then I am. So if I fail, it all falls on their shoulders! All joking aside, if this does fail spectacularly, best case scenario, I'll have enough flowers to arrange a bouquet for myself and I'll just have to diy some different center pieces for the tables. At the moment I'm thinking paper flowers (if done right they can be quite beautiful). Worst case scenario I'll just have to buy some flowers and arrange my bouquet the day/night before.

But enough of all this silly back story, you've come for the good stuff, and here it is! My first, and main flower, the ranunculus:

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These things are so weird looking. SAMSUNG CSCI was scared of root rot while trying to germinate these suckers, and I read that you could soak them for 24 hours before planting, then after you plant them you begin to water after they start showing signs of growth.

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Oh my, they got quite big.SAMSUNG CSC Time to plant! But one problem. I had forgotten to pick up some rocks and from my basic research, I figured out you need to provide drainage in the bottom of the pot. I didn't feel like going back out during rush hour to get rocks so I did the next best thing; I turned to the internet. "I don't have rocks for the bottom of my pot! What do I do?!" I was surprised to learn that some people suggest using packing peanuts to help with the drainage in the bottom of their pots. Interesting! And guess who had recently received a package filled to the brim with those things?SAMSUNG CSCLooks like packing peanuts it is! SAMSUNG CSC

Oh god, I hope those sites I was looking at weren't joke sites and this is actually a thing that people actually do. SAMSUNG CSC Whelp, it's too late now anyway. Let's plant! So you're supposed to plant these with the tubers pointing down.SAMSUNG CSC I spaced them out evenly and covered with about an inch of soil.SAMSUNG CSCHere are my next flowers: watsonia- snow queen. SAMSUNG CSCThese required about four inches of soil on top. Fingers crossed!SAMSUNG CSC And the next flowers are: freesia- double white. Not pictured, me covering these with about an inch of soil.SAMSUNG CSC

For buying the amount of bulbs I did, they threw in a free pack of "adventure bulbs" to help encourage people to find our about/grow new flowers. These tiny onion looking bulbs I ended up getting are allium drumstick. We'll see how they go! SAMSUNG CSCHere are but a few of the freshly planted bulbs up on my credenza while they germinate. The plan is to eventually move them outside once they're growing well. (One side note; this is another post that was delayed a bit. I planted everything on the 2nd, so my next update for these guys will seem like they grew super fast when in reality they're normal bulbs with normal growing rates. Nothing super here!)

I sure hope this works out, how great would it be if my first real gardening success was growing flowers for my own wedding!

 

Gardening

My Misadventures in Gardening: Planting the Mango

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Yesterday I posted about the mango I decided to try to grow. There was about a weeks delay from when I took the pictures and when I made the post, so now it's already time for a weekly update!SAMSUNG CSC Let's open this guy up and see what's happening.

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I see a root! This is very exciting for me. I'm a very impatient person when it comes to plants (which is probably why I suck so much at growing them) so being able to see progress already is pretty awesome. SAMSUNG CSCI'll be honest though, I didn't wait a whole week before opening it up to see what it was doing... I opened it almost every day to check out the roots progress. It's probably not good to be disturbing the seed that much so I made the decision to plant it already so I'll be less tempted to mess with it. Most people that I've seen do the zip lock method usually wait about two weeks before planting.  SAMSUNG CSCHopefully I don't mess this up! SAMSUNG CSC

I took a pot of soil and dug out a shallow hole for the seed.SAMSUNG CSCI planted the seed root side down, obviously. The tree will sprout from the same spot as the root, so I just laid the seed on it's side. SAMSUNG CSCI placed the seed slightly off center because I want the tree to grow from the middle of the pot and as I said earlier, it will sprout from the same end as the root grew from.SAMSUNG CSC See? The little root is poking out from right here.SAMSUNG CSC Then I covered it with a little bit of soilSAMSUNG CSC And now it's labeled and ready to grow! I planted it already to make it less tempting for me to mess with it and see how it's doing, but I don't know how well that's working. Every time I pass by the pot now my finance laughs at me because I just stare at it like I have x-ray vision and I'm trying to see how the seed is progressing. Don't worry, I haven't dug it up to check on it...

...yet.

 

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And to end on a not-so-good note, and to show how bad I am at this stuff, here's another mango seed I tried starting with the zip lock method. I actually had two of them like this (one started 9/25 and the other 9/28) and unfortunately they both got really moldy. The seeds came from a different type of mango but I don't think that's why they molded over. I probably wet the paper towels too much or something. Well, at least I had one of the seeds make it through this stage!

Stay tuned for more mango growing updates!

Gardening

My Misadventures in Gardening: Mango Beginnings

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I am terrible at growing things. I often reminisce about how, when I was growing up, we'd always have houseplants inside and I remember having to go around and water them for my mom and it was just nice to have some living, green plants in the house. It's a regular occurrence where I'll remember those times and I'll go and try to have a green thumb, only to fail horribly and kill the poor plant. I'm pretty sure the cycle is starting again, and I figured I could record me failing (or hopefully NOT failing!) Maybe this time will be different. 100th times a charm!

I've always seen instances where people plant the seeds from the fruit they bought at the grocery store and they grow houseplants from them. I thought that was a fun, good idea to try. You're already buying the fruit to eat it, so now instead of just throwing the seed away, I started keeping select ones to attempt to grow! This leads to my first "experiment": the mango.

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I'm not the biggest fan of mangoes but my fiance LOVES them, and if you're a mango fan like him, you'd know that a rather large, flat seed is housed in the center of the fruit. But how do you get it completely out? Let's find out!

SAMSUNG CSCCut down each side of the mango. Be careful not to cut into the seed.

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Cut out the seeds husk from the rest of the fruit. I have no idea if I was doing this right, but my fiance, the mango aficionado didn't correct me, so I'm assuming this is okay. SAMSUNG CSC

Now that you have most of the flesh removed, take a butter knife and scrape off what is left on the husk. At this point some people let this dry out for a few days so it's easier to handle. This thing is slippery. I just attempted to dry it off some with a paper towel. It was still slippery, but I managed.SAMSUNG CSCAlong the edge of the husk there's a portion that feels a bit thicker then the rest. I used my knife to scrape it down more to reveal where I could split it apart.

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Then I used the tip of the knife to start opening it. You know, like shucking an oyster. Everyone has done that, right? Again, be careful not to nick the seed.SAMSUNG CSC

When there was enough room for my fingers, I just pried it open the rest of the way with my hands.

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Come out!mango3

Ta...SAMSUNG CSC

... da!SAMSUNG CSC The aftermath.SAMSUNG CSC So to germinate the seed I opted for the "wrapped in a wet paper towel and placed in a zip lock bag for a week or two" method.SAMSUNG CSC SAMSUNG CSC

Labeled and dated.

SAMSUNG CSCAnd put in a sunny window. Obviously I did this like a week ago so within the next day or two I'll check on this guy and see if he's ready to be planted! Fingers crossed that this will work!