I lost my angel-wing begonia. When I went to repot it a few weeks ago, I found that the roots were infected with some kind of gray mold. A lot of root structure had been lost already. I went ahead and repotted it and tried to fight the mold, but it was too late, I guess. The plant kept deteriorating ( Read more... )

Something is eating the heads off of my dwarf papyrus- the one in the pond, anyway. I thought it was Al, but today I found a head floating in the pond, and he has not had access to the plants in more than a week. So it is something else ( Read more... )

Today I went out to harvest some eggplants and found that two of the fruits had holes eaten into them. One of them had a freaking CAVE with two entrances. I don't know what ate those fruits, but I did see some mealybugs on the plants themselves. Tomorrow I will get out there and spray them down with orange oil, followed by garlic-pepper spray ( Read more... )

Today we went to Buchanan's and got two of the very last fall tomato plants. We got a variety called "Solar Set R." Tonight I planted them in the SFG. That was sweaty work! I planted them deep and gave them some fertilizer so they will develop a good root structure ( Read more... )

We just moved Martin from the office to back room, into the cage with Leo and Sparky. They all got along well from the get-go! It was very cute to see them meeting one another and being sweet. Lots of kissing and sniffing and covertly examining one another ( Read more... )

I mentioned buying a turtle-shaped sandbox on eBay, to use as a bog garden. Today I finally set it up ( Read more... )

We visited PetSmart to get some barley straw for the pond. I now have barley straw for years. Note to pet people: PetSmart stores will match prices with petsmart.com. Items on the website are usually significantly cheaper than items in the stores, so take a printout of the web page with you when you shop. They will match the price if the ( Read more... )

::sigh ( Read more... )

Every source I've been able to find on cattails says that turtles will bite but not eat them. Well, those people didn't have cattails reproducing in their pond. Al totally shredded one of the young plants (the first new plant has never been robust and this is the second time he's chomped off its leaves) and I am sure he ate at least some of it ( Read more... )

I just repotted the angel wing begonia, and found that the soil is riddled with mold! This might be why it has been looking peaked- it has much less root than I expected. Once things cool down I will water it with baking soda water. I hope that kills off the mold and peps my begonia back up. I love this plant ( Read more... )