Tag: Gardening in grow bags

Look at my Plants

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This is a plant update to show off my plants. However, this is Cursing Cats and Curiosities, so we’ll start with Louie. It’s very hot outside. So while we still let Louie outside some mornings (in his vest), he doesn’t wanna stay out there. He walks back to the door. I think he likes the air conditioning.

So here is a photo of him after he requested to go in, but we were still outside. Louie has resting bitch face. Seriously, he has resting bitch face. That’s just Louie. He aint mad. It’s funny cause he’s next to the “Rescue our cat sign” on the door.

Louie watches from the door.

On to the plants!

Look at my monstera! That new leaf is 27 inches long. Some areas have triple perforations. (Click here for the last update on her.) Admire her:

Monstera be growing.

The butterfly garden is doing fine. I really need to kill all the weeds around the pool area, I know. I’ve seen lots of pollinators and a few butterflies over here. I really need to scrub my bird bath. It’s got algae! I did not expect that for some reason. (Click here for the post where I planted the butterfly garden.)

Butterfly garden.

The Plumeria finally got to go outside. Since moving her outside, her flowers went from light pink to a beautiful dark pink. Oh yeah, and a storm blew her down the stairs. It’s ok! She has recovered. I took her off the pant stand so she’d be more sturdy. She’s already blooming again. In the evening her blooms smell the strongest. I take so many pictures of her flowers. This is from this morning.

Plumeria.

The nook in my bedroom is thriving! Apparently those zig zag cacti really just wanted some grow lights! (Click here for the last check in on those babies. Well, then I did a chop and prop, but that just made the Walmart one l look worse.) That one on the rightmost end of the pole is the free table cutting from that plant fair! It’s finally growing! It grew maybe 4 very long spindly stalks before the grow lights. I chopped them up and planted them all again. It doesn’t have any of the big gorgeous fishbones of the original cutting, but we are making massive progress. Finally!

The immortal sting-of-bananas continues. I keep giving it hair cuts and rooting them back in the pot. (Click here for the last nook update pictures and the Sting-of-Banana journey). It’s so funny because every time I look back at older pictures, I’m like “damn, it was looking thin.” I think it’s just because I always saw where this was going and what it would be. I wonder if husband still hates that closet pole? I won’t ask because he probably does.

The Walmart zig zag cactus is happy as a fucking clam. It has exploded. That’s the left most plant on the pole.

Bedroom nook plant update.

The living room plants are doing great. Once I figured out I was over-watering my rattlesnake plant, it bounced back quickly. My Lemon-Lime prayer plants don’t actually have a lot of day/night movement. This rattlesnake plat does though! She’ll be standing fully tall by night time. As I write this, she’s about halfway up. She’s tucking in.

The money tree has bounced back better than I could have imagined. After fighting the spider mites for so long, I just couldn’t win! New growth was still coming in shitty. And even if she came back thriving, she would have been super spindly. So I made the decision to just cut it all down. I cut it completely back to the bare original sticks and hoped for the best. And WOW. Now she’s thick and luscious and so happy. Each original trunk has at least 2 or more branches coming off. So she’s thicker than she ever was.

Living room buddies.

Speaking of, I hacked down my red banana plants too. They got a bit shocked after going back outside after winter. OK, a LOT shocked. All the leaves went brown on the edges. So I just hacked them back to the bare trunks too. Looks like they’re sprouting now!

Now to go trim the delphiniums in the butterfly garden. They were so insanely gorgeous but all the blooms dropped off. I thought they would bloom all summer? I just read I need to cut off the seeding branches to get more blooms. So… More cutting. Don’t be afraid to cut your plants! Sometimes they need a reset.

Pumpkin Farming Adventures

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Welp, the first pumpkin patch experiment continues. I’m learning a lot. It’s not going as well as I had hoped. Keeping up with their water needs has been a huge pain. I had to get a cheap irrigation line and timer. The timer runs every 6 hours (it was that or every 12). They still wilt in the afternoon heat.

But then, global warming is killing us. Like literally, it’s cooking us.

Then I thought, maybe the water was draining through too fast. So I rigged up milk jugs to fill with the water and slowly disperse it through a pin hole. They perk up right after watering, but I worry how it will affect the fruit.

Slugs have also proven to be a problem. I expected assault from above and so I used insect netting. Turns out slugs were coming out between the mesh barrier and concrete and munching my leaves. I went out one night and saw the fuckers just eating away! WTF?

At first, they just terminated two vines early. But by the time I got slug bait/poison, they got to the heart of one plant and the main vine of another. Here’s how they looked this weekend:

Last night, I went out and cut off all the yellow leaves and found the heart of the problem. They had directly attacked the main vine. It has healed, but all that yellow in the middle died. Here it is today:

So frustrating! That’s the Jack-o’-lantern plant that had a month head start over the others. It takes 120 days to mature so it went out early. Bastard slugs!

Still, I’m finally getting some female flowers to pollinate! You can see that I removed the insect mesh since it wasn’t doing any good. I decided it would better serve me to cover more ground to keep out slugs and keep the weed vines from tangling with my pumpkin vines.

The past two mornings I’ve been able to go and fertilize two females each morning. Two minis and two large. Tomorrow, another large should bloom.

Im not sure if it was the slugs or my pinching off the male flowers that was causing my females to prematurely fall off. Maybe both. But now that I’m letting them bloom freely and removed the netting, there are many happy bees. Look at these cuties from this morning:

They were inside the prettiest vine. I think this is the vine that grows the big grey/green pumpkins. Love the variegated leaves and it has the prettiest flowers.

Unfortunately, it’s also the ones where the slugs attacked in the soil. I know because the marigolds I planted there are heavily munched. It is stunted, but still has some growth. No females on that one yet.

Lessons Learned So Far

I was very smart to put down a ground barrier. So smart that I used the insect netting to extend that barrier on the side. I used a sun sail and it is great. It’s thick and doesn’t let water sit long. Also blocks the light out and looks clean. However, I think the double layer of insect netting will serve the same purpose at a cheaper price. It’s much thinner. It will not keep light from the weeds, but it will keep them under it. It also stays wet longer, but I don’t think it’ll be too bothersome.

I like the twine that I tied from the plants (the poles that were holding up the netting) to stakes across the barrier. The vines want to grow towards the south and I’m training them to the East. I just inspect them every day or two to note female flowers and twist the latest growth around the twine. Also, since I’m growing in grow bags, the main plant is about 2 feet off the ground. This led to my first vine folding under its weight (had to use wood trim to support it). The twine has allowed me to slowly train the vines down to the ground while supporting the weight.

As for cons, well, slugs. I’ve got bug repellent and slug killer out now. The vines are so close together that it is murder to walk through for inspection. But I have to keep track of my female flowers. I only have one of each vine so I can’t rely on the pollinators. Maybe two of each type next year? Or make sure I use the same species so they can inter-pollinate? I will judge after the yield.

I’ve also let the vines on the sides spread out to make more room. I’m even letting the Jack-o’-lantern climb the stair railing to get it off the ground and away from the slugs.

The critter netting worked great until I could get everything growing well. Then, I added a layer of compost and a layer of mulch.

Instead of the cheapest timer, it might have been worth getting one with more customization options. Then I could water only in the heat of the day and not every 6 hours. Turn it on when it’s drooping and skip watering when it rains.

Another fail was using a cheap hose. I hooked up the timer with a cheap hose. It burst the next day. No shit. I guess it wasn’t meant to hold water pressure in a bend and full Alabama sun. Had to steal the hose from the garage for it!

This has been a more expensive and frustrating adventure than expected. Especially before this week. For two months I’ve been tracking female flowers only for them to fall off before they bloom. Now that I’m getting possible pumpkin babies, I’m much happier. I do hope they survive so I can watch them grow!

Oh, and I bought little labels to very loosely tie around the females to keep track of them. Super helpful when digging around in there to see if they’re soon to bloom. The females grow much closer to the main stem so you have to push leaves aside to find them.

It’s a big learning experience. I do hope to have something to show for it this Fall! It’s also been nice to watch it grow in that ugly rock corner. Such insanely large plants I started from seed!

Grow, my pumpkins, grow!