Plant updates
8 September 2023 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThe pak choi seedlings are definitely nothing like 'normal' pak choi (which means there is no point in allowing the final adult plant to flower, as it was trying to do, so I have eaten it!)
However, they are being stripped bare by caterpillars in precisely the same fashion as their predecessors last year, so are evidently cabbagy enough. It's very species-specific predation; none of the surrounding plants are so much as touched.
Still no ripening on the Demon Red chillies, although the plant is covered in fruit. (The current belatedly arrived heatwave may actually do some good -- I have had all the windows open all night and just about managed to knock my bedroom temperature down to 74F from the 80 degrees in which I went to sleep, but at least one thing about a heatwave in September is that the nights are inherently colder at this time of year...)
The runtish dark-leaf chilli that I should really have uprooted long ago (it never got above about four inches high) has opened a solitary flower and has a few more embryonic buds on it.
I have what appears to be an unexpected pink Swan River daisy in the wildflower trough -- I definitely got a scrawny rudbeckia in there, and a blue Swan River daisy up the other end. The 'official' replacement pink Swan River daisies are vigorous plants but still showing no signs of flowering, so it will be a race between them and the oncoming autumn.. Meanwhile the blues have been flowering prolifically and are starting to think about setting seed.
The garden marguerite (Argyranthemum) is now fully back in pink flower :-)
However, they are being stripped bare by caterpillars in precisely the same fashion as their predecessors last year, so are evidently cabbagy enough. It's very species-specific predation; none of the surrounding plants are so much as touched.
Still no ripening on the Demon Red chillies, although the plant is covered in fruit. (The current belatedly arrived heatwave may actually do some good -- I have had all the windows open all night and just about managed to knock my bedroom temperature down to 74F from the 80 degrees in which I went to sleep, but at least one thing about a heatwave in September is that the nights are inherently colder at this time of year...)
The runtish dark-leaf chilli that I should really have uprooted long ago (it never got above about four inches high) has opened a solitary flower and has a few more embryonic buds on it.
I have what appears to be an unexpected pink Swan River daisy in the wildflower trough -- I definitely got a scrawny rudbeckia in there, and a blue Swan River daisy up the other end. The 'official' replacement pink Swan River daisies are vigorous plants but still showing no signs of flowering, so it will be a race between them and the oncoming autumn.. Meanwhile the blues have been flowering prolifically and are starting to think about setting seed.
The garden marguerite (Argyranthemum) is now fully back in pink flower :-)