It's the 22nd of June which means that the summer has officially started here in June. The temperatures are slowly rising and there is more sun.
Both me and my backyard really needed some more sun after a wet spring.
As I showed in my last update my plants are constantly attacked by snails. Many of the small plants like lettuce and zucchini unfortunately didn't survive.
I don't like to focus on the bad things, so I will focus on the things that do well.
Cherry tomatoes
The snails don't seem to like tomatoes. I must admit that the leaves do smell a bit special.
I have placed 8 cherry tomato plants in my backyard. Today I have replaced the small bamboo sticks by larger ones to keep them supported. I also pruned all the lower leaves so the flowers, which will turn into tomatoes will catch enough sun.
And flowers they have!!!
I hope a lot of them will turn into nice sweet cherry tomatoes.
Oxeye
Another plant that is doing well is my Oxeye. I had moved these plants early in summer when they were still completely underground (they completely die off above ground in winter).
It's so cool to see how they grow into large plants with giant leaves in just three months. I have placed five or six of them in a group in the hack of my garden.
It's already full of buds and some of them already turned into beautiful yellow flowers. The flowers always attract a lot of butterflies and other flying insects every year.
I haven't seen a single butterfly in my backyard yet, but I hope this will change soon as the Oxeye has more and more flowers every week.
I recently noticed that one of the plants was covered in aphids. I was scared that they were going to harm the plant, so I looked up what I could do about it.
On the internet I found a tip. I sprayed the aphids with dishwashing liquid diluted with water and after a day all the aphids were dead.
Herbs
Last Sunday we celebrated fathers day. I received some nice presents from my kids including some herbs. I now have lemon verbena and chocolate mint. Both are really nice to make tea from.
As I planted them in my garden they might be attacked by the snails. That is why I cut off some and put them on water to see if I can get them to grow roots. This seems to be very easy according to resources I've found on the internet.
Propagation
Since the outdoor garden isn't going that well I've been focusing more on my indoor plants. I can protect them way better against pests than the plants in my garden. I've looked into propagation of plants and seen quite a lot of interesting youtube video's about that.
I've tried different methods of propagation by dividing plants and by putting them in water. For a couple of years we have had a very nice Philondandron. This plant was in our bedroom, but it was growing so big I had to prune it. As a test I had put the complete branch I had cut off in water. It took a few weeks, but eventually it started to grow roots.
The roots are quite long now, so I think I can plant it in soil soon. This means I have to Philodandrons now.
I'm quite amazed how easy this went, so I started propagating some more plants we have.
Some plants, like the pancake plant and some succulents grow
small new sprouts themselves. All you have to do is carefully separate them from the original plant.
Others you have to split and some need to be places in water. It's just a matter of waiting for them to grow roots. This can take weeks and sometimes even months.
But doing this you can create your own plants for free which is really cool I think.
Another experiment is this pickle plant we had bought as a present for my mother in law. I had cut off one stem, removed the lower leaves (they will rot when they are in the water) and put it in a small bottle with water.
Already after a few days I see some orange on the stem which I think indicates the places where the roots will start to grow.
Do any of you also propagate plants? I would love to hear about your experiences.
I will share some more about my plant propagation in another post soon.
I hope you enjoyed this blog!
Happy gardening!
FriendlyMoose
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