Watering can

It's my coffee carafe :)

Disappearing act

My bell pepper plants are growing very quickly!





This morning when I went out to take a look, I found this interesting little triplet in one of the pots.





I went back out there this afternoon, and they were gone! At least, I thought they'd disappeared.





Turns out they just shriveled up over the course of the day.. weird, huh?

ABC Wednesday: O is for...

O is for Basil.. no, really!


Oops, I am so very late for ABC Wednesday - it's nearly Friday here now! Can I get this posted before the stroke of midnight?

Yesterday, I inadvertently learned my basil plant's scientific name while browsing websites on how to care for it: it's Ocimum basilicum :)

This morning when I opened my blinds, they managed to grab my Ocimum by its leaves and pull it straight up out of its jar! I have it in a jar of water to sprout some roots, which it is doing beautifully. It is a cutting from Central Market, that grocery store of recent Picture Each Day fame.




More ABCs at ABC Wednesday!

Big kids

Well, tonight I put the bell peppers in their big-kid pots! Should I still call them 'seedlings'? I guess I could - they are still pretty tiny. I hope I did the right thing by only putting one plant in each pot. I know that in the end there will only be room for one in each pot, and I think that now they're stable enough to assume that each plant is going to make it. But I don't know much about gardening. Especially container gardening. The pots, by the way, are Home Depot paint buckets.. because I think a $3 bucket with holes punched in the bottom is prettier than a $25 planter :P

I'm keeping just two of the plants. This is mainly due to the amount of real estate on my balcony. The other ten plants already have a good home waiting for them, in the backyard of one of my coworkers. Or possibly the backyards of two of my coworkers; I'm not sure. But they live next-door to each other and are planting their gardens back-to-back, so the peppers will still be one big happy family ;)

The culling of the herd & My neighborly bane

The baby peppers had had their true leaves for several days and were getting bigger and bigger, so on Sunday I finally cut back all but one on each little peat pellet. I was sad to have this little pile of dead seedlings afterwards :( I didn't post the picture on Sunday because I wanted to use Photomatix on it, which I finally did tonight. I have been pretty lazy about photos and the blog this week in general. Sorry about that, loyal readers.

There are some birds working on a nest in this little drain opening (is that what it is?) outside my apartment. This morning I heard them wiggling in and out of it every minute or so, so I went outside to try to sneak a picture of Mama Bird going inside. After I'd been outside for about 30 seconds and snapped this practice shot, Mr Bangs-Around-All-The- Time-Since-Moving-In-A-Few-Days-Ago Upstairs-Neighbor came outside and stood at his balcony rail. And there I was, pointing my camera in his direction while sneakily hiding halfway behind a brick wall. Well, it was too early in the morning to try to explain myself. Plus, I am a little afraid that if I ever open my mouth to say anything to him, the words "Why are you so LOUD all the time?" might fall out before I can stop them. Possibly with some slightly more colorful language inserted. So I just ducked behind the wall and went back inside to get ready for my day. Hopefully I'll catch Mama Bird another day.

ABC Wednesday: L is for...

L is for Lowe's


Okay, so maybe not the most exciting 'L' there is, but I did go there this evening and peruse their selection of desk lamps. (No, I didn't manage to go before work, despite what I said yesterday.)





Yep, that lava lamp in the back and the funky red guy in front were hanging around in the desk lamp section. Not exactly your traditional desk lamps, but to each his own.

But what I'd really gone to buy (finally!) was a Grow Light





which I've propped on the legs of a couple chairs over my little seedlings :)





For many more (probably much more brilliant!) 'L' posts, head on over to mrs nesbitt's ABC Wednesday!

Seedling update

They are getting tall!

Their leaves are unfortunately a bit splotchy. I suspect that it's because my fluorescents do not have a wide enough spectrum, just as RuneE warned me might be the case. Luckily-! the hardware store opens at 6 in the morning, so all I have to do is get up very early and go buy a grow light before work. Mom, stop laughing. I can get up early if I have to...... if I have to...

Scratch that last post.

I have come up with a less precarious solution ;)

My plants need light..

I have read that seedlings started indoors should be kept very close to fluorescent lighting to keep from getting spindly. I figured I'd try just using my kitchen fluorescent lighting, but to get the plants as close as possible to the light, I needed something to prop between the cabinets. I had just gotten in my car to drive to Lowe's for a 2x4 when I noticed my canoe paddles in the corner of the garage. And I figured, what the hell? I think I may need to put something on top of the paddles to get the plants even higher.

We'll see how this works out..

The babies emerge!

Isn't it funny how things seem to show up sometimes in a place you're sure you checked a hundred times already? Today I found my key card for my apartment complex's walking gate in a stack of papers that I leafed through on multiple occasions over the past few days, looking for that very card.

Also today, these pepper seedlings appeared, in the exact place that I've looked for them for days! Eerie ;)

Basil

This basil cutting came with my dish at a Vietnamese restaurant. I just put it in a glass in the window and have ignored it except to pull off some occasional leaves to eat, and it's been thriving.