Strawberries are doing fine

Remember the most cosmopolitan strawberries in the world from few posts back?

They looked rather sad on the picture then, all dry and tired by the journey.

Here's little update to prove they are doing great.

So far I saw only two flowers between four plants, but it's still early in the year and I'm confident I'll see more.

Anyway I'm really proud of them because they've been bravely surviving crappy Irish weather.

It's funny to think what a luxury wild strawberries have become.  I didn't see them on the market even once during my five years in Ireland, and I know of only one place where they grow - all on private land so I can't really go for a berry-picking trip. 

When I was a child, I would just go to a nearby forest and come back with a full basket. 

Ah well.  Now I'll have my own forest on the balcony.  Tiny, but mine.

Cemetery mint

Oooh, I just love stealing plants from the wild.  I also love mint tea, and that's why the hero of today's post found its way to my garden.

I went for a trip few weeks ago, you know the type, jump into your car and drive wherever you feel like, stopping in all the places that catch your attention for any reason.

I happened to be passing some deserted village with a cemetery nearby, when I saw this huge field of wild growing mint, right next to the cemetery fence.  I wouldn't be myself if I didn't grab a bunch or two straight away.

Forget any morbid connotations, the plant grows like insane!  It's already twice the size of that on the picture.  And incidentally - forget (and forgive!) my foot stuck in there.  Simply imagine it's not there, ok? ;)

So yeah, soon I'll be enjoying fresh mint tea which is worth recommending as probably the best drink in the world.

Also, I have this tiny, personal, unofficial announcement to make - mint stolen from cemetery grows best. 

C'est la vie.

Oh, and a brand new lens, straight off the press - Armageddon that didn't happen - check it out for a laugh or two.

My carnivorous love

Right.  I'm not exactly your average Wednesday Adams type, but she and I have one thing in common - a total love for carnivorous plants. 

Can you think of a more lively plant than a sundew?  A plant that actually hunts!  It lures the victim, it immobilises it, it kills and consumes.  Acts you would associate more with a cheetah than a tiny leafy creature, yet here it is - the hunter of the botanical world. 

Somehow, they even look predatory.

And so, so beautiful. 

Did you know that sundew plant is actually very tiny?  A cluster of few plants would easily fit into a palm of your hand.  To see them in the wild for the very first time, I had to get lost in a bog, trip over and fall to my knees - and there it was, inches from my face, tiny, amazing and beatiful. 

It's actually pretty common around Connemara bogs.  Go for a walk on the bogs and you're pretty likely to find it.  I've searched the net through and through to see if it is a protected plant here in Ireland but no, it doesn't show on any protected species list.  Apparently, bluebells are far more endangered than sundews. 

So, if you love me, don't buy me roses.  Buy me a Venus flytrap, which is the next position on my dreamed-of plants list. 

Bean surprise

I do love being surprised in this way.

See my tiny, lonely string bean plant above?

I seem to be jinxed when it comes to growing beans.  Funny, it's supposed to be an easiest plant in the world to grow, even schoolchildren can do it, FFS! I can't.  Or at least, have a misfortune after misfortune when I attempt to. 

I've sown six beans altogether, of which only a single plant sprouted.  After few weeks of indoor growing I moved it to the balcony, when it was promptly battered by stormy weather - it lost nearly half of its leaves, which were never particularly plentiful anyway.

After this first disaster it seemed to be doing all right-ish, growing very slowly, with leaves turning rather yellow, but growing.  It even developed few flowers.

I never really hoped that the flowers would turn into anything, it's a bit high for bees and I didn't bother to artificially fertilise few flowers on a single plant.  It got stormy again, so I stayed away from my balcony and pretty much forgot all about the bean plant.

I checked it after a few days and - surprise, surprise! - it had few pods developed and growing!

It looks like I'm going to have a superabundant harvest of five bean pods pretty soon.

Well, if I throw it into a soup, I may even be able to see it when I'm eating it!

OK, I know that five pods is pitiful, but tiny harvest is better than no harvest.  I might even try my luck and sow some more beans?

In an ex-raspberry bucket, perhaps?

Green growing

Is there a limit to what you can use as a planting pot? 

Behold my latest experiment - an egg carton full of growing radishes.  Looks allright, doesn't it?

It seems to be my tiny obsession these days, you know, turning contents of my rubbish bag into containers.  I even wrote a full size article about it - How to turn your garbage into a garden? - check it out if you have a second to spare.  You'll find many more funky ideas there.

But anyway, back to the egg carton.  So far it's working, but as I'm suffering from an attack of honesty, let me share some of my radish worries.  So -

THINGS YOU HAVE TO WATCH OUT FOR WHEN GROWING PLANTS IN AN EGG CONTAINER:

1.  The amount of soil per each plant is tiny.  Tiny, tiny, tiny.  I'm not so sure if it contains enough nutrients for the plant to grow full size.  But plants tend to have an amazing will to live, so fingers crossed, it may yet work.

2. It dries up fast as hell.  You need to be REALLY careful with your watering schedule, as omitting a single day may result in a dead plant. 


Apart from those, there seem to be no further obstacles to the project, but I'll keep you updated if something pops up.

A sad story of a raspberry bush

Can I stress the importance of drainage holes in your containers AGAIN??

This is one lesson I've learned in a very painful way, as I bet you can imagine looking at the sorry state of my raspberry bush these days.  Just to remind you - THIS is how it used to look like: 

The saddest bit is the fact, that it had already formed clusters of buds before it died.  I had already imagined my plentiful harvest, and then - boom.  The plant is gone.

It may not be so deadly in smaller containers, I'm not sure, but lack of drainage holes in a bucket proved to be deadly.  After a few big rains, I had a tiny lake under the bush: 

And this is AFTER the excess water has been poured out.

At the beginning, the plant seemed to survive it fine.  I hoped the moisture would simply evaporate and no harm done.  I even brought it indoors to make sure she doesn't get any more wet stuff.

But for some reason the soil didn't want to dry up.  It stayed moist for weeks, becoming sticky and sort of compacted as well.  I guess the roots must have rotten slowly in this period and eventually the bush died. 

I still have a tiny sparkle of hope that it will grow back, but if I'm to be realistic...  Well.  No home grown raspberries for me.

So do make sure your containers have drainage holes, OK?  Promise?