Recycling kitchen scraps

Have I mentioned that I love Pinterest?  I may have :) So I found that you can plant some of your discarded veggies in the ground and they grow again, specifically green onions.  So I had a batch of organic green onions left and thought why not?  So in the dirt they went and 4 days later I already had some major growth.  I may never buy green onions again :)

Worm composting

I've been doing a lot of reading on worm composting, what are the best worms, how to do it, the benefits of composting in general, and I decided I want to give it a whirl.  Especially since I spent $9.99 on a tiny bag of worm castings yesterday.  I was in my front flower bed today pruning my unfortunately dead roses when I came across a lot of earth worms snuggled against the house.  Well I figured why not start with those, they are not red wrigglers (I guess those are the best) but at least this will give me and idea of what worm composting is like, and it's free. Red wrigglers run around $30 - $55 a pound.  So I used an old honey bucket, grabbed as many worms as I could find along with some of the dirt they were in, and went inside.  I added some newspaper, water and egg cartons then crushed up some eggshells to put into it as well. Drilled some holes in the lid and tada, mini worm composter, I think ;) I added a bit of tomatoe clippings and cucumber bits to start, we will see what happens in the next week or so.

Stringy Dianthus

So I'm doing something wrong :( Looks like my dianthus are growing really stringy and weak.  My straw flowers are doing the same thing.  They were on the top shelf of my greenhouse, and upon googling why this is happening, temperature and sunlight seem to be the culprits.  I don't think they were getting enough direct light and possibly getting to hot. I've moved them to a lower shelf and I think I might have to open more of the greenhouse during the day.  Hopefully this will solve the problem, I will keep you posted.

My orchid's having a baby!!

So my orchid has been growing something off of last years bloom spike.  I was so excited because I thought it was going to re bloom, I've never had an orchid re bloom before.  Actually I've never been able to keep one alive this long.  But I love orchids and have been doing a lot of reading about them and I'm pretty sure I have them figured out.  Anyway back to the bloom spike, I was in my local nursery and saw their orchids going into re bloom.  They did not look like mine, I was a little bummed because I wanted it to re bloom so bad.  So I went home, got out my iPad and googled what the heck was growing on my orchid.  Turns out its growing a keiki! I'm going to have a little baby orchid, well now I'm really excited because I never thought that would happen, I must be doing something right :)

Update on my Dahlias

I'm so excited!!!  3 out of the 4 tubers that I separated from dahlias that I wintered from last year are growing.  The original tubers are also doing very well and I took cuttings to see if I could propagate them that way, the ladies at my local nursery seem to think it might not work but I'm going to give it a whirl anyway ;) I will give the baby tubers another couple of weeks before I transplant them into their own pots until they are ready to go outside.  Either way I have three extra dahlias and only paid for one.  Love it! On another note I'm not having great luck with my store bought petunias, the ones I harvested last year are doing great but my store bought aren't coming up nearly as fast or as plentiful. All other plant are doing great :)

Propagating Tomatoes part 2

So it's been a week since I planted and soaked my tomatoes.  The two that I put in water for a week grew lovely roots and the one I put directly into soil is also doing ok.  We will see how the next week goes but I do think that starting them in water to root might be the better way to go, the one that I planted directly into the soil is a little sad.  I think it will be fine but the others are defiantly looking better, but we will see how all three are doing next week.  They are all in dirt now.

Propagating tomatoes

I did a little reading on propagating tomatoes, I didn't think about it to much until I started planting my seeds last week.  I have that amazing little tomato plant from last year that is still producing fruit so I thought I would propagate it.  I pinched off some suckers and planted one in soil using cinnamon as a routing agent and two I just placed in water.  From YouTube I found a video that said to try both ways and this guy didn't have much luck putting the cutting directly into soil, he said to let it route in water first.  So I'm trying both ways and I'll see which way works best, so far both ways seem to be working.  I will let you know in a week.

I have babies!!

I am happy and very excited to report that my petunia's and snapdragons that I collected last year germinated and are coming up out of the ground.  I will no longer buy them if I can help it (unless of course I find one that I just have to have).  I also planted some seeds I collected from my mom's garden, until yesterday I had no idea what they were, I found a great website that shows you the seeds and tells you what they are.  I will post the link. Oh they were hollyhocks btw. My dianthus and double petunias that I bought are also coming up, I have to wait another month or so start my veggies but I am super excited.  This is the first time I've grown plants from scratch on my own :)

And the link for the seeds

http://theseedsite.co.uk/

Dahlia's

I decided to check on my dahlia's and calla lily that I dug up last fall, I had put them in a plastic veggie bag (the ones that have tiny air holes in them).  I dried them and put the in the bags with peat moss then stuck them in the bottom of my broom closet. I had forgotten about them until last weekend when I started my seedlings so I went and got them out of the closet. Unfortunately I lost the lily,  I think there was too much moisture in the bag. But my dahlia's had little feelers coming out of the bag and looked quite happy.  I decided to pot them because I want to try propagating them from cuttings.  I separated the tubers a bit from one plant and just put the other in dirt, the whole one started to grow right away, the others not so sure.  We will see as time goes on. I'm very excited if I can get them to propagate because I love these dahlia's, they are the smaller ones that only grow to about 8-12" and are covered with blooms all summer.  These ones are purple and orange, fingers crossed :)

Pruned my apple tree

OMG!!!  I was so scared to prune my apple tree today... My local nursery said  that I could and should do it now, while the tree was in a dormant state.  So I got out my sheers and grit my teeth and off I went.  Now I didn't just hack away at it, I googled it and watched multiple videos on the subject and have been staring at it for months deciding which branches to cut. I also added a branch to bend one of the main branches down a bit, it's supposed to be at a 45 degree angle, so I've read.  I am very happy with the end result, it looks a little bare but I was assured that once it starts growing again it will be far happier.  Once I started it wasn't so bad, I actually had fun and could see more and more as to where it needed to be pruned.  I can't wait to see it this summer :) I had 5 apples off this tree last year, hopefully I will get a few more.

Getting started

So I couldn't wait any longer... Luckily for me petunias and snap dragons are ready to plant ;) I asked a lot of questions today at my local nursery and they gave me the go ahead.  I wanted to try more things from seed this year and I collected seeds from my petunias and snap dragons last year so I planted those.  I will keep you posted.  As you can see from the picture I have a lot of snow outside so I have a while to wait.  But I figure why not, that way I can watch all the baby plants grow in my house.  I bought a mini greenhouse, used organic all purpose soil and my old egg cartons to grow them in, from what I have read when the plants are ready to go outside you should be able to rip the cartons apart and plant them directly into the ground.  They will decompose :) I'm so excited, and now we wait!