You Grow Girl™

The other evening I went over to Sandy's place to take a look at her deck. What a gorgeous job she has done! I was most impressed by her GIANT papyrus! She gave me a small plant she had propagated herself and I am really treasuring it. My interest in bog plants has grown quite a lot as a result of the carnivorous addiction. I was so inspired by her deck, I spent a few hours yesterday cleaning up my own. This summer has been busier than ever and as a result my deck has been a little worse for wear over the last month. The plants have been fine (minus a few late season, hot weather messes) since I always find the time to water them, but I've been very lazy about cleaning up my mess. In the past I start out with one arrangement and move the containers around as the plants grow and change. However this year I haven't bothered to do much and everything was looking scrappy.

The dabbled light table. Mint, carnivorous bog, new succulents hardening off, bromeliads.

So yesterday I decided to spend some time cleaning up, repotting and moving plants about. Things are looking a bit nicer. I posted a few photos so you can see what it looks like.

The hot sun table. Mainly succulents and cacti

Another job I finally got to yesterday was cutting back my nepenthes and setting the bits to root. I had put this off for far too long and the poor plant was being pulled out of the container by its own weight. I also got around to repotting it to a new, larger hanging basket. And what's more, earlier in the day while out running errands I popped into Happy Girl Hydroponics and scored a bottle of "SUPERthrive" AND a bag of those lightweight, terracotta coloured hydroponic pellets (also inspired by Sandy who had been using them for her epiphytic and bog plants). I went nuts experimenting with them as mulch which I think is going to work out really well. I bought the SUPERthrive for my carnivorous plants. Everyone seems to recommend it so I had to see for myself. I'm a bit freaked out wondering exactly what is in the stuff but since I'm not using it on edibles it's not a big deal.

Black Plum tomato

In other news the last few weeks have been a flurry of tomato harvesting. Okay that's an exaggeration but many of the plants have been producing ripe fruit recently. So far I have harvested nearly all the silver fir trees, the sunrise III, three lemon boys, and some of the black plums. Overall I am really impressed by the silver fir tree fruit. It reminds me quite a lot of last year's ceylon tomato in shape, colour and flavour. I had no idea what to expect and had planted many of the silver fir trees in pots that I suspect were too small but they still produced an abundance of good-sized, tasty tomatoes. It's definitely a variety I would grow again.

Over at the community garden everything is still very green as the plot is in semi-shade and does not receive the intense heat and sun of the deck.