Still Growing.

For all you blog fans, the past month and a half has been a slow time for updating the blog. Now I foresee the entries becoming more frequent again and perhaps even a daily/every other day (small) posting on general garden happenings in the summer. Not too much is going on with the indoor plants right now and it might be nice to check in on the outdoor gardens here in Minnesota, (keeping our various gesneriads in mind), seeing if there is anything we can learn from them. You never know when something practical or helpful might be gained from thinking about what we're doing outdoors.

The sun is still making a large difference in the growth and development of the tomatoes from the last post. This is taken two weeks after the June 29th picture.

Surprisingly Fast!

As all of us "plant fans" already know, plants are really quite remarkable things. Growth for some must take place in a very short amount of time. Here in a relatively northern garden all growth and development, from seed germination to seed ripening, must take place in roughly 4 month's time.... or about 120 days.

Although I've been gardening for nearly 30 years, it struck me particularly this year how fast annuals and vegetables actually grow here in Minnesota. The first photo was the "sunny" garden on May 12th. As you can see from the surrounding spaces, nothing much was planted by anyone else at that time in my 6'x8' community garden plot.




The second photo was taken on June 19th, or about a month later. The tomatoes are not up to the tops of their tomato-cages and the fairly new transplants aren't filled in or blooming much.



The last photo was taken June 29th, less than a half month after the previous photo. You can see that the tomatoes are past their cages and the zinnias are much more lush and filled out with some good looking blooms. That happened in only 10 days. I'm frankly amazed.

I share this amazement because of a couple of reasons.... one being that sometimes we forget. I forgot over the years that sun really does matter. My home gardens never have more than two to three hours of direct sunlight a day. I have (what I like to think) is a fun yard with lots of bird feeders and semi-tended gardens and interesting plants that I'm "trying out" to see what they'll do in a northern climate. Everything has to "put up" with shade. I have trees in the front and I have trees in the back..... and where there might be a potential patch of sunlight, the neighbors have huge Cottonwood trees across the street. The sun doesn't get past them after about two in the afternoon either. I simply forgot the lessons of growing up on a farm. Fields do not have shade.

On a whim, I signed up for a tiny patch of community garden. A 6'x8' plot is approximately the size of a living room accent rug like the sort at the home furnishing stores. Since I haven't had any home grown tomatoes for years (or any that were larger than a golf ball) I thought I would plant a couple of vegetables. I put in three different heritage tomato varieties, some chard, peppers, basil, onions and flowers. In only 55 days I have plants that are as tall as a couple of the neighbors! Light, the number of hours of light and the intensity of light are extremely important to robust growth. I'm going to take that lesson indoors and reassess what the violets and gesneriads on the light stands are getting as far as both the quantity and quality of light that they're receiving.

Perhaps something else that I've forgotten about is temperature. Our typical frost-free days here in the Twin Cities area are from May 10th to about Sept. 20th. If we're using roundish numbers, that means there are about 120 frost-free growing days and about 245 that fall someplace in the time that could potentially freeze. Many of the fruits and vegetables that we grow are not hardy past freezing. Some of the "cole crops" like cabbage might be able to stand a little cold weather but most things do not. So fast growth and maturity are important.

Many of the gesneriads and African violets have naturally evolved to live climates where the weather is never cold enough to freeze. But, could the temperature that they grow in matter more than we realize? The appeal of houseplants is that they survive in the same conditions that most people usually keep their house at. But, would more closely mimicking nature (and that plant's natural habitat) speed their growth and development up like the lovely surprise of putting tomatoes in full sun? This could be a good topic for one of the experiments that we posted about a week or two ago. Anyone want to try this???

Variegation!

Variegation is the appearance of differently colored zones and areas on leaves or stems of plants. But, did you know that this is caused by many different things? Not only is it caused by lack of pigment in certain parts of a leaf, it may appear because of reflections of light, the close proximity of cells with different genetic makeup in the same leaf or flower, the masking of lighter pigments because of the presence of darker pigments and because of viral infections! Read more about the various types of variegation here!

The stunning variegated plants are grown by Sharon! Thanks for the examples!

Leaves of all Shapes and Sizes!

African violet leaves come in many shapes and sizes. It's good to have a handy reference nearby so that when you're trying to order violets or are thinking of adding to your collection you can be more confident of what will actually show up at your doorstep.

These are some illustrations from the TAVS, which I believe is the Toranto African Violet Society. If I'm mistaken, please contact me for a correction.

Since the image is small, click ON the image for an ENLARGEMENT.

What's in a Name?

Here's a little something from a book published 35 years ago.... The Exotic House Plants book by Graf has a very nice set of sketches simply illustrating some basic botanical terms that relate to leaves and their shapes, flower parts etc. Sometimes it's just nice to get a refresher in the differences between ovate and obovate! These things can get confusing.

Some of the lables are small and difficult to read. Simply click ON the ILLUSTRATION and it will apear larger.

We'll examine what sorts of shapes violet leaves come in in the near future.

Myth Busting the Legends... or Experiments for the Club!

Really? Is that TRUE?

Busting the MYTHS behind the legend!

What? Design an experiment to find out what will happen when you change ONE aspect of growing your plants.
Why? To see if some of the “standard advice” about growing violets - what we’ve always heard - is really TRUE. To learn about something that interests YOU.
When? Starting now in the summer or early fall so that we can all report back to the club about our results at future meetings this year.
Where? You’ll do this in your own growing environment at home.
Who? Everyone in the club is asked to try at least one simple experiment of your choice so that we might all learn something new.
How? By taking two of the same plant or two or more leaves of the same variety and choosing some aspect of growing those plants to see if what you’ve always heard is really true. For example: rooting a leaf in water is faster than rooting a leaf in soil.

Ideas: Which grows larger and faster, plants watered with Superthrive added to your usual routine or plants watered with what you usually use?
Do young leaves produce babies faster than old leaves?
Do Episcias grow better in warmer conditions or cooler ones?
Does pollinating a strep on the first day the bloom is open make more seeds/pods than pollinating the flower 5 days after it is open?
Do Grow-Lux bulbs make plants grow better than regular cool white fluorescents?
Do Kohleria rhizomes store better in moist sphagnum or in plastic bags in the refrigerator?
Does watering with cold water stunt the plant as opposed to room temperature water?
Does water on a violet leaf REALLY cause a spot?

Here is the shortened write-up of the club's next proposed project. We'd like everyone to participate and try to experiment on some aspect of horticulture. Let's be creative, let's really try to find out something interesting. I would love to put pictures in the blog following the progress of the experiments!!! You may send an email attachment or an actual photo in and we'll get it into the blog.

The topic you choose can be something elaborate or simple, but every piece of information is valuable. Who would have thought that upsetting or wiggling the roots of strep babies would make them grow faster? But, Dale Martens tried this and showed all us strep lovers something extremely useful for getting streps to grow quickly and thusly allowing the grower to see what the babies look like months ahead of the old "tried and true" way. Let's find another really cool result like that one!

We're Not There Yet.

Here are two colors that haven't happened in the world of violets yet. Why don't we have either turquoise or orange for our African violets? There are finally flowers with yellow coloration and although they tend to be somewhat mellow in hue, why when crossed with a red ... have we gotten no orange?

We've also seen blue flowers and green flowers, but we haven't hit a true turquoise color on a whole flower.


I checked this out with Dr. Jeff Smith and he agrees that we haven't quite gotten to those two particular colors yet. He says: "I’ve seen orange in African violet flowers as streaks. The trick will be getting it over the whole flower. That we haven’t managed to do just yet. I’ve not seen a shade that I would have called turquoise. Would that be a light blue over green combination? We can get blue flowers with green edges, but I don’t know if we can get green over the entire flower. It’s a similar problem to that of orange flowers."

Wouldn't it be fun to be the first to come up with a totally original color for our violets?

Lady Slipper Orchid

A pretty part of spring in Minnesota.

Me? Organize? You Have Got to be Kidding!

For those of you who have taken your life in your hands and walked through my “sewing, craft, plant, stuff” room, know what a mess it is. Surprisingly, I have a pretty good idea where everything is. However, as cluttered as the room may look, the closet is worse. That is where I kept all my design materials.

I absolutely love doing design, but it had started becoming more like a chore. Much of my design materials was kept in a two-drawer organizer which really wasn’t. Each drawer is 18” long x 14” wide x 8” deep. Plus there was also a box with material, one for dried weedy things, one for baskets, moss, containers of dried materials, etc. Doing design meant pulling the drawers out and rummaging through them. By the time I was done, half the family room had stuff scattered around. Dragging it all out and then trying to put it away would have me saying “*!!?#*#?/” to design.

We went shopping! The result was an organizer with more, but much smaller drawers and it is on wheels. The drawers are 14” long x 11” wide. Four drawers are 3” deep and three are 7” deep. It is perfect! Now my design organizer IS. One drawer has shiny sparkle stuff, one has small containers of all sorts, one has fastening materials, etc. The deeper drawers are divided up with small boxes. The whole experience was kind of like a treasure hunt. I found items that were completely forgotten. So much ended up on the bottom of those big deep drawers. The old two-drawer now holds larger items. It’s soooo nice to have it all where I can see it.

By the way, NO the rest of the room still looks the same. There’s only so much organizing that can be done at one time. Give me a few years.

Many thanks and appreciation to Barb Werness for this great article!!!

Perry's Old Age

Perry's fabulous inflorescence has almost completely collapsed. Soon the corm will send up a leaf... only one leaf.... that will probably be the biggest leaf in the entire state of Minnesota.

The links to the college of Gustavus have lots of further information about Perry; using an engine hoist to move the corm into another pot, the problems with finding a pot for a hundred pound corm.... taking mom to smell a "corpse flower" for Mother's Day and so much more!!! Check it out!

All about Perry! Enjoy. I hope they'll keep the web cams going when the leaf is growing.