Putting the garden to bed

[lblanchard]

Tomorrow night it's supposed to dip down into the high 40s. I'm not sure I believe it, but I brought all my hippeastrum into Anderson House just to be on the safe side.

In the course of picking out the bazillion wisteria leaves in the pots, I discovered that my older bulbs (Classes of 2006 and 2009) seem to have the Stagonospora curtsii fungus. So, some warm afternoon next month I'll have to cut off the leaves, soak the pots, tease the roots apart, let the bulbs dry for a few days, and then give them the warm fungicide bath -- followed by the warmer miticide bath while I'm at it. That treatment appears to have worked very well for the Papilio I treated last spring.

I also discovered I had a mosquito farm -- a pan over in a corner with about an inch of water topped by a cloud of mosquitoes. I grabbed for my spritzer of pyrethrin spray and discovered that the spritzing mechanism had died. So I zapped them with my vanilla / lavender spray and they all vanished.

On the upstairs windowsills: I think I've successfully rooted a new guinea impatiens -- the big leaves all look great -- but I don't see any new growth yet, and the smallest leaf has died. I've taken another cutting, just in case, and am waiting till I see roots to move it to vermiculite. It looks like I'm going to have a whole lot of successfully rooted cuttings from the Salmon NOID / Madisto cross (the two plants whose root systems rotted), although all but two are from the vigorous grower, which disappoints me. On a more positive note, the smallest-leafed seedling is putting out more leaves, so I think I can still hope for a mini. I took a couple more cuttings of the wedding coleus for insurance. Tomorrow I'll move my coleus etc cuttings to the basement.

This is my exciting life. Much free time spent on Tolkien and Doctor Who and utterly comforting plain knitting. Work is good, family is good, life is good except for fungus on my hippeastrum.

Comments

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Good grief with the fungus! It must be the higher humidity you have there as compared to us that makes your plants more prone.

I'm glad all is good...fungus aside.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Knowledge is occasionally unnerving. My plants have had that fungus for some time, but I just put it down to "the red stuff the leaves get at the end of the season." Not so! And I want it gone. (Edited to add: I've never treated these bulbs. The species hippeastrum I treated this past spring stayed indoors this season. I'm hoping that if I treat everybody else before they come indoors I may have better luck.)