I have learned my lesson!
Rosie1949
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
I almost don't know how to start this. All of you were right!!!! After a looong time of NO violets,,,,,,I lived in a happy little world of getting back into violets,,,then losing them to a furnace outage in the winter and having to rebuild again.
Happily I started every leaf that broke off. If I had to repot a slight neck, you guess it!!!! I potted every single leaf that had to come off!!!! Oh not all of the leaves lived. And I was able to trade some for others! How exciting!!!
And I had a couple of enabling friends! YIPPEEEE!!! And even though Lowe's and Meijer's were the only stores I know of to buy violets from I was happy!
And I went to my first violet show EVER!!!!! with Anne!!! And bought MORE!!!! And started MORE!!!! And cleaned out over 600 Kcups!!!! (perfect little starting pots!).
Two days after the show (April 5th) I had knee replacement surgery. Last Tuesday I had to go back and have it "manipulated" (a fancy word for breaking up a lot of scar tissue that formed! Walking and bending much better since I did that!)
So yesterday I had my reality check. Violets and babies badly needed attention--ya think??? I was so far behind. So I spent the better part of the day hobbling around doing that.
NOW I regret planting every single little leaf that was a mulitiple. What am I going to do with 5 Kcups of babies of one variety??? 8 Kcups of another variety? And so on. Irina, your warnings came flooding back to me! And Anne! And all of the other polite warnings??? Oh my.
Soooo,,,,,I did what just a few short months ago would be unthinkable for me. I picked up every Kcup that had a leaf that produced babies and cut off the leaf and pulled out all but ONE of the growing babies. AND THEN I THREW THEM AWAY!!!!!!! Anne!!!!! I THREW THEM AWAY!!! Only kept the one cup and baby. OH did that hurt!!!!
Most of the ones that I did that to were Optimaras from Lowe's and Meijer. Not that I don't love them,,,,but what am I going to do with all those Pennsylvania's, Ontario's, Trinidad ll's etc.????? And the rest??? Oh my. It certainly cut down the amount of Kcups/containers that were taking up valuable space!
This gave more space for the streps that are now getting larger and need to go into Dannon yogurt cups from Kcups etc. AND yes, I am keeping the more (dare I say the word???) valuable violets from the Ann Arbor Show (that I am making for my daughter.)
Whew!!!! Yesterday was painful. And I don't mean just the knee. But another thing. I can go up and down stairs slowly, but I can't carry anything (soil, pots etc) so I still can't do a lot of repotting. Potting stuff is in the basement! Guess all of these factors just smacked me in the head!!!!!
In the 1960's to early 80's I did grow hundreds of violets. BUT,,,,,,, that was then,,,,this is now.
Ok,,,I am now living in the real world. Will be selective from now on. Well,,,,,at least I will try hard!!!!! Rosie
PS. This is an older pix of Trinidad ll. I posted it before when I was sooooo happy to see "mouse ears"! The mom leaf is now gone and I have "pruned" out all but one baby. But now that baby will have room to grow into a very nice plant that I probably won't keep! (sigh).
PPS You all can now say "I TOLD YOU SO!!!!"
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Rosie1949
7 years ago
Julie He
7 years agoRelated Discussions
No idea what to do with my dahlias
Comments (1)All dahlias come from tubers, and can be started from seed, after which the plant produces a tuber (by the end of the season). As far as I know, there are no dahlias which are perennial to zone 6 - so they all have to be dug up and stored inside. People who don't want to bother doing this consider dahlias annual - but what a waste, in my opinion. The attached link has lots of great information for beginner and expert alike. Anna Here is a link that might be useful: Lots of Dahlia Information...See MoreFwhomp! That's the sound my tomato plant made last night
Comments (6)Hi Jeff! Hey, it is ONLY June. Those tomato plants could be 10' tall by August! Just to clarify, I always cage my tomatoes, AND I stake the cages AND the plants. Here is how I do it, and there are many other ways to do it as well. When I plant the tomato plant into the ground, I pound a 3' stake into the ground a couple of inches from the plant and loosely tie the plant to it with a zip-tie. This helps encourage the plant to stand up straight and tall as it begins to branch out rapidly....sometimes they get too heavy too fast and lean sideways a little. Secondly, I put the cage around the plant and stake the cage on 2 to 4 sides, depending on that variety's general rate of growth. The stakes help keep the cage from tipping over when we have a thunderstorm with very strong winds. I also attach the stakes to the cage with zip ties. I use zip ties a lot. After the tomato plant is a couple of feet tall, I cut the zip tie holding the plant to the original stake so the zip tie won't cut into the ever-enlarging main stem. If we are having a REALLY windy year, I run a bamboo stick or PVC pipe horizontally through several cages so they can help hold each other up. If a plant becomes a big monster and the cage is in imminent danger of tipping over, I add a 4' to 6' tall metal fence post as a stake on the side from which the wind usually blows, which for us in the summer is from the south. Sometimes, in spite of all you do, a cage will topple over anyway. That is where good mulching comes in. If your garden is well mulched, the toppled plant won't get a lot of foliar disease from the dirt. I am glad you enjoyed your first tomato. Home-grown ones are SO-O-O-O much better. You do know, don't you, that you shouldn't refrigerate homegrown tomatoes if you can avoid it? 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In my largest containers, the tomato plants hardly ever get taller than 7' or 8' tall. Often, they stay in the 4' to 5' tall range, depending on the variety and the container size. I just look at a 5 gallon bucket and estimate sizes of containers upward from there. Some of the best containers don't come from the garden center. Those square Rubbermaid-type storage totes make great containers if you drill or cut drainage holes into the bottoms of them. If you don't like the available colors, you can spray paint them with the Krylon Fusion spraypaint for plastics. Some of my favorite containers are 'muck buckets' sold at feed stores and farm and ranch stores. You can turn almost anything into a container if you put drainage holes in it. I know people who grow tomatoes in cheap 25 or 30 gallon trash cans. They fill the bottom half with shredded mulch and get put soil in the upper half. You can grow huge plants in containers that size. Dawn...See MoreAnswers to Questions About A Holly Hedge
Comments (15)Enjoying nature, I never have tried pruning hollies to a certain size. I let mine get to the full size and shape that they're meant to attain. You probably could prune them to any size and shape you want, but after a few years you end up with big thick branches with leaves sticking out of them and it looks unnatural unless you like tightly pruned hedges. I still can hear Neil Sperry's voice in my head on his radio show saying that if you want to prune shrubs into square green boxes, why not just go out and build a plywood box and paint it green. (grin) Who am I to defy Neil Sperry and try to prune my hollies to a certain arbitrary size? So, mine were spaced as far apart as they needed to be in the first place because I had a good idea how big they'd get and they are fine now---roughly 12' tall and 5-6' apart. Those are the Burford hollies on the south side of the house. They shade the south porch from the summer sun, which is precisely what I wanted them to do. On the east side of the house, which is where the front part of the wraparound porch and the front door is located, I planted Dwarf Burford hollies in 2011 and they seem more like the size you'd want. I wanted a naturally shorter shrub there so we could sit on the porch and look out into the yard somewhat at least. Mine have really had to struggle through drought (i think I planted them in April of 2011 and it stopped raining soon thereafter and didn't rain for 90 days that summer) so they have grown relatively slowly for hollies, but now are about 5' tall and about 3-4' wide and they haven't reached their max size yet. I expect them to top out at around 8' tall and 4' wide, but time will tell. They are a loose informal hedge, which fits with our country Victorian house....all relaxed and sort of cottagey. It is your house, though, and they are your shrubs, so you should plant what pleases you and maintain them in the way that makes you happy. I'm a firm believer that a person's landscape plantings should reflect their tastes and anyone who doesn't like it can just go mind their own business. Well, except, I still have Neil Sperry's voice in my head and I agree with his comments about picking the right shrub to begin with so you don't have to prune your shrubs to an unnatural size or shape. That's just me, though. Some people love formally pruned hedges and they should have what they want. All those years of reading Neil's newspaper columns, his magazine and his books when we lived in Texas (as well as listening to his radio show and attending his Garden Shows) trained me to be a certain way as a younger gardener, and I have his voice in my head the way I have my dad's voice in my head, even though he is long gone. Scott, We have native possumhaw hollies and I love them, but they sucker like the devil and we've got one in the front yard we're going to take out. I hate to take it out because it is the bird feeder tree where we hang the feeders, but we'll just move them somewhere else. It just suckers endlessly and I'm tired of dealing with it. We'll leave the ones on the edges of the woods because it doesn't bother us if they form thickets, and the birds love the berries in late winter and early spring, though they won't touch them until all the other berries are gone. When the cedar waxwings are migrating through in spring, they get pretty much drunk on those fermented possumhaw berries. I feel like pretty much everything we plant has one poisonous part or another, so I plant what I want. If kids are around, I keep an eye on the kids, and teach them not to eat plant parts without checking with an adult first. No child has poisoned themselves on anything we grow yet, so I try not to worry about it. (And I grow several types of brugmansias and daturas, but the spiny seed balls are so hideous that I don't think I have to worry about kids getting hold of them and accessing the seeds.) When we were kids we ran all over the neighborhood and played and we all knew to go home immediately when our parents turned on the front porch light. None of us died or ever got seriously injured or ill. It was a wonderful childhood, and we had a woodland, a neighborhood pond, rocky cliffs to climb, etc. I appreciate that we got to be kids with no one hovering over us too much. Times have changed. And, just so you know, most poisonous plant parts have a bad taste, making it less likely kids will eat them. Or, they will cause you to throw up if you ingest them, so kids are not that likely to eat and swallow them. (However, some dogs will eat anything, so that is one thing to keep in mind if you have dogs.) It is a sad commentary on life in this century that kids cannot play tag. No wonder so many children have a weight issue. It is hard to stay physically fit if you cannot do anything because you might get hurt. That is just sad. Dawn...See MoreGardens in Bed
Comments (4)I do 3 raised beds 4' x 18'. Just the wife and I. Tomatoes went well with Big Beef , Black Krim and Thessaloniki productive and tasty. CP and Jetsetter were huge failures this year. Sunsugar ( 2) were so productive the neighbors were putting up No Trespassing signs with my name on it.LOL. Two 5 foot trellisis of Alibi cukes produced 48 qts of pickles before the wife told me to "please, no more". Onions did great 60# of Alisa Craige and Copra. Even though we have snow on the ground now , we still are pulling Tendersweet carrots for Thanksgiving and Sunday's dinner ( mulched with chopped leaves). Many,many quarts of pole beans, Fortex and Emerite. Japanese Beetles love the Fortex but left the Emerite virtually alone. Will try Emerite only next year just to see. Garlic, hardneck, 250 plants this year, 80 in the ground for next year (Music and German Xtra Hardy). Ordered all my seeds last week, flowers and veggies, and received half already. Of course I save seeds from all my OP veggies and petunias. For next spring: no cherry toms ( we cannot eat fast enough). Big Beef, Thessaloniki, Black Krim toms. Going to attempt winter sowing some Early Girls just for fun. Peppers will be Gypsy and Carmen. Onion = AC and Copra No winter squash or Brassicas, they take up too much room, and the SVBs are persistent here. Alibi and Diva cukes again. Dill reseeds itself ( boy, does it ever)....See More
irina_co
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years ago
Catherine
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years ago
DJ Curtiss
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agoemmsmommy
7 years agoDJ Curtiss
7 years agoJulie He
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoDJ Curtiss
7 years agoDJ Curtiss
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoJulie He
7 years agoemmsmommy
7 years agoJulia (1meanmop)
7 years agoDJ Curtiss
7 years agoJulie He
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agoKen Zone 5 SE Idaho
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agoYOLANDA
7 years agoirina_co
7 years ago
Leon Ash
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoDJ Curtiss
7 years ago
Katy
7 years agoDJ Curtiss
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agoYOLANDA
7 years agoDJ Curtiss
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agoKaty
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoRosie1949
7 years ago
joyfulsu
7 years agoRosie1949
7 years ago
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