Amaryllis ‘Anglo-American hybrids’ seedling being repotted.

Amaryllis ‘Anglo-American hybrids’ seedling being repotted.

I’ve just realized while browsing through my plants that I’d forgotten to write about my Amaryllis ‘Anglo-American hybrids’ seedling!

On March 19th 2014 I finally got around to potting them on:

While searching for a photo from 2013, so as to find out when I last transplanted them (or better said, when I transplanted them for the first time!) I was astonished to see it was on the very same day last year (2013)! I had no idea!

Amaryllis ‘Anglo-American’ seedlings 19th March 2013:

So on the same day but a year later they were planted up in 5″ pots. They will stay in them for another year & then in 2015 (19th March???) I’ll move them on to their final pots for flowering, perhaps during April 2015.

Amaryllis ‘Anglo-American’ seedlings 19th March 2013:

I ended up with 20 pots before I ran out of both pots & compost!:

There are about 6 still in their tiny pots from last year. I’m afraid they will have to stay in them for another month till I can take all my other 50+ pots of my other Amaryllis down to the allotment for the summer. These were also grown from seed but have flowered every year for the past 4 years.

A little history:

These ‘Anglo-American hybrids’ were sown almost exactly 3 years ago on May 1st 2012.

They germinated very well & remained in their seedtray for nearly a year until I transplanted them into 2 1/2″ square black pots. 15 of these fit in a seed tray.

See how much they had progressed by August 2013:

*By October 2013 they were becoming big plants!:

I’m going to be in real trouble come October! The ‘Anglo-American hybrids’ Amaryllis seedlings will stay at home this summer but I’ve no idea what I’m going to do when I bring the others back home from the allotment about the middle of October! Where am I going to put 80 pots???

We live in a small flat & already the three windowsills are so full of Amaryllis plants they have to be stacked in tiers three pots high! Except when the leaves begin to grow in April/May my poor wife never says anything then she gets a bit “anxious” about the windows being so covered up she can’t see out of them! I tell her that about the middle of May I’ll take them down to the allotment for the summer. She then resigns herself to not being able to look outside till then!

Amaryllis in 1st bedroom window:

Amaryllis in 2nd bedroom window:

Amaryllis in kitchen window:

The kitchen window is 3m(10ft) long so I need two photos to get them all in!:

To finish off this blog, here are a few of my Amaryllis on our living room table, in March:

A month later:

I hope you find this blog interesting but I’d love to hear what you think!

Christmas Cacti? You’re joking!

Christmas Cacti? You’re joking!

As I have not written a blog about these lovely little plants before I thought I’d do one today.

Pink & white one flowering on our living room table:

I have had one or two plants in flower for the last month – therefore the title of this blog!

Christmas Cactus with dying flowers in the living room

This was the very first plant to start flowering this autumn.

I got the original plants many years ago from leaf cutting, bits of the leaf pad that easily break off the main plant & will usually root very well & quite quickly when put into a little compost. These pieces I found in the flower & plants section of the supermarket were my wife works. Knowing how easily they root I collected up some leaves that would otherwise have ended up in the waste bin. That no longer happens any more as the plants always come in a protective plastic sleeve but 10 years ago or more they didn’t do that, at least not for the plants in the supermarket.

Christmas Cacti with buds in our kitchen:

As we live in a flat there isn’t all that much room for plants, at least not big plants but some small plants can be accommodated! These plants are very fragile so I keep them very small, they always grow in small square 2 & 1/2″ pots or sometimes in 3″ round pots. They are never transplanted, though they do get some tomato fertilizer in the summer, (in fact ALL my plants do, even the ones grown only for their leaves! It does them no harm), & they flourish on pure neglect!

Pink & white flowering on the living room table:

Pink & white & Red flowering on our living room table:

The red ones are in the middle but they don’t show up very well, besides they were mainly buds rather than open flowers.

Red Christmas Cactus that was flowering in March this year!:

They are actually a very dark red – usually that is! The light may have made it look more a dark pink rather than red! As I have two dripping with deep red flowers I’ll have to take a couple of photos & include them here.

Here are a trio of the promised photos:

They spend their lives, when not in flower, on the windowsill in our kitchen which is about 3m long & faces South west.

I also have a number of Easter Cacti that share the same place as well. I obtained them by the same method as the Christmas Cacti & they get the same treatment – that is “pure neglect”! They don’t mind either as they also flower every year & live in the same pots as the others.

Easter Cactus flowering in our living room window:

Here is a close up of an Easter Cactus flower:

Easter Cactus flowering on balcony during July!:

I fertilize them all with tomato feed during the summer & they give me this wonderful display in the autumn.

Edited to include a note on cultivation which I’ve condensed from the “RHS A-Z Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants”:

“They are plants from the tropical rain forests of Brazil where they live on trees & require very little soil, (that’s probably the reason they can exist for so long in tiny pots!) They need a high potash feed every 4 weeks while they are growing & moderate humidity in the air & in the soil. They should be grown in bright, indirect light. They should be repotted every 3-4 years in the spring.”

What a disastrous year for growing Tomatoes & Peppers!

What a disastrous year for growing Tomatoes & Peppers! I’m ashamed to post any pictures of them – or even take photos of them in the first place – let alone write about them! :-((

Garden Pearl & Gardener’s Delight seeds sown on balcony:

Germination was very good but it was the growing on of them that has been the problem! Other years I’ve had lovely plants for planting out in the middle of May – but not this year! The seedlings just sulked due to the very cold May we had!

Tomato seedlings in the kitchen:

After being potted up I moved them out onto the table in the most sheltered corner of our balcony but they made no progress at all during all of May!

Seedlings on table in corner of balcony:

Tomato Marmande seedlings just transplanted:

I took them down to the greenhouse on the allotment hoping they might pick up there, but no such luck!

I did plant some out in my own allotment, Plot 12A, a couple of weeks or so ago but even they don’t seem to have made much progress! They are all still little more than seedlings with a couple of pairs of true leaves! :-((

Tomatoes after mulching:

Tomatoes Marmande just planted out on balcony:

These were the only decent seedlings to really make any progress once in the greenhouse. I’d potted them up in 5-6″ pots before bring them back home on Saturday. I planted the up in some tomato growers set atop a growbag. Hopefully I’ll get some fruit from them before the growing season comes to an end!

Sweet Pepper ‘Corno di Toro Rosso’ germinating:

Sweet Pepper seedlings repotted on balcony:

TWO MONTHS LATER:

Sweet Peppers ‘Corno di toro rosso’ with true leaves:

Even after a month in the greenhouse on the allotment they still had made next to no progress! :-((

I ended up planting some of the seedlings in the green house border:

Others I planted out in a space on Gerry’s allotment:

I noticed on Monday that the Peppers planted in the greenhouse border seem to have grown a little & look better (or is it my fanciful imagination?)

Onions grown from seed: Alisa Craig

Onions grown from seed: Alisa Craig

I thought it would be fun to do a monoblog on just one vegetable. As I have photos for every month I thought I would show you just how my onions developed from the day they were sown till the day I harvested them & later cleaned them up at home & put the weight on the last photo.

So here is the 1st photo of when I sowed them in a seedtray in the greenhouse on Gerry’s allotment:

Germination 3 weeks later:

About 5 weeks later I transplanted them into my own allotment, Plot 12A:

Here they are well established after about another 3 weeks:

About a month later – making good progress:

Some 6 weeks separate the photo above from this one:

Here’s the final photo of them in the ground – ripening nicely:

Here they are just having been harvested:

The final photo – after a good clean up:

As you can see I got almost 4kg of onions in 6 months from seed to harvest!

I also sowed 3 bags of onion sets but I’m not going to write about them here, suffice it to say we are now  swimming in onions!!!