Experiment 8 - The really old gourd seeds
I finally got around to planting the delightfully retro gourd seeds. If you’re a newcomer to Garden Science or just haven’t read the post, feel free to get all caught up here. The nutshell version is that these seeds are 25ish years old and I intend on finding out if they’ll still grow. The actual planting/photography happened about a week ago.
I know it may look like I put half a dozen artsy filters on this photo, but I assure you that’s just how this packet looks whenever I try to photograph it. It’s fastidiously set in its sepia time warp, and I respect that.
Here are all of the seeds just hanging out waiting to be planted. Given the fact that the apartment doesn’t have a ton of space, I opted to plant these in the instant garden back at the house.
It’s a little hard to see, but I put 4 little sticks in the ground - 1 for each seed I planted. If you’re super good at math, you may be noticing that I’m 2 sticks short of my 6 seed total. The remaining seeds were saved so that I could do something else with them, and you’ll see more on that in a future post.
No experiment is a guaranteed success, and this one really seems like a long shot. Even if this is the last we see of these seeds, I’ve had a blast writing about them and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about them, too. Still, who knows… I may be drying, painting, and etching my very own garden-grown crafts by the end of the season after all.
Experiment 4
I sometimes forget to post progress updates on things that fail to grow the first time around. The Eggling, for instance, didn’t grow at all after its initial run and I totally neglected to tell anyone about it. For the record, I think the lack of growth may have been my own fault. Small items like this tend to require a level of watering diligence that I find it difficult to keep up with, and I’m pretty sure I let it get bone dry no fewer than 20 times.
Luckily this Eggling came with a packet of back-up seeds. I planted a few and cranked up my level of attentiveness, and sure enough I have a tiny basil plant growing out of the egg now. This is a really fun little kit and it looks adorable on the windowsill.
I definitely recommend the Eggling. Just be sure to water it regularly!
Garden Science gets an apartment
That’s right, it’s new fancy independent living for Garden Science. I probably brainstormed 50 or so “I’m moving” title ideas before I settled on this one because I thought too many people might just read the headline and think that I’d moved the blog itself to a different location or something. Nope! Garden Science the blog isn’t going anywhere, but Garden Science the narrator has moved.
This place is sweet.
This is the “game room” (games not pictured) featuring a plant shelf and some bottle cap folk art. All of my strictly-indoor plants are here with a couple of new friends, too. I’ll do a special plant shelf feature eventually.
One of my favorite parts of the new place is the balcony/patio area where my outdoor and seasonal plants are hanging out. I’ll do an individual feature on this, too. Things are still kind of in flux as far as what plant is going to go where.
Spoiler alert: Some very observant folks might notice that I have a “Dino Dome” on the shelf, and sheepishly I must admit that I have not done a single post on it yet despite how awesome it is. I’ve talked a bit about having a big important post coming up, and… well, that’s it. It’s still a work in progress.
Another one of my favorite things is this awesome railing-box I received as a gift. It has a lone impatien in it (a leftover from back at the house) but it won’t be the lone plant occupant for long. There is one other current occupant, and that’s Quigley the garden gnome. He decided to move his operation over to the apartment. Editor’s note: the railing planter can be found at Home Depot.
A while ago on Garden Science I announced the return of the instant garden. This announcement was made before the moving plan was fully realized, and it is possible that the move may impact coverage of the instant garden somewhat. Don’t worry though - I still plan on spending a lot of time at the house this summer and should be able to cover any cool developments there. If the instant garden posts are few and far between, take solace in knowing I should be able to more than make up for it in cool “urban gardening” patio posts.
More soon!
I answered a question to Garden Science back in the day about the green fence-type stuff that you can see in the instant garden (and the rest of the family garden, for that matter). My mom and fellow gardening enthusiast tango-mango just did a great post of her own on the stuff that I thought I’d share.
Garden fencing
Our sugar snap peas are already over my head and they’ll grow another 3 feet or so before their season’s over. Year after year people who walk by our house are fascinated by their height and how well they climb the wire. Because so many people have asked about the wire I thought it might be interesting to some of you out there as well.
Not only is this green PVC covered wire a great medium for our peas and beans to climb it’s also great fencing for unruly plants like potatoes. Before we plant our seeds we lay it down on the soil as a digging deterrent for squirrels and cats. Occasionally we’ll get a creative critter who can work around it but not usually. We surround our sunflower plants with the fencing when they’re young mostly for protection from wayward children and their toys. After the last of the garden has been picked it gets taken down, rolled up and saved for the following year.
As I was out taking a few pictures an Oregon Junko very conveniently decided to land on the fencing surrounding the sunflowers. It’s not the world’s greatest picture but I felt it necessary to add because of the coincidental nature of the situation.
In another week we’ll be eating the first of the peas and then for weeks we’ll have more of them than I know what to do with. Like last year, I will spam you with a multitude of photos and recipes that include them. Stay tuned.
Experiment 11 - The return of magic beans!
Once upon a time, Garden Science visited San Francisco’s Chinatown and found some message-inscribed magic beans. Readers were successful in translating the secret of the beans, but their fairy tale took a sad turn when they ultimately failed to grow. This was a pretty substantial disappointment.
Fortunately, there’s a magical place called THE INTERNET where time machines, unicorns, and other objects of myth are only a couple of clicks away. Searches on this “internet” thing helped me find some beans that were supposedly giant and drew comparisons to those from Jack in the Beanstalk. They sounded so remarkable that I just had to order them. After all, there’s nothing but truth on the internet. Right? I hope so, because I traded my only cow to get these.
Joking aside, both the vendor and the product got great reviews and the beans arrived speedily and just as described. By happy coincidence, they appear to be of the exact same variety as the original Chinatown beans.
Long time readers may know that I am a pretty big fan of Dollar Tree. My nearest one currently has respectably sized plastic pots (see the large capacity measuring cup for size comparison), and I thought I’d try planting a magic bean in there to see what happened. I’m optimistic that I’ll get a good germination rate out of these, so for now I’m only planting one. The rest may get planted in time.
Sweet dreams, bean.
Bonus:
Dollar Tree also has hanging pots right now. They aren’t super deluxe or anything, but a buck still seems like a pretty good bargain for this. It’s only a matter of time before something gets planted here…
Experiment 3
I took some macro shots of my tiny Christmas trees yesterday that seemed neat enough to warrant their own post. The top one depicts the taller of the two. You can really see the trees’ difference in coloration!
To put things in scale, the needle-span of the top sapling is close to the diameter of a dime. The bottom one is about quarter-sized.
Experiment 3 - A good day to be a Christmas tree in a can
I just realized something! Even though I intended to and even thought I did, I have not given a single Experiment 3 update since December 30th. Yikes, definitely time to change that.
The last time I reported on the Christmas tree in a can situation there was a second one that had only just begun to emerge. Much like its partner, it jumped to a stable height right away and then promptly stopped growing. While the first tree is tall, thin, and bright green, the second tree is shorter and stockier with a darker green coloration.
Despite their lack of growth, the condition of the trees remained pretty stable since planting… up until today. Upon looking at them this evening I realized their situation had deteriorated.
The granular pellets the trees are growing out of have seemingly no friction. As soon as they dry out between waterings, the grains shift with the slightest bump and the trees go with them. The poor smaller tree was at almost a 90 degree angle when I discovered it today. This was unacceptable.
The trees are still finger-crushingly small but I figured they weren’t going to get any bigger while they remained in a substance with the physical and nutritive properties of fish gravel. I was expecting a difficult extraction, but the grains were so loose I was able to gently pull each of the trees from the pellets with minimal resistance.
It’ll take time to be sure, but the trees seem happy to have left the can. Merry late Christmas, trees!
Experiment 8 - Return of the instant garden
I am pleased to announce that Garden Science’s biggest and best experiment to date - the instant garden - will return this spring for its second season.
Wait… it gets better.
Garden Science gets THE WHOLE BOX this time! There is no lack of ideas (or seeds) to fill it with, either.
What’s in store this time around? There’s going to be a couple of second generation instant garden classics coming back for sure. I’ll also be planting the really old gourd seeds and crossing my fingers. Additionally, I’m looking into trading my cow in exchange for some more magic beans so that I can try a reboot of Experiment 11. That last part may or may not happen, but I’m hopeful.
Rotten to the core
A while back I wrote that the artichoke looked like it was going to overwinter. Things continued looking good over the next few weeks, and it even had a bunch of budding flowers on it.
I was fairly confident that the hardest part was over. It had made it to through the winter and survived several freezes/thaws… what could spring possibly throw at it that was worse than that?
Here’s some foreshadowing. As you can see in this photo that was intended to be solely of Quigley the garden gnome, the base of this plant looks bad. Really bad, actually. I noticed this, but since the artichoke seemed to be doing so well I barely thought anything of it.
…Fast forward a couple of weeks…
It didn’t happen on purpose and I wasn’t there to witness it, but recently the plant was hit lightly by a rogue gardening tool and the whole thing toppled over. The main stalk was completely rotted out. I have no idea how the thing was able to stand for so long, let alone how it was able to continue living and growing.
But all is not lost! New growth continues to spring up around the area where the main stalk fell and this indicates that the root system is alive and well. If we don’t have any more freezes this year, then we’re already off to a pretty good start for the season. This is about as big as the plant was when I bought it from the store last June.
Will the plant yield flowers this year?
Quigley is admirably optimistic.
im-just-a-person asked: I love hearing about your lemon experiment!! I just planted some seeds of my own yesterday, about how big will they be within 2 months?
I am glad! In a way, I think I can credit the lemon trees with being the whole reason for starting Garden Science in the first place.
As to your question - that’s a tough call. I live in a less-than-favorable climate for growing citrus trees, and it took mine about a month just to sprout. Check out this post to see what the lemon trees looked like about 2 and a half months after planting the seeds (approximate).
Best of luck with your own experiment!
