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.