‘Dig’ The Earth

There are many products on the market that are made to make remembering to water your plants easier.  Whether it’s a ceramic worm that changes color or a glass globe with a long tube that sticks into the soil and self waters there is one thing you have to do – PAY ATTENTION.  Neither of these products tell you when the plant needs more if you aren’t looking right at them.  I’ve been known to neglect watering my indoor plants to the point of utter dehydration.  My “alarm” is a very observant 3 year old who notices when the plants look “sad”.

The talented people at the Botanicalls Project have found a way to bridge the gap of communication between people and plants.  They have created a sensor which monitors the plant’s moisture levels and sends Tweets to your mobile phone when it needs watered.  It even sends a “Thank You” when you show it love by watering it.  In an effort to show the public how this works they have a tweeting plant set up named Pothos.  As of today it has 3,025 followers and 152 updates and indicates it is in Urgent need of a watering .  How cool is that!?!

This would be a great gift for the avid gardener in your life. (*hint*hint*)

In the past few weeks we have had incredible ups and downs in temperature.  Since about the 8th of November it’s been mostly down, way down.   The week before it was in the 60s and 70s and then January came out of nowhere.  Nights have been down in the 20s and our heating system in the house has been running overtime.

Even with these extremes in weather I’ve witnessed something amazing happen.  The iris corms that I planted earlier in the fall actually started to sprout.  They’ve been rained on, snowed on, frozen and thawed and they are still green and growing.  For instance on Tuesday it snowed, then it warmed up and the little green leaves were still as bright and perky as can be.

The other plant that has me completely flabbergasted is the Nippon Montauk Daisy that is planted in a container on my back patio. My tremendous pregnant belly has precluded me from bringing in all my potted plants by myself so this plant and others have braved the cold, snow and freezing. Every time it warms up even a little – like into the upper 30s – the leaves bounce back and it doesn’t look wilty anymore.

I’ve only got a few more weeks before the baby comes. With what little energy I have left I’ve been trying without much success to get my winter sowing started. Last year I think I started too late and left too few “breathing” holes in the containers to be successful. Just seeing how resilient these plants have been makes me want to try again.

It has been at least a couple of weeks since we have had any significant rainfall. And it’s been hot, really hot. With temps up in the 90s and little cloud cover of breeze the afternoons and sometimes even the mornings and evenings have been unbearable. Thank goodness for central air.

The poor plants have been suffering though. We were gone for three days during this dry spell and I’d say 90% of my potted plants that were outdoors died of thirst. I thought I’d given them enough water before we left, but it must have gotten too hot for them to handle. Gladly the majority of these are herbs and they can be dried before use anyway so it works out OK. The one I’m lamenting right now is my basil plant. There is nothing like fresh, green basil with tomatoes and mozzarella in a balsamic vinaigrette. Now I have only a dried out woody stem and hardly any seeds to speak of .

At least most of my indoor plants survived my absense. Especially, my basil plants. They are too small yet to harvest a great deal from them, but I’m working on getting spaces for them outdoors. That’s what I was working on this morning before it got up to 90 and just uncomfortable. When I checked weather.com and it said we had a 40% chance of rain showers I was hoping not to get stuck in the other 60% of the region. When the radar showed no clouds this morning about 10:30 I didn’t have much hope. About 3 PM it started thundering and just about 4 PM we started with a steady rainfall that the ground is sucking up like a hungry baby sucks on a bottle of milk.

So much for my weed pulling for the rest of the day. At least the plants are getting a much needed drink. This will make my work much easier too, the ground won’t be so stinking hard.

Monday I spent most of the day driving around because I had appointments everywhere but home. It was nice though because my baby girl got to spend some time with her cousins. I took the opportunity to get some cow manure compost, petunias, basil, rosemary, sweet marjoram and lavender at the local Lowe’s store. There were a few groceries I had to pick up so I took the opportunity to peruse the garden center at Meijer and found they had Stargazer Asian Lily bulbs packed in bags shoved in a small end cap hanging box. I found one that had sprouted and was semi upright with no other signs of abuse. They were so cheap I just couldn’t leave them. Not to mention the Asian lily bulbs that I picked up last year probably rotted in the ground. Well, all but one that seems to have divided as well even though it never broke ground last year. I got them in a pot as soon as I could, but with all the stuff that was clanging around in the back of the car the little bud and topmost leaves got pinched off. I also lost half the basil plant (that’s why I got the biggest one I could find).

Tuesday, Earth Day, was such a nice day from the get go that we had all the windows open, the lights off and the air conditioning off. I don’t think I even turned the lights on in the aquariums that day. Poor fishies. Eh, they don’t care as long as they’re fed. It actually got pretty hot in the afternoon. My little one wanted to be outdoors with me and I doused her with SPF 50 before we went outside. She covered herself in sand while I spread compost and gypsum on the garden. After a little while even though she was mostly in the shade you could see the rosiness of her cheeks increasing. So, I convinced her that it was time for her afternoon nap.she wanted to go to her room, but since she was covered in sand (though I couldn’t see it I was convinced it was there and didn’t want to try and get it out of her carpet) I had her sleep on the couch, which she loves anyway. She was out for three and a half hours. Plenty of time for me to plant some 2 year asparagus plants, re pot all my herbs and plant the lily bulbs. I wanted to keep the herbs fairly close to the house so I found some old pot hangers and a birdbath that was left with the house and used them to display the little herb garden near my front door.