More annonas!

I thought these were weeds, and then I remembered a Cherimoya fruit that I bought at the grocery store last year. It was decent tasting, considering it came from the grocery store, and probably born halfway around the world somewhere. I read that most grocery store Cherimoyas are probably Fino de Jete from Chile.  I had no idea the seed was even viable. And after our heavy freeze, I completely forgot about it. Yet here they are in Mid June 2011. So I potted them up. I'll figure out what to do with all these seedlings later. I also finally potted a bunch of other tropical fruit seeds, like white sapote and more cherimoyas. I planted 9 seeds to a gallon pot. Guess what I used as my potting mix this year? Soil conditioner (Nature's Way I think)  from Lowes mixed w/perlite for fun.

Sugar Cane in the Garden, but not How you Think

Sugar Cane 4 ft $2.99 @ the supermarket. I was curious so I bought one.

This was a learning experience for me. I was determined to use all parts of the sugar cane for something, don't know what.

I pulled out my Breville Juicer, thinking I can get this thing juiced in no time.

Well first I had to peel the sugarcane. Then I realized I had to chop the sugarcane into 1 inch chunks. The problem with the juicer is that the fibers clogged up the little grater holes:

So every few seconds,I had to open up the machine, scrape out the fibers, turn the thing on, repeat. Did you notice the fibrous leftovers? It is so pretty! The texture kind of reminds me of coconut coir. I bet I can use this as some type of soil amendment. I will try rooting some cuttings in it. 

From that one stalk I juiced about 3 cups, which had to be watered down because it's very sweet. Poured over ice, it was very refreshing! In vietnam, vendors would often add tangerine peel to add depth to the flavor.

And here is my "harvest" of natural materials to be used in the garden. The tough internodes between the stalks, I will pot up and see if I can't get new sugarcane. (They look like bamboo in the garden). I can only imagine what fresh home grown sugarcane tastes like. I believe they are semi frost tender, but I"m willing to give it a try. The fibrous frass will be used to start seeds or root some cuttings. And the peeled bark?

This is what I ended doing with the bark. I love the green color.  I have seen wooden labels sold, so my reasoning is that the bark is more rot resistant than inner wood so this might work even better. Saved myself $5 for unattractive plastic labels, which I've been searching for.

It took me 45 minutes to get that one stalk juiced. Next time I will use my high speed blender instead (hopefully there IS a next time). My H commented that I could just pay $5 for a big cup of sugar cane drink at the store and save all that time and energy.....but there is a problem with simplifying every experience down to a dollar amount. These are the things I gained from this experience:

sugar cane juice $5

plant labels $5 

sugar cane fiber $??

new sugar cane starts: $???

hand eye coordination (from chopping!): priceless

the feeling of discovery: priceless

See, I came away with way more than just a cup of juice!

I bought these trees Today

Here is my much sought after Cogshall Mango. It is a condo mango, and quite prolific, or so I hear. $30 for 3 gal

Here is my Alano Sapodilla. It is a midget  compared to my other sapodilla. It's about 3 feet including the pot. I am about to repot it in this pic. When I slid it out of it's pot, the roots barely filled in the soil. I accidentally dropped it and a huge chunk of rootless soil fell off. I may have damaged the roots a little. It is ok, since I am placing this indoors as a houseplant, no water stress.  The soil is a mix of fine pine bark (topsoil), expanded shale ($6.99 on sale for 40lb @Cornelius), and perlite. There is no peat in this mix to bog it down (pun intended). 

And here it is in its final spot. It'll have west and northern window light.... if my H will stop closing the blinds all the time. I cleaned each water-spotted leaf with a paper towel dipped in olive oil. This is a trick I use to clean all houseplant leaves, they like it better than commercial leaf shiners.  Olive oil is good for cleaning water spots or salt crust on the pots too....makes them look shiny and new.

I also potted up a mango seed a few days ago:

Longan seedlings update

Here's that tiny longan plant, with newly developed leaves. It has grown fast. I now have 8 shoots coming up.

day 3 (from potting up)

week 1 (day 7). leaves on the largest seedling

week 1. I now have 14 seedling shoots, 4 more to go. 

 

9/24/10

Beginning of a longan forest!

I planted about 25 longan seeds. About 22 of them sprouted within a week. The temperature was around 95 F, and the area where i planted them was under the water hose, so the soil was more moist than other areas.

I don't know if Longans will grow true from seed, but even if they didn't, they will still be good. And with 25 trees, one of them is bound to be a great one. You can always graft a known variety, such as Kohala, on your other 24 trees if you don't like them. Or maybe I'll start a bonsai forest of Longan trees. So many ideas! Most likely though, I will end up giving these away.

I dug the seeds up after a week, and this is what they looked like:

I planted them in 3 inch pots on top of a self watering tray. (that's what I had, I wish I had bigger pots, notice the long taproot). I also used regular bagged topsoil from Lowe's. It's made mostly of pine bark and sand, I hope they do well. If they do, that would be all I use from now on. I had a bag of Pro-Mix, but I'll save that for smaller seedlings. Here is a tiny longan shoot, isn't it cute?:

I installed a bright 6400K T-5 lightbulb under my kitchen cabinet last year. All my plants thrive under these lights. I have more installed in my office on a book shelf. One pot holds a tumbling tom tomato cutting, and another is an avocado pit, which has started putting out a root, purely for decorative purposes, since I already recently bought two named Avocado trees. Cost for one T-5 bulb and fixture: $35 from saviolighting.com. Watering tray at gardeners.com $15. Pots @ Veseys.com $13. 1 quart watering can, plastic $2 at Walmart.

Bouquet of bay leaves, for cooking AND for keeping the kitchen bug free. I discovered by accident when I picked these branches and placed them in my kitchen for culinary as well as decorative purposes,  that the gnats virtually disappeared overnight. It's been a year and they still have not come back. Fresh or dried bay leaves work very well.

Also on my counter is a pot that I stick small garlic cloves into, the ones too small to even bother chopping. Notice the small shoot coming from one of the bulbs! Garlic shoots can be eaten raw in salads.