Yearning for sunflowers

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The roadside garden that made me want to grow sunflowers again. Note the giant sunflower plant at the back. Slurp.

I’m getting that urge to grow sunflowers again. Alright, I’ve had the feeling for several weeks now. It’s because I passed a house that had several sunflower plants growing along the road, and that re-awakened my want for these flowers once more.

I pulled out the remainder of my sunflower seeds obtained in 2010, but they didn’t appear to be viable any more. Novice Gardener then came to my rescue with more seeds, and I’ve been thrilled to see some of them start germinating. Even better, these are varieties I’ve never grown before:

Velvet Queen sunflower sprouts

Velvet Queen is a dark red variety with a black centre. This will be the first red sunflower we will have growing in our garden.

Italian White sprout – how tiny!

Italian White has creamy white petals and deep chocolate centres. That makes me hungry for some reason… This, too, will be a first new colour growing here.

Moonwalker sunflower sprouts

Moonwalker is supposed to be one of the giant varieties that can grow between 8 to 12 feet high. I hope I’ll be able to get it to grow that big! This plant bears pale yellow flowers with similar centres.

I’m still waiting to see if any other varieties germinate, but have to admit that after seeing the roadside garden – especially the tallest sunflower – I want to try my hand at growing giant sunflowers again. The Moonwalker plants will pave the way until I get more “cousins” to keep them company…

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Anti-snail margarita

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My immediate snail deterrent – salt sprinkled around the rim of a flowerpot!

You know how the margarita drink is served with salt lining the rim of the glass? Well, I decided to copy that idea to deter snails when I planted out my shark fin melon seedling.

Yes, it was a risk placing that little baby out in the garden even before it had properly grown any true leaves, but I had several seedlings then, and wanted to experiment with growing one plant directly in a big pot, rather than transfer it later in life.

The only problem was that I expected snails to be attracted to the big, succulent-looking seed leaves.

Snail pellets don’t have an immediate effect, so even though they can claim several victims, your plants will still be vulnerable before the poison kills the pests.

I had to keep my seedling protected, and I decided to make use of salt to achieve this.

You know how sprinkling salt on snails kills them, right? I figured that any snail that came across salt would be smart enough to avoid it. So, I wet the rim of the flower pot that the seedling was in, and sprinkled salt around the rim. The water held it in place, and some of the salt probably dissolved a bit, spreading it more.

Lo and behold, my anti-snail margarita worked! The little seedling was left undisturbed and has grown into a long vine. I know that salt can be harmful to plants, so I can’t do this too often, but now I wonder if I could spray a salt-water solution on the sides of my flowerpots to keep snails away…

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Butternut ups and downs

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Our big butternut pumpkin vine spreading out under the mango tree, with the younger plant in the pot in the rear.

You’ve guessed it – it’s time to talk about the Butternut pumpkin plants. Thankfully, it’s not all mumbles and grumbles this time.

In case you’ve forgotten, we have two butternut plants right now. The first is quite matured, having been growing for a few months now. It had a shaky period where it had to adjust from growing well in a container to learning to grow in the ground in a completely different environment under our mango tree. I was interested to see that it took root at the part of the vine that was growing out when it was transplanted, and eventually discarded the length of vine that had grown in the pot.

That’s like throwing out the old and going with the new. Who’d think plants practised such psychology?

Finally, the vine has started putting out flower buds along the second half of the vine, at the leaf junctures.

Now that this vine has adjusted to the new place, it is growing faster and stronger, and is finally starting to bud. It is still creeping along the ground, and I’ve been poking bamboo sticks along the length of vine to try to protect it from people and creatures that don’t know it is supposed to be left alone. Who knows, maybe some of the tendrils that have been growing out may grab on and try to start the plant climbing.

In the meantime, the vine looks good – it’s at least finger-width at the moment!

Which is a good thing, because my small butternut plant that joined the butternut pumpkin patch-to-be – was not so lucky:

And here we have it: the baby butternut plant was neatly beheaded…

I suspect that a snail chomped through the juicy-looking stem, effectively beheading the poor plant.

Since the plant had good roots, I hope it can re-grow itself. And since I managed to do this once before with the Hami melon plant, I’ve stuck the severed part of the stem back into the soil in the hopes that it will grow new roots and eventually survive.

My lessons in all this:

  1. Let the plant grow bigger before putting it out in the garden. It’s too tempting to snails when they are young, tender and juicy.
  2. Bring the young, potted plant near the place it’s going to be put out in to let it adjust to the new place for a few days while it continues to grow a bit more.

Obviously I’ve forgotten the rules about transplanting young plants. :( Nevertheless, there is still the first plant, and a few more seeds to try planting. Cest la vie.

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Pollinator attractor: the Brazilian Bachelor’s Button flower

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Industriously going from flower to flower…

We got the Brazilian Bachelor’s Button (Centratherum intermedium) plant as a pass-along cutting from a family friend. The single cutting has since grown and literally spread out as a low-lying bush that is slowly encircling our big Birds’ Nest fern.

The pale purple flowers are really pretty. I’ve mentioned that they remind me of Carnival in Brazil, because of their stringy, pouffy appearance. Well, all that fluffiness is actually made up of lots of tiny flowers – yes, from the outer light purple ring all the way to the whitish middle. I can’t hazard a guess how many little flowers are in each Brazilian Bachelor’s Button flower head…

…but all those pollen-laden flowers are definitely a magnet for pollen-seeking creatures.

Busily gathering pollen…

If you go to the plant in the late afternoon, you will find lots of activity.

I haven’t staked out the plant in the morning, so I can’t vouch for that time of day, but it’s possible it’s busy then, too.

What you will see is a small swarm of bees busily flitting from flower to flower, landing for a short while, walking around a little, and then drifting off to the next flower target. I hadn’t realized just what a good pollinator-attracting plant this was until recently. I think that when I prune the plant, I’m going to use the cuttings to propagate more plants closer to my edible garden. Isn’t that what companion planting is supposed to be about? :)

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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