Poinsettia Care

January of this year my mother gave me a poinsettia that my sister gave to her. My mother has never been able to get a poinsettia to stay alive through the year she usually ends up tossing it in the trash when the plant dies. This year she decided to give it to me. There are specific things you have to do with the plant to get it to re bloom from what I have read. The hardest part will be ion the next few months. You have to give the plant a limited amount of sunlight and keep it in the complete dark the rest of the time. I think I will be able to do it without much of a problem as soon as I get a timer. I have a growing station in my home with grow lights, all I will have to do is set the timer and hopefully there will not be a problem, and the other plants will grow as well. This is the first time that I have ever had a poinsettia so I have no idea what will happen. I have always heard that getting one to live through the year was very difficult, well so far so good. I think keeping it alive is probably the easy part getting it to re bloom will be the hard part. I'll keep you posted,m and if it does bloom I will post everything I did so that the next person will possibly get a bloom out of their plant.

My plant had babies

Normally when you grow an Amaryllis bulb from a seed it takes several years usually 5 for it to reach bloom size. So back in 2009 I estimated that I would not get to see a bloom until 2014 possibly 2013 at the earliest. Imagine my surprise when I was watering my plants and saw that the bulb had what appeared to be offshoots, from my research the bulb can not have off-shoots until it is large enough to flower or bloom. Also from my research it can not bloom unless it has four or more leaves (this bulb has six). This is an Amaryllis that I grew from a seed and I am so hopeful that it will bloom. I have no idea what color it will be, the parent plant was a Minerva, which is a Dutch Hybrid so there is no telling what color the bloom will be or what size. Nevertheless I will be happy, happy, happy, and feel that I have really accomplished something.

An easy way to Water

The heat this summer has been just plain awful on my poor plants this year. I have lost several in the 100+ degree heat. It is difficult to keep up with watering. I get my water from a well, and I don't want it to go dry. Well My husband and I went to a tool store that also sells a limited supply of gardening items. Well they had one item that I felt the need to try. It was a set of watering cones. There were 6 in the set. It used a 1 or 2 liter bottle. I used a 2 liter, I mean lets face it. The heat is just literally killing my plants and since it was in the ground, I figured I use the 2 liter bottle. It took some remembering to save the bottles, but I did. I am happy to say the things work. I placed them at the base of several of my butterfly bushes and the butterfly bushes did not go limp from the heat and the temperature was over 100. True I had to refill it during the day, but I was not in the heat and my plants were being watered.

I am without a doubt going to get some more, I don't know how many more I just know that the six I have is not enough. Next year I plan to water my plants at the start of the season with these.

butterfly bush colors

Well It has taken a while but my butterfly bushes have started blooming all over the place, and yes the butterfly's are all over them when they are in bloom. It is such a pretty sight to see all the butterfly's all over that bush, but that is why it is called a butterfly bush. Anyway the seed mix I got said that there were four colors in the mix. The colors were suppose to be white, lilac, blue and purple. Well of the ten plants butterfly bushes that I have now planted in my yard eight have blooms and of those eight five have blooms to the point that I can see what color that they are. Four of the blooms are lilac ans one is purple. The one I gave my mother-in-law also turned out to be lilac. Lilac must be the dominate color when it comes to butterfly bushes. I was so hoping for a white one. I might have to find someone that has one and take a cutting from it, or simply purchase one from a nursery. I have often wondered if butterfly bushes come in pink? I will have to do some research and find out, because if they do I'm going to want to get one of them also.