I’m Prepared, Gardenwise, For Cold Weather
A bevy of thermometers –and that’s not all of them? |
A bevy of thermometers –and that’s not all of them? |
For a little experiment I’m doing I need seeds of Thompson & Morgan’s ‘Gardener’s Delight’ tomato. This British company (http://www.thompson-morgan.com) sells those seeds on their British website, but not their U.S. website. T&M does not ship items from that site to the U.S. Can someone out there send me a packet of those seeds? (‘Gardener’s Delight’ seeds are also sold by some U.S. seed companies but, for the purposes of my experiment, I need T&M’s seed of that variety.) Please contact me through my website, which is linked to this blog (on your right, just below the photo of me). Thanks.
might be tropical on a sunny day but light inside is the same as outdoors, except less because it needs to go through 2 layers of plastic film. Low light and, to a lesser extent, cool temperatures on nights and overcast days (the heater kicks on at 36°F.) make for little growth in the greenhouse in the dead of winter. My goal, then, is to fill the 400 square feet of space with plants that are just about large enough to harvest by early December.
David and Holly’s kiwis |
me, the scene was both beautiful and inspirational. Acting on inspiration, I headed outdoors, pruners in hand, to get to work on my own kiwi vines.
My kiwis, before pruning |
keep the vines manageable and easy to harvest, bathed in sunlight for high quality fruit, and to stimulate an annual flush of new wood. Fruits are borne only near the bases of new shoots growing off one-year-old canes.
My kiwis, last spring, after pruning (except final shortening) |
and from along canes that were left for last year’s fruits. The goal is to remove enough so that those that remain are spaced a foot apart on either side of the permanent arms, favoring those that are pencil-thick and originating either from the permanent arm or near the base of a last or previous year’s cane.
delectable and free of pest problems. Even if you don’t grow hardy kiwi vines, though, the above pruning technique could be useful to you. It can be applied, with slight modification, to grapes, which a lot of people do grow.
Bonsai weeping fig, biding its time, for now |
houseplants aren’t waiting for warmth. They’re indoors. These tropical plants never experience true dormancy; they’re quiescent, just sitting and waiting for better growing conditions, in this case more light.
February, my potted plant sends up thin flower stalks along which sprout white flowers whose thick petals look as if they were carved from wax and from which drifts a delicate fragrance. Blooms persist relentlessly, for weeks. The plants only flower in winter, but I’m not sure what exactly brings on the flowering.
pollen tube down the style, which is attached to the stigma, to reach and fertilize an egg. The product of successful pollination and fertilization is a seed, the development of which induces the surrounding floral part to swell to become a fruit.
My sex-less hollies |
and Meserve holly — but, generally, each keeps fidelity to its own species. (An exception is that English holly can pollinate Meserve holly, which is a hybrid offspring of the English species.) Further compounding hollies’ sex problems, some males within a species cannot even adequately pollinate some females within the same species because their bloom times do not overlap.
My flowerless jasmine |
cooler temperatures, and/or, in some regions, drier weather. I’ve tried them all with my poet’s jasmine, and every year about midwinter, buds begin growth on the plant that keep stretching out into lanky, twisting shoots that try to grab onto whatever they can twist around. But no sign of flowers or flower buds.