Weeding fest 2, round 1 ...

After 5:00 pm R and I walked from the lab to our GHGP garden plot. We started weeding a little before 6:00 pm, and M joined us shortly after that.


GHGP plot before Friday weeding

While we were there, we saw several other people working their plots. We exchanged hellos, but otherwise mainly concentrated on the fatiguing task of weeding.


Friday GHGP plot after weeding, center, long pic

First we soaked the area, then we used our shovels to dig up weed roots. There were ragweeds, bermuda grass, crab grass, and other numerous weeds we couldn't identity.


At end of friday weeding, too dark pic of plot

The sun was starting its descent so I couldn't get any good pics of our plot after ou Friday weeding fest. We've probably done a little less than another 1/3 of the plot.


At end of friday weeding, side detail, blurry

R and M posed with their trusty shovels. By this time, all of us were tired and dirty, despite a little less than 1.5 hours of weeding.


R and M posing with their shovels, those yokels

Piled up high were our weed heaps. It took us two trips with the wheelbarrel to toss the weeds in the area outside the GHGP set aside for tossing this garbage.


Weed piles to be tossed

Lastly, I leave you with the leftover weeding that awaits us tomorrow. R and I both hope that we'll finish the main weeding task tomorrow.


Weeding work to look forward to tomorrow

Houseplants on my windowsill, progress update.

Here are the plants I have upon my windowsill. The plants in the bags are cuttings taken from L's fragrant plants.


Plants on windowsill

The spider plants I took as pups from E's mother plant have long since recovered from their transplanting ordeal on August 12, 2005. They are chlorophytum comosum var vittatum, where the white stripes are along the outer edge of the leaf. Before they were fading, but now they have perked up and gotten darker.


Spider plants as pups from E's mother plant, var vittatum

Next up are the two kinds of spider pups from R's mother's plants. One of the variegatum spider pups isn't doing so well, but I'm not going to toss it till it completely wilts away.


Spider plants R's mother's plants

The gardenia cuttings in 1 cup are doing fine (2 cuttings), while the ones in another cup (3 cuttings) are developing dead dark brown patches on the leaves. I guess I'll have to toss these guys.


Gardenia cuttings in bag

My two jasmine sambac cuttings are doing okay, although one is still bent over. I know I should have removed the flower buds on the larger cutting so that it could concentrate its energy on its roots, but I just wanted to see if the flowers would open while the cutting was trying to root.


Jasmine sambac cuttings in bag

Apparently the blossoms could open. After 1 week from taking the jasmine sambac (single petal variety) from a plant growing out on the sidewalk, one flower bud has opened.


Jasmine sambac cuttings, no bag, facing bloom

Well, I think I'll be removing the other flower buds since my curiousity has been satisfied. I really want the jasmine cuttings to develop good roots. Then maybe I'll give one M.


Jasmine sambac cuttings, no bag, alternate view

One week has passed since I started trying to root the gardenia and jasmine cuttings, so hopefully only 3 more weeks remain.

L's Garden Checkpoint 6, 10 weeks later, part 2

This morning I noticed a few of the flowers on L's 含羞草, "sensitive plant," or mimosa pudica had been pollinated and were setting seeds.


含羞草 hanxiucao flower and seed pods

Note the little green cells with dark centers (seeds). Only 3 fluffy thistle-like flowers had developed these seed pods.


含羞草 closeup of hanxiucao seed pods

Before I left for UCSB, I took 4-5 gardenia cuttings from various bushes and stuck them in potting soil. Later I stuck plastic baggies over them to up the humidity.


Gardenia Jasminoides 'Mystery" Cuttings, under plastic

While out for my morning constitutional, I noticed a huge jasmine sambac plant growing out on the sidewalk. So I took 2 cuttings from the plant, which looked to be one of the cheaper single-petaled varieties.


茉莉花，Jasminum Sambac cuttings under plastic

Hopefully the cuttings will root within the next month. Next up is L's M. alba, which she potted into a huge 18+ gallon pot since she was afraid its roots would hurt the nearby cement walkway. It is exhibiting new leaf growth, which is reassuring as M. alba dislikes having its roots disturbed.


白玉蘭，yulan new leaf growth

The peppers in the glass plate below were all harvested from L's pepper plant. None of us know what kind the longer red pepper is, but the smaller red ones might be a type of bird pepper called (chil)tepin.


Homegrown peppers

Early this morning I heard cats meowing. Then when I got up to check on L's garden, I saw a little mom cat and 2 babies all snuggled up together for warmth on the neighbor's porch. I guess they chose the neighbor's porch since they don't have any plants or pots obstructing the place.


Stray cats cuddling for warmth on neighbor's porch: mom cat and 2 babies

Anyway I tried to take a closer picture of the 3 cats, but as soon as I took one step closer, the mom cat ran away, followed by one of the babies. They had left behind the smallest one, whom you can see below, who eventually got up to follow its family.


Stray cats disturbed

L said she's seen them around before and she doesn't believe anyone is raising them. Why the mom cat chose our housing complex to live around we have no idea.

L's Garden Checkpoint 6, 10 weeks later --

It's now 10 weeks since I started to informally chronicle L's garden progress. Mostly, the pictures are very boring except for 1 or 2 tomato pics.

First up is the plumeria we started from an unrooted cutting, growing in front of E's house. Three weeks ago it only had 4 leaves.


Plumeria with new leaf grown in

L's Arabian jasmine continues to grow well. I'll wait till early next spring to take a cutting and root it. I think her jasmine is one of the double- or triple-petaled kinds.


Perkier jasminum sambac

I've ripped out several instances of the unknown plant growing in the same pot as the aglaia odorata or Chinese rice/perfume plant, but another one inevitably rears its ugly head again.


米子蘭, Aglaia odorata with the same unknown plant growing in

L's gardenia plants, about 7 in total, are all doing well, but one of her Gardenia jasminoides/augusta 'Mystery' plants is doing particularly well. It was busting out all over the place with flower buds and opened flowers.


栀子花, Gardenia jasminoides 'Mystery' blossom

I'm not a good photographer, but I still try to take pictures of interest.


栀子花, Gardenia jasminoides 'Mystery', blossom with droplets

All of L's container tomato plants are dying off dramatically, but some tomatoes are still hanging on. I finally was able to pick 2 black seaman tomatoes from one of her unhealthier plants.


Black Seaman tomato plant

They were fairly small, smaller than typical, but that's b/c L hadn't been feeding them well and they were stuck in a 7 gallon nursery container. I'd say they were about 1.75" to 2.5" in diameter, the size of 4-6 of our Sweet Million cherry tomatoes.


Black Seaman tomatoes

Here's the Italian Principe Borghese tomato plant. Most of its 70+ fruit have already been harvest. Probably in a few weeks L and I will rip it out and junk it.


Principe Borghese tomato plant

L's Omar's Lebanese tomato plant looks relatively healthy, even if most of the lower growth had withered and been removed. Its tomatoes have been larger than the other tomatoes, but not as large as they should be.


Omar's Lebanese tomato plant

The French Carmello plant has several green tomatoes waiting to ripen. The foliage looks somewhat healthier than the rest, like the Omar's Lebanese plant.


Carmello tomato plant

Actually the hybrid cherry tomato plant, Sweet Millions, is still going on strong. The foliage has probably held up the best, even though several of the branches are growing far out of the tomato cage.


Sweet Millions tomato plant

L is pretty unobservant. I kept asking her if any flowers or fruit had developed on her Ping Tung Long Eggplant. She said no.


Pingtung Eggplant plant

But, lo and behold, when I checked them out I saw one plant with 6-8 fruit. There weren't any flowers, but the flower petals had already dropped and tiny green pea-sized fruit were growing in.


Pingtung Eggplant developing fruits

I'm not sure if there will be enough sunny days left for the eggplant to mature, but I certainly am hoping so.


Pingtung Eggplant, young fruit appearing

L's Sweet Genovese Basil plants are growing woody. These past 3 weeks she has not been harvesting leaves, so the stems and leaves have been getting hard. I noticed flower clusters developing, so I cut off the stems with flowers on them, and also harvest a bunch of the leaves. I took a cutting to have it root on L's kitchen windowsill so she'd have a new plant to replace her old, tough one.


Sweet Genovese Basil, larger woodier plant

Here's a picture of the harvested tomatoes and tiny peppers that I think are chiltepin peppers. Not all the tomatoes shown below are ripe yet, but I picked those who had started to blush so they could ripen indoors safely away from insects and birds. There were omar's lebanese, black seaman, principe borghese, and sweet millions tomatoes.

I tried the black seaman tomatoes, and they were the best tasting out of all the ripened tomatoes from L's container garden. I told L that even though she wasn't wild about the tomatoes we started late this year, she should at least grow 1 black tomato.


Picked tomatoes and peppers: sweet millions, principe borghese, black seaman, carmello

Here's the harvested Sweet Genovese Basil. L's mother washed the leaves, then left them out to dry a bit in the kitchen before freezing.

I tried the leaves and felt they tasted better cooked or with other ingredients; they didn't really taste good by themselves or in a plain leafy salad.


Picked basil

The other plumeria we rooted from cuttings was also showing some progress, albeit at a slower rate than the others.


Backyard plumeria, with new leaves

The loquat tree I ordered bareroot via ebay has since dropped all its original dead or drying leaves so that only the healthy foliage grown after we planted it in the ground was showing.


Backyard loquat tree, all old growth gone

Here are boring pictures of the plants lining E's patio. First up are the plants to the left.


E's plot, facing patio, left

Next up are the plants to the right. L's strawberry guava tree is the small tree on the right.


E's plot, facing patio, right

And below is a bad picture of one of the handful of strawberry guava fruits growing in. They came late this year due to transplant shock, and we're not sure if there will be enough time for the fruit to mature in time before the rain and relative gloom rolls in.


Strawberry guava fruit

E's front plots look much the same as ever, although the gardenia bushes are really growing happily. The leftmost gardenia plant is a Veitchii, but the other two are Gardenia 'Mystery' plants.


E's front plot, gardenia bushes in the middle

L thinks one of the over-the-cement-wall neighbor's morning glories seeded itself in the narrow plot lining E's walkway. She taped it up using foam tape.


Volunteer morning glory, taped up

The only thing the developer's gardeners did right, in my opinion, was plant several osthmanthus bushes before May 2005. They are right now all sweetly fragrant. I'm not sure what type of osthmanthus, or 桂花 as these fragrant shrubs, native to China, are also called.


桂花, Osthmanthus flowers

Are these wild morning glories?

During another of my morning constitutionals, I spied some weedy looking plants with white flowers that appeared to be morning glories.


Wild morning glory growing on UCSB campus near bioswales?

R and I saw them earlier at our GHGP plot. The ones pictured here were growing by bioswales and vernal pool reconstructions near the UCSB Lagoon. Can anyone give me a definitive answer as to whether they are morning glories?

Update: Now we know these are field bindweed, a rather evil and tenacious morning glory cousin.


Side view of ?native morning glory?

And finally, here's a picture of the last repotted coleus. I still need to repot the Wandering Jew and Pothos, but that's for another day.


Last coleus, repotted