Today has been a marvelous day of gardening, albeit, with some desperation attached.
Herbacious purple flowering things have taken over the patches of garden once occupied by ubiquitous mint plants and wild strawberries - lamenting the loss of the strawberries, I was most surprised by the loss of the mint plants, which I had never imagined could have ever been replaced. I did manage to find one last mint plant which I have been cutting and replanting out of hopes of bringing it back outdoors, when I noticed its leaves withering and dying. Upon closer inspection, I noticed many aphid nymphs sucking it dry - I have given them a loving send-off with lots of gin, and I hope a gin and mint cocktail is as good a way to die as any.
My forsythia appeared dead for most of this season, but I always keep around most dead potted plants for a few years just in case they were dormant or reproducing underground. Sure enough, the seemingly dead plant sprouted loads of beautiful yellow flowers and green leaves, so I have learned more about forsythias.
My nepenthes, pitcher plant, has been suffering immensely for a year now. I had nursed it into a massive, bountiful state, repotted it into its largest pot yet and things would have continued well had I not entrusted it to the care of an arrogant gardener whilst I was on holiday. I had told them three simple rules which would ensure its continued health: Use only the rainwater I had provided, do not move it from its current position unless it is being exposed to direct sunlight, and never ever put it outdoors or under the direct sun. I find out three days in that they had moved it outdoors under the direct English summer sun during a heatwave. I was absolutely furious and by the time they had rectified that situation, I returned home to find the damage was immense. All but one branch had been irreparably burnt, while the last branch had its apical meristem eaten and burnt, meaning that although the branch had survived with moderate burning, it would no longer grow any further and was a dead end. Slugs had eaten it, there were aphids on it, I had very little hope of reviving it. In the days following it I was awoken by the sound of scraping and found slugs had actually continued breeding inside my pot even after I had brought it indoors. Also a potato plant grew out of it, which is a story I covered in another thread.
Nevertheless, today as I added more soil to it and deliberated whether it was worth my daily care, I have had some hope. I began cutting off all the hopelessly damaged leaves - something I had deliberately avoided for as long as possible in order to not risk infection of the last branch, but the appearance of two new young branches and a fungal infection on all three of the last branches has prompted me to act lest I lose every leaf. I suspect there may be a slug still somewhere owing to the presence of mucus, but despite all my vigilance, checking every corner of the pot with my fingers, I am yet to find any. Today I found a helpful sign of a centipede scurrying about - if there are slugs left, the centipedes will eat them. Likewise with a toothbrush, tissue paper and a mix of water and washing liquid, I have had great success in removing all the dust, crust and fungus on the remaining "healthy" leaves, which I hope should keep the open cuts I made from getting infected. Of course the greatest sign of hope is that the whole plant is alive at all, my biggest fear when cutting the dying leaves off was that I'd find them dry, but the phloem and xylem are both working and wet with sap, meaning that despite its beleaguered looks, the plant is still soldiering on.
In orchid news, my orchids are doing wonderfully, flowering. Orchids are great flowers, impossible to kill really.
A lot of my cactuses can attest to the same. One cactus gift was supposed to be "temporary" (dying soon after, it's encased in sand that has been glued together so I can't repot them), but it's nearly two decades old and I've just repotted some of its cuttings (accidentally cut after it got caught in a window). Another bulbous cactus which was a gift to me when I was a mere babe needs repotting, but it too is alive, and although I've only seen it flower once I'm determined to reproduce it some time in the future. My aloe vera, another "temporary" gift to me, is still alive and beginning to overcrowd its little glass jar and will need repotting into an actual pot. Another cactus has been cut and is regrowing into a new cactus, although I bloody dislike this one as it has hooked barbs that pierce gloves and is nearly impossible to handle. And some flower I got for Christmas, another "temporary" gift, although I do not know what it is, was supposed to die after flowering. It flowered thrice and after the flowers died, immediately started growing new flowers!
I have also moved my white flowers to the garden, where I lost one to squirrels or birds. I have since moved a broken chinese pot over their bulbs, with the pot giving the impression of being buried most aesthetically into the soil, protecting the rest of the bulbs from being dug up. The holly plant is burgeoning still, the passion vines are infernally growing tall, the mosses bountiful and the sunflowers beginning to sprout after the last year's dead stalks were cleared. The palm trees are all right, a load of other flowers whose existence I had forgotten have sprouted everywhere, and even the bees are returning. Of the indoor passion vine I keep for my sister, that one has been growing two ft a month and I've had to wind it around itself to stop it from invading the ceiling. Of the bamboo I keep for my friend, I have stealthily extracted one bamboo and made a cutting of it, with the long term plan of growing myself some bamboo from it before they retrieve it. My venus flytrap has been doing very well, as after it seems I failed to grow any of its seedlings, I attempted to grow it by cutting its flower stalk off and growing it from there. Whilst trying to cut the flower stalk, I accidentally pulled the whole flytrap out - which is when I learned flytraps grow by rhizomes, as although I had planted one flytrap, I was now in possession of two flytraps, with a smaller one being left behind.
I left the smaller flytrap behind in its native pot, full of natural mosses and fungi from the low-quality soil I had put it in. I collected all the low-quality soil from various pots and when I exhausted that, from my neighbours, who were more than happy to relinquish their worst soil to my purposes. It's actually rather beautiful, seeing all the little mosses and fungi with the flytrap in the centre, giving the impression of a quiet boggy corner of a wet forest, with aesthetic rolling clumps of green and even patches of orange. The flytraps have not seemed to be bothered by the tiny little vegetation all around it, and so I am considering moving some of the soil culture to the pot where I have placed the mother-flytrap, which has been made with a relatively sterile cactus soil, and besides some rogue passion vines I am going to kill or give away, only has the mother-flytrap sitting happily within it. I'll probably move both flytraps outdoors in June and July, as the flytraps love being in the sun and rain, and rapidly devour the local fly population (which seems to have no experience dealing with the foreign flytrap).
My aquarium plants have been doing extraordinarily well. But then again, as long as you keep the water quality and lighting right, they'll grow immensely well all year round. The only hiccup has been the removal of many snails and fungus-coated leaves, but other than that, all is well. I do harbour ambitions of finding some corner of the world where I can increase my gardening ambitions, though I imagine I might have to wait decades and also move abroad to do so. Whilst talking to an American, I was immensely pleased at what I heard Americans have access to, and do, in regards to gardening. It is mainly the scale - Americans have access to all climates, and vast tracts of land, making it possible for American "gardens" to be the size of Belgium and be largely wilderness.
I am very much of the opinion that the best garden is the one which needs very little human interference, and the best garden is the wildest one you can get before it starts trying to kill you. I remember just last week I was joking with this American and a Malaysian gardener, when one of them talked about a wild plant that had showed up in their garden. It was "all plants are wild plants if you leave them alone long enough."
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Topic: Gardening thread! (Read 1583 times)