Time to plant

For every season, turn turn turn.

The daily temperatures may not really show it yet, but it's getting a bit cooler. Any week now we'll be under 90 degrees for the high! Ooo! Ooo!

Who hasn't put an avocado seed into water and watched it sprout roots? Amazingly, the wife, being brought up in deep South Texas and having avocado trees in her back yard (which produced humongous avocadoes!) had put many an avocado seed into water to watch it sprout.

The amazing part is that she had never seen the leaves sprout from the top. She gave up every time before the leaves began to sprout. Odd. This time around, we had two avocado seeds in water. When one had a long root, and no leaves up top yet, we planted it in soil in a container on the roof.

This picture was taken today, and it's doing quite nicely.


The second seed is still in water, and we are waiting for the leaves to sprout up top before planting it. We can see them inside the seed, almost coming out, so we will be planting it soon. It's kind of a gardening experiment. Which one will do better? The one planted before the leaves sprouted, or the one planted AFTER the leaves sprouted?

Hey, you get your thrills where you can.

We finally bit the bullet today and pulled up several pots with unproductive plants. After washing them out with detergent and scrubbing them clean, we re-planted several things.

These pictures are how the mature plants are supposed to look...

Here's the "Little Gem" lettuce, a smallish head lettuce....we're planting from seed, using Baker Creek Heirloom seeds. Haven't had a lot of success with Baker Creek so far...


Here's the "Dark Lollo Rosa" lettuce. It's also a Baker Creek seed.


The third type of lettuce we planted today is "Sunset," also from Baker Creek...yes, that's two types of red lettuce.


We're taking our first shot at growing broccoli. Another selection from Baker Creek "Waltham 29." What? Did you forget what broccoli looks like? Well, here....


In one pot, we put four different kinds of Swiss Chard: Bright Lights (Park Seed) and Canary Yellow, Flamingo Pink, and Oriole Orange, all from Baker Creek. That should be a colorful pot.


Our first attempt at endive, called "De Louviers" also from Baker Creek....


Another pot mixed with winter purslane (first-Gourmet Seed) and a Burpee Seed (second) "mesclun mix." Both of these have produced well for us in the past.



For right now, all the new pots sorta look like this....this is just some of them, bunched....


We planted three Baker Creek tomato plants back on 5/31/09, and to date, all three have produced a lot of foliage and flowers, but a grand total of only one teeny tiny tomato. Looks like another case of incomplete pollination. Where have all the bees gone?!

So we broke down and bought two tomato seedlings recently at Houston Garden Center.

First is a Brandywine...


and the other is a Bradley.


In another couple of weeks, we'll put in some more lettuce, kale, pak choi, green beans, peas, and spinach. Maybe. Depends on many things...

Until then, check out the gorgeous asters we picked up recently....


Happy Gardening, though the world be crashing down around our hearts.