wherein Liz muses about plants
May. 3rd, 2021 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingSome gardening and other botanical updates:
1. My lilac bush (...by which I mean the lilac outside my front window, which I am kind of possessive of even though all the landscaping really belongs to Landlord Dude) has a pattern where one year it will bloom normally, and then the next year or two it will only produce two to six flowers because it's exhausted. This is a tired year. It's done a little better since I started pruning it annually, but I think perhaps I should also try fertilizing it a little.
The lilac in the back yard blooms enthusiastically each year. It is also literally the size of a tree, because nobody's tried to manage it for over a decade, and it was trying to compete with actual trees (far too closely placed!) for sunlight. Landlord Dude has expressed a vague intent to trim it back a little. We shall see if anything comes of that.
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2. Landlord Dude gave the front hedge a severe haircut last year, knocking it down from 4.5 feet (5 when it got out of hand) to 3 feet. The plant on the end of the row did not take this well. By this spring, all except one main stem/branch was dead. I spent part of last year snapping off dead wood as I found it, and I've been continuing the effort this spring. Today it occurred to me that dead wood has useless roots, and I could probably lever the dead bits completely out of the ground. So I did.
Then I chucked the wood onto the pile in the back yard where Landlord Dude chopped down one of the too-close trees and heavily trimmed another. He is attempting to turn the yard into a actual lawn, instead of a small garden and some bare dirt with a decrepit picnic table.
(This reminds me that I need to talk to Landlord Dude about the back deck while he's in a project mood, because some of the boards are not going to last another year. I do my best to keep it clean, but I don't think the wood was treated with much of anything and it's been harder each year to get rid of moss and opportunistic mulberry sprouts. By now, some of the wood is more dirt than cellulose.)
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3. I potted my four jalapeno seedlings a couple days ago, and took them outside on Sunday for a little afternoon adventure. I will take them out again tomorrow, providing the weather cooperates. My bell peppers should be ready to pot soon, along with two tomatoes. I will need to scrub out some containers for the tomatoes.
I should probably decide whether I'm growing zucchini or summer squash and get those seedlings started. I want to start them indoors and then gradually ease them outside before I plant them around the base of the raspberries. (Ugh, I will need to weed the garden patch. I hate weeding.)
I also need to start the spinach, but in that case I'm not bothering with peat cylinders -- I will just clean out two other containers and sow the seeds in rows.
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4. I bought an office plant for myself a couple months ago, because one of Miss Cactus's two plants had died despite my best efforts. (I am not good with bromeliads.) I have not been giving it particularly close attention, but I water it regularly and turn the pot 90 degrees each week, and it seems quite happy. This pleases me.
In other office plant news, I bought some supports for the office snake plant, but they're a little too tall and I keep forgetting to ask Maintenance if I can borrow some of their heavy-duty wire cutters and trim the supports by about six inches.
I also keep forgetting to bring in some extra potting soil and clips/hooks for Miss Cactus's other office plant, a very exuberant golden pothos which she had been training up the office wall. I don't want it to get completely out of hand, but I'm okay with letting it sprawl a bit more than it currently does, so long as I control the direction of that sprawl.
-----
5. I accidentally killed another clementine last week. Dammit.
I will learn how to handle citrus trees, so help me. It is just probably going to take years. *sigh*
1. My lilac bush (...by which I mean the lilac outside my front window, which I am kind of possessive of even though all the landscaping really belongs to Landlord Dude) has a pattern where one year it will bloom normally, and then the next year or two it will only produce two to six flowers because it's exhausted. This is a tired year. It's done a little better since I started pruning it annually, but I think perhaps I should also try fertilizing it a little.
The lilac in the back yard blooms enthusiastically each year. It is also literally the size of a tree, because nobody's tried to manage it for over a decade, and it was trying to compete with actual trees (far too closely placed!) for sunlight. Landlord Dude has expressed a vague intent to trim it back a little. We shall see if anything comes of that.
-----
2. Landlord Dude gave the front hedge a severe haircut last year, knocking it down from 4.5 feet (5 when it got out of hand) to 3 feet. The plant on the end of the row did not take this well. By this spring, all except one main stem/branch was dead. I spent part of last year snapping off dead wood as I found it, and I've been continuing the effort this spring. Today it occurred to me that dead wood has useless roots, and I could probably lever the dead bits completely out of the ground. So I did.
Then I chucked the wood onto the pile in the back yard where Landlord Dude chopped down one of the too-close trees and heavily trimmed another. He is attempting to turn the yard into a actual lawn, instead of a small garden and some bare dirt with a decrepit picnic table.
(This reminds me that I need to talk to Landlord Dude about the back deck while he's in a project mood, because some of the boards are not going to last another year. I do my best to keep it clean, but I don't think the wood was treated with much of anything and it's been harder each year to get rid of moss and opportunistic mulberry sprouts. By now, some of the wood is more dirt than cellulose.)
-----
3. I potted my four jalapeno seedlings a couple days ago, and took them outside on Sunday for a little afternoon adventure. I will take them out again tomorrow, providing the weather cooperates. My bell peppers should be ready to pot soon, along with two tomatoes. I will need to scrub out some containers for the tomatoes.
I should probably decide whether I'm growing zucchini or summer squash and get those seedlings started. I want to start them indoors and then gradually ease them outside before I plant them around the base of the raspberries. (Ugh, I will need to weed the garden patch. I hate weeding.)
I also need to start the spinach, but in that case I'm not bothering with peat cylinders -- I will just clean out two other containers and sow the seeds in rows.
-----
4. I bought an office plant for myself a couple months ago, because one of Miss Cactus's two plants had died despite my best efforts. (I am not good with bromeliads.) I have not been giving it particularly close attention, but I water it regularly and turn the pot 90 degrees each week, and it seems quite happy. This pleases me.
In other office plant news, I bought some supports for the office snake plant, but they're a little too tall and I keep forgetting to ask Maintenance if I can borrow some of their heavy-duty wire cutters and trim the supports by about six inches.
I also keep forgetting to bring in some extra potting soil and clips/hooks for Miss Cactus's other office plant, a very exuberant golden pothos which she had been training up the office wall. I don't want it to get completely out of hand, but I'm okay with letting it sprawl a bit more than it currently does, so long as I control the direction of that sprawl.
-----
5. I accidentally killed another clementine last week. Dammit.
I will learn how to handle citrus trees, so help me. It is just probably going to take years. *sigh*
