Volunteers

VOLUNTEERS!
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It amazes me that every week there is something to blog about. Things have been crazy at work, so yesterday was the first chance I've had in a while to do garden-related things or even really check out my plants during the daylight. What a surprise I got! Two weekends ago I dug a bunch of compost into the soil. It was nothing exciting - just the normal apple cores, banana peels, melon rind and innards (seeds), etc. But when I went outside today, look what I found:


Honeydew melon volunteer sprouts!

These are little baby honeydew melon plants! They are little volunteers - they came up completely of their own accord! I completely forgot that the melon insides were actually real seeds, and it didn't actually occur to me that they might grow into plants (does that sound stupid? I mean this is commercially-grown produce, I was assuming that it needs all kinds of high tech fertilizer or whatever to come up). But no - the technology with gardening is pretty simple. Put it in the dirt, and it grows!

It's really sad, but I think I may to have to evict the volunteer melon plants. Melons are a really sprawling plant with huge leaves, and they would take up a lot of space in my little garden for not a lot of yield. They also require a lot of nutrients from the soil because the plants are so gigantic. I would love to grow them some day.

PEAS

The other exciting development is that one of my pea plants has a flower! It's unbelievable- a real, live flower! Pea flowers are gorgeous (I actually considered planting sweet pea flowers, a different type of pea plant that produces non-edible pea pods, just because they are so beautiful). I'm not sure what I'm more excited about - the peas or the flowers on the plants that show a pea is about to grow! Here's a picture:


Baby pea flower!

Anyway, this flower means that pretty soon I'll have an actual pea growing on the plant. The plants are gaining height and I'm hoping as soon as they're big enough, I'll be able to train them to climb up the fence in the background. (Ha ha - I just re-read this and I can imagine someone who doesn't garden going, "what? train them? are you insane?" It basically means "encourage them by wrapping them around or tying them to whatever you want them to grow up/around"). The fence is a natural trellis and peas love to climb. The plants have the most beautiful little curly tendrils that stick out and wrap around anything nearby. My seed packet says that pea plants only have to be two inches apart, so I planted the rest of my seedlings and some more actual seeds in the ground according to that spacing. If they all grow, we are going to have a lot of peas this summer! Here is a picture of the line of peas growing up against the fence:


Peas growing along the fence

Some random (and possibly drunk) dude that lives in the neighborhood walked by while I was planting the peas and asked what I was doing, so I told him, and he was like, "OH! So you is GETTING YOUR EAT ON!" That's right dude. That's what I'm hoping for! He thought the idea of growing vegetables in your front yard was so crazy that he walked away laughing.

SUNFLOWERS

As you loyal readers may remember, I got quite excited about my sprouts and planted some sunflowers and beans in the ground outside around April 10th. Well, it turns out that was way too early, because we had a couple of really cold evenings (down in the 40s!) Anyway, about half of the sunflower sprouts and two of the bean plants died. But I am happy to report that the other sunflower seedlings survived and they are now growing quickly. I think that the sprouts stay sprouts for a long time, and then one day decide to shoot out some new leaves and turn into real seedlings and then just grow like crazy after that. (If I remembered anything from high school biology I might know why!) But this picture is of one of the little sunflower sprouts that survived. Can you believe that by the end of the summer, this plant could grow to be six feet tall?


Sunflower seedling

I planted the rest of my packet of my new packet of sunflower seeds directly in the ground (they are supposed to be gigantic, red sunflowers, I can hardly wait!), so it will be interesting to see what comes up.


BEANS
Two of the four bean plants I put in the ground originally survived, and yesterday I planted three more seedlings. I put up poles (they are called "pole beans," go figure!) so they will have something to climb. I also planted the rest of my pole bean seeds in the ground. I tried to start some more seeds in potting soil, but they didn't come up for some reason (neither did my new sunflower seeds). So I thought I'd try them directly in the ground, mostly to see if they grow (I think they will; beans are some of the easiest plants to grow from seed). I used a little gardening twine (like the twist-ties that come on bread packages) to hold the beans to the pole, and that will help support them as they grow.



IN OTHER NEWS...

It has been really hot and humid for the past couple of days (in the high 80s-low 90s) and so I decided to put my seedlings outside on the back porch to soak up the humidity. I watered them thoroughly the night before, but it was so hot that they dried up and some of them wilted and died. Victims of the heat included some Nasturtiums, pak choi, and some basil sprouts. We'll see if they recover. For the most part though, while the heat is pretty miserable for humans and apparently some sprouts, the other plants seemed to really love it. One of my little cucumber sprouts in the back doubled in size just during the day! It will be fun to watch how everything does with the heat.

The other things I did yesterday, but did not take pictures of, included digging more compost into the soil, re-potting some pepper, cucumber, and okra sprouts into bigger pots (if they all grow into plants I am going to have eight million-bajillion peppers!), and put some Nasturtium seedlings into a big pot on the back balcony (I'm hoping they'll get big and climb up the balcony fence).

AND FINALLY...

One of the things I love about DC is that there are so many flowering plants and shrubs everywhere. One day something will just be this big ugly shrub, and the next day it will have exploded into a million brightly-colored flowers. DC has very hot, humid summers, so that means a lot of gorgeous tropical-like flowers grow well here. Anyway I didn't even notice this little shrub in the front yard in the past, but I went outside yesterday and saw this beautiful flower! I'm happy to have this lovely addition to the garden.



That's all for the week! Thanks for checking out what's blooming in Bloomingdale! :)