Walter the Gardening Cat makes a Terririum

 This is Walter... and oh, is he bored. Nothing to do, and his plant room maintenance slave (me) is just not up to anything fun.

 He's SO BORED that even stretching out in the middle of everything and politely throwing things on the floor is no fun.

What to do? What to doooo????

 A lightbulb goes on! There are terrariums for the upcoming show to make. Certainly a gardening cat can put together a little something that will win prizes and ribbons (which are good to play with and shred) and this will certainly alleviate the boredom!

 If I only had a video camera... this would be so much more funny.

After each time I reached into the terrarium to pull out something or to arrange something, Walter the Gardening Cat politely took his turn and helped.

First he would look inside very carefully before inserting a paw.

 The paw would go in and out would come just a little something like when I would bring out my hand.

There would be more looking....

 And there would be another paw going in to see what should be arranged much more attractively.

Sometimes we would recline to get a better angle on things,

 And sometimes we would have to be sitting up so we could reach better.

 There was a lot of looking in between to contemplate what was looking good and looking like it needed to be removed.

 Finally, after much consideration and careful planning it was decided that the violet in the terrarium was just not looking good.

Some of the leaves were spotted and not up to the standards of the discerning gardening cat.

 You will note that out came a violet leaf. Ever so carefully was it removed and even more carefully was each bit inspected.

A very new development has come upon the scene. Walter the Gardening Cat might have a gardening helper. He's not too keen on the idea right here, but I would imagine over time that he will be glad to show another apprentice how to be most helpful and efficient in the arts of gardening and growing under artificial lighting. The "plant room maintenance slave" (me) is not sure about this decision either.  *sigh

But... the final project did turn out okie dokie, and Walter is very proud of the ribbon he gets to shred. He thinks that ribbons are really fun... especially if they have extra little strings on them......

Sinningia speciosa, not just for the geriatric anymore!

 Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates that sort of thing, and Happy Day to those that don't.

Here is a nice 'surprise' Sinningia speciosa. A bit of a story here... our chapter discovered to our dismay that no one besides a tried and true plant geek knows what a "gesneriad" is. We even got the comments, and no joke here, that it must be for the elderly... equating gesneriad with geriatric.  So, to improve our "cool factor" we were thinking up how to sound much more awesome than something for only the aged when we advertised for shows and events etc.

We found ourselves going back to the days when the national organization was the Gloxinia AND Gesneriad Society, using the Gloxinia as a recognizable flower most people knew. So here's our plot... which no one in the club knows about just yet, but they WILL!

We're going to get all our members to grow a couple of Gloxinias so that when we get a chance to show off our stuff we can advertise that there will be LOTS of Gloxinias and "rare gesneriads" there to marvel at! We'll see how that flies... lol.

Anyway, when at the Linder's Garden Center there were nice healthy looking 'Gloxinias' there just waiting to go home with someone that would think that they were special. A fellow member and I got a couple that weren't in flower, just because that would mean it would be a surprise when they opened and showed off their color! It really doesn't matter what color a Gloxie is, they are all really cool! So, here is MY Easter colored Gloxina which opened just in time to show off it's pretty purple colors. Now if I can figure out how to pollinate something a bit smaller with this one, we might have another experiment in the works.

Pollen Tube??

This is a photo of a pistil from an Alsobia 'Chiapas' that I put some pollen on. I wasn't expecting to see anything all that exciting but if you look slightly to the right of center on the picture the pistil shows a circular "hole". I was wondering if I found something interesting or not. When appropriate pollen gets on a pistil all sorts of cool things happen (such as the formation of pollen tubes), but I'm not sure IF you can see a pollen tube or not, and below the fine folks at Wikipedia tell us about pollen tubes, but they don't say if they are visible. I wonder.....?????


"Once a pollen grain settles on a compatible pistil, it germinates in response to a sugary fluid secreted by the mature stigma. Lipids at the surface of the stigma stimulate pollen tube growth for compatible pollen. Plants that are self-sterile inhibit the pollen grains from their own flowers from growing pollen tubes. The presence of multiple grains of pollen has been observed to stimulate quicker pollen tube growth in some plants. The vegetative cell then produces the pollen tube, a tubular protrusion from the pollen grain, which carries the sperm cells within its cytoplasm. This tube is the transportation medium of the male gamete to reach the egg cell.
The germinated pollen tube must then drill its way through the nutrient-rich style and curl to the bottom of the ovary to reach the ovule. Once the pollen tube successfully attains an ovule, it delivers the two sperm cells with a burst. One of them fertilizes the female gamete (the egg cell) to form an embryo, which will become the future plant. And the other one fuses with both polar nuclei of the central cell to form the endosperm, which serves as the embryo's food supply. The endosperm is rich in starch, proteins and oils and is a major source of human food (e.g., wheat, barley, rye, oats, corn). Finally, the ovary will develop into a fruit and the ovules will develop into seeds."

"Sciencing" or The SEEDLINGS are Germinating!!!

 YAY! The seedlings are starting to come up! You will have noticed in a post about three weeks back that we planted all sorts of gesneriad seeds.

Even the seedlings have hair!

 They were/are mighty tiny. It takes a magnifier to see them amongst the dusting of sphagnum moss on the soil surface.

It's unfortunate that the only photo I had to demonstrate the size is over exposed, but here's the head of a pin to show you about how large our baby gesneriads are. They come from tiny seed and they don't disappoint!

Comments???

Sinningia speciosa

 Sometimes rescuing a plant from the Big Box store is worth the effort. This plant wasn't showing any bloom when I bought it, but I was hoping it would be lovely, (I've never met a Gloxinia that wasn't lovely).

It surprised me in many ways.

Not only was it really cool and spotty, like the first photo, but some of the flowers were variable! This one is right next to the spotted one as you can see, and it has much less coloration.

I just love the spots. You can see the connected stamen down in the flower's tube along with the pistil too.

I encourage plant rescue! The life you save may bring you lots of good photo ops.

Gerten's Plant Society Day

I hadn't really noticed till I was setting this up, but it does have some color... you can't say it lacks color!

 We've got color too... posters of different genera and where they come from, business cards and plants and we were set!

We even have friendly, knowledgeable staff. What more can anyone want?

Super Drainage Idea? What Do You Think?

 One of the local hardware stores is closing to remodel and I got these two nifty little PVC pipe pieces for $.35. I was thinking that it would make an easy way to make the center of my pot easy to fill with what ever amendments I'd like to add.

 Really just putting in a smaller Dixie cup does about the same thing (double potting) but this seemed like it could work even slicker. And, since I got the cute little pipe segment with a cover, why not try it out?

 I filled the area around the pipe with some regular potting mix.










I patted down the soil a bit.

I took off the cover, leaving a hole to fill with whatever I thought I wanted to experiment with.

 Grabbed some giant perlite...

filled the hole, and then eased the pipe up and filled it in a little more.











Had my work inspected.... This is very important!

 This is what it looked like, a nice pot with a core of super perlite.

I watered the entire pot of soil and perlite and let the excess moisture drain off.

 Had the inspector inspect things again.... (so many inspections!)

 Wouldn't tubers, which are prone to rot if kept too moist (especially when dormant) or plants that require excellent drainage like this set up? Of course you would have to have a few roots started so that they settle into the surrounding soil, but for example purposes this photo shows what I'm trying to get across.

I find that unless you are a very attentive grower, sometimes things don't always get watered at the optimum moments. Plants in an extremely light mix sometimes get too dry very quickly. This damages the root hair and although the plant might not die, it's not going to perform at it's optimum best either.

Some plants that produce tubers or rhizomes like a moist soil for growth, but you have to pay attention to their needs and see that they don't stay too wet, otherwise tubers rot.

What would a set up like this likely do? This might keep the plant extremely well drained but allow the roots to take up all the moisture they require from a soil mix that might otherwise be considered "heavy" for what you're planting.

So??? Will this work??? Have you tried it on other things??? I'd love to start a discussion...... Comments?????