I happily admit to being a fair-weather gardener. If it’s cold, no chance. If it’s raining, I’d rather not, thanks.
From spring to late summer I’m happy to be involved in the garden, but there’s been an awful lot of rain this summer in the UK so I’ve not been so interested.
Which has left the green-fingered side of my nature pretty unimpressed. But I’ve found a way round it.
Seedling Saturday (or this week anyway, Sunday) is to document my indoor growing projects. I have three mini hydroponics setups, but two of them I only use for the lights as the pumps run for 30 minutes per hour versus the AeroGarden’s 5 or so, and they’re not particularly quiet.
I’m still mulling over what to try growing. I tried epiphyllums from seed and they’re all doing rather well. Not big enough to flower yet, but that takes a few years so I’m in no hurry with them. But I want something that’ll grow more quickly.
My options are:
Cacti
Cacti / succulent mix
Sedums
Sempervivums
Lewisias
Or really I can do any combination thereof. However I like the idea of growing little plants that can be kept indoors or outdoors as part of a fairy garden.
I’ve bought some bits and pieces in Wilko’s sale to help get me going, now I just need to mix up my compost blend. I have all-purpose compost, grit, and perlite. And it’ll need to be sterilised too, if it’s coming indoors. We don’t want any unwelcome visitors! Having previously had an infestation of fungus gnats we don’t want them back. Getting rid of them was hard enough, and took weeks.
To start with, I’ve just mixed the compost with grit and have split some epiphyllum cuttings I bought inexpensively a few weeks back. They’ve been kept well-watered and had some sunshine (when we’ve had some) and they’ve started to put on new growth. Now they’ve got their own little modules they can get a bit more established.
Hopefully they’ll settle in and the snails will leave them alone!
More soon…