It has been patchy cloudy most of the day and app says a 50% chance of rain tomorrow, possible drizzles tonight. So what does any gardener do just before it rains? Plant seeds! (and maybe water a little bit). Puffy winter clouds ahead of the rain tomorrow.
But first, flowers!
Only took a good handful of the younger flowers since I brought my clippers with me for a different reason. Some of the older flowers are all brown and have formed a seedhead, will be collecting those soon enough.
About a year or so ago I posted about a mulberry that was growing under the trumpet flower right at the base of the trunk. Well I cut it down then and now, it's back up to even taller because the gardeners don't bother looking at anything other than the lawn they're mowing or shrubs they're trimming. So I got my pruners and chopped it back. You can see by the main trunk it was at least 3/4 inch big and where I cut it. It grew that new branch where the outer layer had been torn looks like. I'm sure it'll be back but there's no way of digging it out. This was close to 6 feet tall.
Soooo, about seeds... remember that cilantro/coriander I just threw on the ground, knowing full well it would likely go to seed? Yup, it's coming up! I pulled a few but realized that would be silly to just pull it up because it's not in a planter bed. So they get to survive on their own and will harvest it when they are big enough. And that green plant? At first I thought it was wild mustard or something...then I looked at the potato over in the west bed...looked at this and remembered...oh yeah...potato nuggets were tossed over here too! Good thing about the cilantro, once it gets big enough I can just dig a shovel over there and lift them up, separate and plant them in the beds.
Hahahahhaha! So, here I am trying to grow things in healthy soil and taking care of them and getting less than satisfactory results and then nature says... pffft... we don't need no care!
Chantenay carrots and more cilantro planted in the bed. Barely covered the carrot seeds and then dribbled some water on them. Since it's going to rain soon, I wet the soil so they don't get washed away. The cilantro, pfft... it'll grow or not.
Romaine coming up in the pellets and the mixed lettuce is filling out nicely. More red leaves showing better now. I dribbled water on the pellets even if it is going to rain. I 'll go out a bit later and put covers on that and the supposed sweet pea tray as well.
Speaking of peas, I decided to drop several into the little container I'm using as a watering bucket for the containers in the raised bed. They all sank which if I remember correctly means they're still good. I think some of the original batch of sweet peas floated so that explains why they didn't grow. Just my luck the snow peas will thrive and the sweet peas will likely wait until spring to really do well.
In the 'weird insect' category, leafminers on the lantana. I am used to the squiggly lines and random tracks of leafminers so this is a new and different mining tracks I've seen. They're following a rib, usually hte main one and then branching out sometimes on the side veins and other times just little side nibbles. Hard to see on the left picture but that larger upright leaf the larvae have followed the veins almost exclusively and hen on the right almost a runic style track up the main rib. Research says it could be a 'Herringbone Leaf Miner' which is common on lantana apparently. I also discovered that in some parts of the world lantana is considered a weed and invasive species. I did not know that.
Learn something new every day.
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