Mini Pomegranate

The dwarf pomegranate is a-thrivin'.  Though I was not expecting any fruit on the little guy for another year, this dwarf tree/bush bore three mini fruits this season.  It really couldn't be cuter.  Here is a picture of the fruit that was cracked open on the branch today.  The seeds are hardly the red jewel color I'd expect from a pomegranate and they were extremely tart and tiny.  Maybe it is because that plant is still so young.  But, the flowers keep coming on this plant.  I would really encourage anyone living in So Cal to find one of these dwarf plants for their house/apartment.   It is so easy to care for; the flowers are pretty and attract hummingbirds.  AND, as a benefit, the pomegranate fruit is so beautiful and so perfect. I am considering ordering another one of these plants because I don't think one is nearly enough ;) 

PS.  I bought mine at Gurneys.com if you are curious, but I think this time around, I'd just ask my local nursery for suggestions on where to buy it locally.

Armenian Cucumbers

I am only sort of into cucumbers.  If you slather them with some kind of bad-for-you dip, or use them to flavor water, then I really enjoy them.  But if you just hand me a bit of cucumber, I’d rather not.  Trust me you, I want to love cucumbers because they are light and refreshing and make you stay skinny but, they just don’t quite do it for me plain.

So, it make sense that I am growing a giant Armenian cucumber plant, right?  Not really.  Sandra bought one of those six packs last winter from some nursery and gave me two of the plants.  Now, I rarely, if ever, reject a plant.  So, I stuffed the two plants in with my strawberries.  One of the plants met an early death, but the other, well, that is a whole other story.  It is mega!

What’s that?  You’ve never heard of an Armenian cucumber.  Well, me either.  I am still trying to figure out why Sandra bought this plant in the first place.  I mean, both of us live in little apartments and have very limited growing spaces.  Most cucumbers need to be trellised, and that, my dear reader, is just too much work.

Now, the Armenian cucumber is actually not really a cucumber.  It’s in the melon family and just tastes and sort of looks like a cucumber—a mega cucumber.  These babies can be 3 feet long!  According to my sources, if you have ever seen “Pickled Wild Cucumber” in a middle eastern store, you were looking at Armenian Cucumber.  Anyone had this delicacy?

They are thin skinned and don’t need to be peeled.  Just wash, slice, and enjoy.  My plant has so far yielded one major cucumber.  I think it was over a foot when I picked it.  I had to give half to my mom because no way was this girl going to eat over a foot of cucumber.

Pollination Troubles-

I am a tad concerned that I have only had one mature fruit.  There are loads and loads of flowers and the darn plant keeps getting bigger and bigger.  It has attached itself to several of my tomato plants and is growing down and over my fencing.  It doesn’t have to be trellised (if you trellis the plant, it will give you really straight fruits, if you let it go wild, the fruit will curve) but my plant is in such a place that it can cascade down several feet.  So, I’ve been trying to pollinate the plant by pulling off the male flowers and rubbing them into the female flowers.  Weird, I know.  Especially since there is a serious ant farm living in the planter with the strawberries and cucumber.  I figured with all these ants walking up and down the stalks, the flowers would surely be pollinated.  Not so much.  

Pest Problems-

Damn those spider mites.  They are loving the Armenian cucumber, and strangely, the ants are loving the spider mites.  Have you ever heard of bug-eating ants?  I have been trying to organically control the spider mite population by spraying them with jets of water.  It actually seems to be working. 

Overall, I’d say this is a very satisfying plant to grow.  It just gets so big, there is something new to look at every day.  So if you are into cucumbers and giant plants, this one is for you.  AND it seems to enjoy growing in a container. 

I’ll try to post a picture the next time I pick one of them. 

Name that Cacti!

Botanical names are incredibly difficult to remember-seriously, difficult to remember.   I took a trip over to the good ole public library this morning because it really isn't acceptable to spend so much money on books you can read for free. Though the library was rather disorienting and left me with a sour stomach (HURRY UP RECOVERY), I managed to find both the botany section and gardening section (they are in totally different aisles and many of the books were very similar).  I have been dying to know the names of all my little cacti guys so, I checked out one of the many picture books of succulents (seriously the books were scattered between the botany and gardening and they were just a load of pretty pictures with captions).  Despite the many pictures, the book I chose only identified two of my plants: Echeveria derenbergii and Pleiospilos nelii.  Remember what I said about botanical names.  I'll save the Echeveria for another post.  This one is all about the Pleiospilos Nelii-- lets call it the Ple-Nel for short.

Not a Living Stone At All

I have been referring to this plant under the common name of Living Stone.  That is just plain wrong, or so I've learned.   The common name is Split Rock; Living Stone is the common name for the Lithops variety of succulents.  The two look very similar and are actually in the same family.  The Ple-Nel is fully above ground with pale green leaves (and by leaves, I mean two bulbous chunks of cactus) that have little raised dark speckles.  It flowers in the spring (unlike the lithops which flowers in winter) and can have more than one flower, as my plant does (again unlike the lithops which only ever have a single flower per leave pair).

You have to love the internet: I search for the Ple-Nel and loads of sites pop up--and they all contradict one another.  Some say it is really hard to grow this plant and people kill them left and right, while other praise the ease of growing the plant.  A few talk about the difficulty in getting it to flower and some just talk about flowering as if it is nothing to worry about.  Here is my take:

1.  Buy one (I think mine came from Lowes, but possibly home depot)

2.  I then mixed some little rocks with soil and sand (no precise measuring here, I just threw in what I had).

3.  Find a container.

4. Put the plant in the container with the soil mixture

5.  Stick it in the sun.

6. Ignore the plant for most of the year.

7.  When it rains, it gets watered.  Other than that, I water the cacti at my apartment once a blue moon (perhaps every two months)

Now, I live in So Cal, so it rarely rains.  Do I fertilize you ask-- heck no! Why? because I'm not fixing what isn't broken.  And that is the secret.