August 2023 Garden Update

sigh It's been a busy summer but as you can see, I would never leave my garden fallow. I just filled the land with my mutant white pinto beans, carrots, and cilantro. I haven't even really watered much. Luckily it has been raining here and there. I didn't put much thought into tomatoes this year, but I let some grow in some places. Some remnant beans from last year are scattered within like rattlesnake (another pinto!) and trail of tears, I think, along with some volunteer potatoes I need to remember to harvest.

I'm growing the mutant beans outdoors on a large scale in an attempt to produce another random mutation. I am beginning to believe my previous mutation induction experiment might be a failure (but I will still continue). It's ok either way because I don't consider having actually lost anything, not even time. I had fun growing those miniature plants indoors where they were sheltered and I could really focus on them individually.

Anyways, I might have more chances of a breakthrough outdoors. One of them produced red flowers as opposed to white but didn't have time for the fruits to set. Thinking back now, I should have salvaged the plant somehow or at least attempted to clone it. Oh well.

My Eastern Prickly Pear bloomed late June and has 4 fruits ripening! They will be ready when they turn red.

The experiment here worked... sort of. I tried to plant flowers of varying heights taller going back but only about half of everything actually sprouted. It's a little weedy too but I only weeded here a few times while I planned the different flowers. I essentially eradicated the rogue tomatoes that were infesting the area.

Wanted poster for rogue tomato FFXII

Honorable mentions go out to my sunchoke plant and the psychedelic little leafhopper resting on it (zoom in!).

This weekend I did a gardening job closer to the center of the city that involved transplanting a few plants a some weeding. Here is the finished product:

I recommended they mulch so hopefully they take my advice. The city offers free hardwood mulch. I watered everything in by hand as that's the only way for now so hopefully the client keeps up with watering as well and everything should be fine.

In other news, I added the first deliberate vascular plant to my terrarium: the mock strawberry (Duchesnea indica). They are said to be medicinal as well. If you're not familiar, it is almost in every way like the strawberry we know, its cousin, but in miniature. Despite having yellow flowers, it produces small strawberry-like fruits as well (which are not very palatable).

Here is the terrarium before the addition:

And now:

The plant is the centerpiece and, only seems to have taken root immediately. It will likely spread through stolons and, if it gets too out of hand, I'll just complicate the ecosystem a little more by introducing an isopods. Because nothing mows the lawn like a herd of slaters!

I also added some piles of tamarind leaflets to offer food and shelter for the sparse(?) springtail population. So far they have not produced big ghostly tufts of mold so maybe I should add more. I also want to introduce a few mealybugs to the mock strawberry, you know, to slow it down so that's it's not so wildly successful right off the bat. Am I going too far with this? You'd actually be surprised at all the tiny things I've added to this. I just need a proper top for it.

That concludes the events of my home garden. But in the wild, I finally found this:

Wild beans of the genus Strophostyles! The species is either S. umbellata (my money's on that one) or S. helvola. I'll have to ask the experts on native plants that share our service yard at work. Now I sort of have a feel for how they grow so I can plant them in my garden!

Maybe soon I will share a bonsai update though nothing much to show right now. I take need to step up my bonsai game. That being said, I need to buy some acadama! It is a special natural clay mined in Japan so it can be expensive but it might be just what I need to solve my soil problems.