In my house, everything blooms in February. Last month, I didn't do a garden update because nothing much was happening. And now in February, I couldn't wait to show you, but as I was preparing to post last week, the buds on my hibiscus were thickening so I put off posting.
The Christmas cactus blooms based on photo period, the number of hours of light it gets in a day. In my household, it blooms in November and February but the February bloom is a showier one. February is just a nicer sunnier month after the grey skies of November and December.
I think I took this photo last month. I'm getting an earlier start on my bunching onions for the garden and I decided to try some Swiss chard as an experiment because I still had seeds from last year. I don't expect the Swiss chard to do well inside but at least I won't walk into the room to find a bunny lying in it, like in my garden. Those are the onions on the left and the Swiss chard on the right in the tray. I'll show you another photo later.
Behind those is another experiment. I had some garlic sprouting so I decided to plant it. Unlike other seeds I have planted indoors, I know these won't grow 8' (2.4 m) tall!
I promised you flowers. Depending on the light, the hibiscus flower looks red or pink. In real life, it's a bold red. I always wonder if the people on Hive who live in milder climates think it's odd that we have hibiscus inside here.
Still blooming. I keep notes on things and I went back to check them today. This orchid flowered all of last year except for one month on this one stem.
Take a look -- I'm going to get another two flowers, behind the two that are still going strong. This is the orchid my tenant left for me when I rented out my house in 2020.
The orchid looks like it is trying to escape the pot. I'll have to learn how to handle this.
Here's my other orchid, getting ready to play tag team. By the time the other orchid's blossoms fall, this one should be in full bloom. This is the orchid a friend gave me in 2019 and I think I have figured out how to care for it enough to remove the tag. (The things you get used to and don't notice until you take a photo.) This photo was from last month.
I've been watching those buds bulk up.
This is what it looked like yesterday.
These flowers don't move fast and then suddenly they do. As I posted the last photo, I thought maybe I should check it right now. Surprise!
I used to think orchids were beautiful and exotic flowers that I could never grow. I have seen people build little grow rooms with their pots of orchids essentially inside a plastic tent, sitting on pebbles in water to keep the humidity up and wondering if they would live long enough to see their orchids bloom. Maybe that's true for some orchids but, wow, was I wrong.
Here are the onions now. I won't show you the Swiss chard that started well but, I think, just needed more light.
Some people pinch the seed off the top. I started these indoors last year and transplanted them to the garden, and they did okay but not stellar. First, because I should have started them sooner but also because they fell in the shadow of my pole beans. I'll find a better spot this year.
This was a short update on some of the plants in my house.
As you can see, my weather indicator says that outdoor gardening is still a long way off.
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