Grey Day Greenhousing

There is more work to do in the greenhouse than one would expect in November. Lisa and I spent the morning cleaning up, dividing, and propagating. 

Allison has developed a house plant problem so we potted up divisions of Alocasia 'California.' We divided Bilbergia 'Domingo Martin' hoping both Adam and Allison would try it. I also took cuttings of the various Hoyas; Allie claims she doesn't like Hoyas but we'll see if we can get her interested. 

We're preparing another shipment of plants to Adam in Florida. We've got the Alocasia, Globba 'Mauve Dancing Girl,' Heloconia 'Dwarf Jamaican,' and others. 

Harvest Approaches

 Foch was at 17 Brix last week. I haven't checked this week, but it smells like it is getting close. 

This weekend's list, complete:

• Weed/Roundup the elderberries
• Dig up volunteer ornamental grasses
• Clean mud daubers off porch and garage
• Net the grapes
• Remove the grow tubes
• Weed the berm
• Weed the liriope
• Prune the lychees

We're targeting shorter, more frequent posts for my brother. So finally some nice pictures.

And from last week, Lake Michigan:

Packing the Greenhouse

Winter approaches, and once again everything must come inside or get left behind. This year, we say goodbye to Plumeria pudica. The plant makes very fragrant white flowers, but it refuses to solidly root in the pot and as a result it constantly tips over and grow awkwardly. We made some interesting plumeria wine from its flowers but said wine ruined us on Traminette. So long, P. pudica.

We also bid adieu to Psidium myrtoides, purple guava. I grew two trees from seeds brought from Puerto Rico. I managed with great difficulty to prune and stake these into a tree-like form, and they got to around 5 feet. But theses trees also refused to firmly root in the pot and required constant staking. Worse, the marble-sized fruit were not worthy of wine or anything else. The smell reminded me of something between motor oil and skunk, and they taste was bitter. 

Some of the plants in the south window did not handle the transition well. The loquat and one of the sapodillas will lose some leaves. I walked in Thursday morning to find one contributing cause - no heat. It was 46F inside. I didn't have time to troubleshoot until Saturday, and finally found the culprits.

A replacement thermocouple

What you can find on Amazon for $9 is $36 at the local hardware store. I coughed up the money for the only one in stock, and I had the north furnace going in about 10 minutes. The second one is coming from Amazon in a week, we'll get by until then with one furnace.

There were a couple of nice fruit this week. We brought home the largest guava to date, this one nearly baseball sized. Noel's Big Red sugar apple was sweet and tasty, even if small and seedy.

A tour:

A Tidy Yard

It is interesting what having no kids at home means for keeping the yard tidy.

Saturday saw no relief from the high temperatures. We worked outside in 95F (35C) moving the last of the plants out of the greenhouse. The plumerias are back in their summer homes.

Plumerias in their summer home

We are experimenting with some of the greenhouse fruiting trees. We repotted the fruiting sapodilla and our newest citrus, a Persian lime and a calamondin. The Barbados Cherry and the other sapodilla will spend the summer on the porch. The bag of Barbados cherries in the freezer is growing. I didn't add them to my freezer wine last January in the hopes of having enough for a 1 gallon batch this year.

Barbados Cherry, loaded with fruit and flowering again

Saturday afternoon Shawn and Suzanne came over for some pool time. We opened the last bottle of Passion fruit wine.  This wine returned some nasty comments in the KC Cellarmasters wine competition, despite my high hopes. Not sure what they were thinking. All agreed that this wine was fantastic. The aroma was just like cutting open a ripe passion fruit, and the wine was well balanced. The bottle was empty in a half hour.

Sunday remained hot. I have been considering removal of the bananas from the greenhouse for some time now. Sunday I finally did it. The blooms are too infrequent and besides, bananas really are only good in wine as a body building additive. I cut them down rather than digging them out in case I get a case of greenhouser's remorse. But the center of the house has opened up nicely and I may make up for the loss of the bananas with lychee production.

No room in the greenhouse for shy producers

 The beds are largely tamed. One little section of the greenhouse bed is out of control, and the berms east of the pool need to be rid of their ash seedlings. I'm actually thinking about tackling the Dawn Redwood bed...something I haven't had time to get to for years.

Dinner Sunday as grilled cabbage with a basil pesto sauce and jerk chicken tenders. I thought about opening one of my wines but we have three bottles already open so I could not justify it.