21 March 2010
Second Day of Spring (#fail)
Posted by Jake under: Indoor Gardening; Propagation; Seedstarting .
Well, it’s been a lonnnnnnnng winter and apparently it’s not over yet.
Woke up this morning to a foot of snow on the ground. Ok, maybe it’s 10 inches. This is hardly a consolation. This is not what I imagined for my first couple of days of spring in my new garden.
I look out the back window onto a winter wonderland and out of the corner of my eye is my seed starting station: 70 peat pellets—many of them with sprouts—eagerly anticipating planting day. Oh, boy. They are a comfortable 75 degrees on their heating mat under a fluorescent light. I hope they can’t see through their humidity dome to the outside world. They might just give it up right now!
I *hoped* to do a little yard clean-up this weekend to make way for the daffodils and tulips that seemed to appear overnight (hopefully they are okay under their blanket of snow). Instead I turned my attention to my indoor plants. I purchased a couple of tropical plants at Home Depot last Saturday with my Garden Club buy-one-get one coupon. I have fantastic light in my office at work so I am planning to create an indoor garden there. I am terrible with tropical plant names and I can’t find my houseplant book so more on those later. I repotted one of the plants but my potting soil purchased is mostly too wet to work with so the other will need to wait for things to dry out a bit!
I did some shopping for containers. I have a small back yard here and no natural place for a vegetable garden so I am thinking that I will do a lot of container gardening. I have a few large self-watering planters that I purchased from Gardener’s Supply a couple of years ago. They were expensive but a worthwhile investment as they have held up very well. I am planning to buy a few more potato bags (the only way to grow potatoes, IMO) and a couple of Tomato Success Kits. Stay tuned.
Indoor Gardening Report
I did take this opportunity to repot my bromeliads. I have a dish garden with three different bromeliads that I received as a gift from my honey two years ago. It’s done really well but recently one of the plants gave it up. I noticed that it had offsets so I did a little reading and learned that bromeliads die after they bloom! Not unlike some Arizona agaves. But they produce pups before they give it up and sure enough I have seven pups from the three original plants. I repotted five of the pups in the original dish, mixing in some orchid bark to lighten up the soil mixture. The other two pups are in peat pots at the moment—I’ll get them a new dish in a couple weeks. I repotted the remaining mother plants in another pot—I am not sure if they are done. Maybe they have more work to do. 
I have an air plant that has been hanging out with the bromeliads and seems to be doing well. I would like to find a decorative branch to attach it to using some moss. A small project to look forward to while I am waiting for the real spring to show up.
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