Unknown bulb
14 August 2024 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeIt was time for another Mad Hatter's Potting Party, in which all the plants get moved up one size (and some of them get discarded to make room/save compost, mainly the shoo-fly plants). And in the bottom of the compost bag, into which other pots had been emptied previously, I once again found a mysterious little set of bulbs or corms.
My immediate assumption was that this was an escaped fragment of grape hyacinth, but I unearthed some of those to have a look -- the foliage has now died down entirely -- and they really don't resemble these bulbs at all, being much more spherical.
(Original photo when misidentified as garlic:)
But then these don't look much like the missing narcissus either -- or like the taproot of the elusive Cumbrian poppy.
They probably *are* grape hyacinth, but I've potted them up into a small pot of their own labelled 'mystery bulbs' to see what, if anything, they turn into.
Most of what was getting repotted was Swan River daisies, both pink and blue. They are all now looking very healthy -- finally.
I also repotted the smaller of the two Demon Red chillies (having succeeded in giving away the other two). Like the Swan River daisies the chillies have also been putting on a great rush of growth in the last few weeks and are now eight or nine inches high, but still with only a single flower each, putting them a fortnight behind last year and a month behind my initial attempt in 2021 :-(
(I am still actually cooking with the 2022 crop, having given away the entirety of my gigantic (after all that worrying!) 2023 crop, and have been trying to remember to add them to things in order to use them up; I get the impression that their intensity is definitely wearing off, although you still notice if you put your fingers in your mouth after chopping even a dried green chilli.)
My immediate assumption was that this was an escaped fragment of grape hyacinth, but I unearthed some of those to have a look -- the foliage has now died down entirely -- and they really don't resemble these bulbs at all, being much more spherical.
(Original photo when misidentified as garlic:)
But then these don't look much like the missing narcissus either -- or like the taproot of the elusive Cumbrian poppy.
They probably *are* grape hyacinth, but I've potted them up into a small pot of their own labelled 'mystery bulbs' to see what, if anything, they turn into.
Most of what was getting repotted was Swan River daisies, both pink and blue. They are all now looking very healthy -- finally.
I also repotted the smaller of the two Demon Red chillies (having succeeded in giving away the other two). Like the Swan River daisies the chillies have also been putting on a great rush of growth in the last few weeks and are now eight or nine inches high, but still with only a single flower each, putting them a fortnight behind last year and a month behind my initial attempt in 2021 :-(
(I am still actually cooking with the 2022 crop, having given away the entirety of my gigantic (after all that worrying!) 2023 crop, and have been trying to remember to add them to things in order to use them up; I get the impression that their intensity is definitely wearing off, although you still notice if you put your fingers in your mouth after chopping even a dried green chilli.)