Day 5 – April 5, 2025

Posted on by Len W. Brown

After only a few days several of the seeds I’ve placed on damp paper towels have begun to germinate.  Namely, Balsam, Cypress Vine, Four-O-Clocks and Yukon Chief Dwarf Sweet Corn.

01Balsam is ready for me to pot them up, which I will do tomorrow.

 

 

 

02Cypress Vine is clearly ready for me to pot up the germinating seeds tomorrow.

 

 

03Four-O-Clocks are barely starting to germinate.

 

 

 

04Yukon Chief Dwarf Sweet Corn is also ready.  Tomorrow is going to be a busy day!

 

 

 

Tomorrow I’m going to start planting these and check to see if any of the other seeds have started to germinate yet.

Day 4 – April 4, 2025

Posted on by Len W. Brown

Nepenthes alata, a tropical pitcher plant, is one of the few carnivorous plants that is so easy to grow just about anyone can do it.    Unfortunately, a great many tropical pitcher plants have requirements that can be quite challenging for the average person to meet for them to thrive, or at the very least survive.  But Alata will very often do quite well in the average home or balcony.

01Nepenthes alata are best grown in hanging baskets, as the pitchers they produce at the end of their leaves drape down and hang rather dramatically.  The leave themselves are a bright shiny green color and somewhat fleshy, almost succulent in appearance.  While Nepenthes alata does bloom, it does so infrequently, and only after the plant is several years old.  Also, the plants are either male or female, so if you would like to save seed, you must insure you have both genders near one another, and both blooming at the same time.  Thankfully they are very easy to propagate by cuttings, so it doesn’t really matter whether they bloom or not.

02Like most Nepenthes, Alata has two different kinds of pitchers it produces, depending on the age of the plant.  Juvenile and Adult, also referred to as Lower and Upper pitchers.  When the plant is young, the juvenile or “lower pitchers” tend to be more smooth and green with some reddish coloration on the upper part of the pitchers.  But as the plant gets bigger and more established, the adult or “upper” pitchers often display a great deal more deep blood red and interesting veinage and ridges on its surface.

03This pitcher here is a sort of “transitional” stage, where it is not entirely juvenile nor adult, but possesses features of both.  Regardless, feeding the Nepenthes alata is essentially the same regardless of the specific phase of the individual pitchers.  As carnivorous plants, they take in the majority of their nutrition by consuming insects and small animals that fall into their pitchers rather than nutrient absorbed by their roots.  Personally, I feed mine very small pieces of raw chicken, beef, pork and turkey alternating with some fish food flakes.  I just make sure there is very little fat attached to the meat, and that the meat is not salted or cooked in any way.  Be sure to only do this with very small pieces every few weeks, because if there is too much material for them to digest in their pitchers, it runs the risk of spoiling and turning the pitchers black.  You can readily tell if you’re feeding it too much if you start to smell rotten meat.  If there is no smell, then it’s very likely you’re providing just the right amount of meat for them to thrive.  Of course, you can also simply feed them an occasional cricket, beetle or grasshopper if you’re worried that fresh pieces of raw meat will cause odors.

04Today I removed ten pieces from my Nepenthes alata in order to propagate it.  Since this particular tropical pitcher plant will root fairly easily in water, I decided to give that a shot and see how well it does.  I cut the stems so that I had individual leaves attached to a small piece of stem with a growth bud.

 

05Here are the ten pieces.  I removed the pitchers from each one so that all I had was a length of green leaf attached to a node from the main stem.  It’s fairly simple and straightforward.  I then placed all ten of the cuttings into a mason jar with distilled water.  NEVER give Nepenthes tap water under any circumstances!  It may not be obvious at first, but it will most certainly eventually kill Nepenthes, as the tropical pitcher plants are very sensitive to chemicals and minerals found in tap water.  Always use rain water or, in this case, plain distilled water purchased by the gallon from the supermarket.

06New growth will take some time, potentially several months, so patience is very important  As long as you replace the water with more distilled water regularly and keep the cuttings warm, in bright light, and regularly misted or where the humidity is kept fairly high, they will eventually begin to grow roots and new vegetative growth buds.  Once they have shown some new growth, they can be planted into sphagnum and/or peat moss with some perlite and a small amount of sand, and they should take off and start growing beautifully.

Hopefully in a few months I’ll end up with ten (or more) new young plants I can pot up and sell.  In the meantime I will keep an eye on these cuttings and hope for the best!

Day 3 – April 3, 2025

Posted on by Len W. Brown

Today I’m planting a tuber of the Dragon Lily (Dracunculus vulgaris).  This arum grows around three feet tall and produces a large blood-red inflorescence that gets about eighteen inches long.  When it blooms, it smells like rotting flesh, attracting flies to assist in pollinating it.  Depending on how potent the scent becomes, it may find itself taking up residence out on my balcony this summer.

01The larger tuber on the right is the one I’m planting today.  The one on the eft is an equally strange (and smelly) arum I’ll be discussing and planting in a few days .  The Dragon Lily, especially if mulched, can survive as far North as Zone 6.  Given that I am in Zone 7b, if i were not living in an apartment and had a house instead, I could safely plant it outdoors and leave it there year-round.   But since I’m in an apartment, this tuber will be placed into a pot and mainly grown under artificial lighting.

02Using regular houseplant potting soil and a one gallon pot, I place a single tuber in the center of the pot and bury it.  Since there is already a growth bud that is a few inches long, I bury it so that the very tip of the bud is visible above the soil line.

 

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Normally, were I to plant it outdoors and in the ground, I’d bury the tuber about 5 to 6 inches deep.  But since it will be growing indoors in a pot, I am only placing it a couple inches under the soil.

 

 

04I then gently water it in, thoroughly dampening the soil until water begins to run out of the bottom of the pot.

 

 

 

05Finally, I place it under very bright light; in this case eighteen inches beneath a 10,000 lumen LED fixture.  That should be more than adequate to simulate full sunlight to encourage it to make strong initial growth.

Outdoors, Dragon Lily normally goes into bloom in late May or June.  So it will likely be a very similar schedule growing indoors like this so long as the temperature remains warm and the light stays consistently bright every day.

The other smaller tuber you saw at the start of this post will be planted in a few days in a separate pot.  That one, a Voodoo Lily (Sauromatum venosum) is fairly small and likely too small to bloom.  So I’m in no particular rush to plant it just yet, as it will only grow vegetatively this first year.

Day 2 – April 2, 2025

Posted on by Len W. Brown

Like yesterday, today I placed five seeds each of four different plants into plastic baggies on damp paper towel.  They are Balsam, Cypress Vine, Squirting Cucumber and Yukon Chief Dwarf Sweet Corn.

01Balsam is an old-time favorite of mine.  It’s in the Impatiens family and grows as bushy plants that have a very lengthy bloom season.  They begin by growing as a single vertical stalk and the flowers start to open from the bottom upward.  After the lower flowers are spent, side branches begin to appear that also begin blooming.  They are extremely popular with many species of ants, as both the flowers and stems tend to exude both nectar and sap that ants tend to find irresistible.  A common name for Balsam is Touch-Me-Not, as the seed pods will explode, sending seeds flying in all directions when you touch them when ripe.  As you might guess, this means they readily self-seed when grown out in the garden.  The flowers are bright and release a decent amount of scent as well.

02Cypress Vine is also a favorite of mine.  Related to Morning Glories, the Cypress Vine is a very fast-growing climbing vine that will quickly cover fences and posts.  The leaves are incredibly beautiful, fanned out like deeply detailed feathers.  These plants will very easily self-seed and once they make their presence known somewhere, will generally come back year after year after year.  The flowers are small, star-shaped, and come in red, pink and white.  If you want to have humming birds in your garden, this is most certainly a plant for you to keep around.

03Squirting Cucumber is a truly strange and remarkable plant, growing as a weed in Greece and surrounding areas.  The bush-like vines often grow in poor soil and the fruit they produce are like large hairy green goose eggs atop tall stems.  As the seed pods mature, they swell with fluid and the point where the fruit and stem meet starts to weaken.  When animals brush by them, the fruit detach and the pressure built up within the fruit cause a thick, gelatinous mucilaginous fluid to spew out, taking seeds along with it.  Streams of this fluid and seed mixture can shoot up to twenty feet away from the parent plant.  Since the mucilaginous fluid is also extremely bitter, if the seeds spray onto the fur of the animal that displaced them, the animal will be reluctant to remove it, allowing the seeds to potentially travel great distances before falling from the fur on its own after some time has passed.

04Yukon Chief Dwarf Sweet Corn is the smallest variety of sweet corn in the world.  Developed at a university in Alaska, this corn was bred to have a very short growth cycle, around 55 days as opposed to traditional sweet corn requiring around 100 days or more.  Also, this corn will grow in temperatures of around 65 degrees F, lower than traditional corn.  Generally, this corn will grow approximately three to four feet tall and averages around four ears of corn per plant.  Rarely does one consider corn being a crop that is grown indoors, but I’m going to give it a shot.  It must be noted, however, that all varieties of corn are pollinated through wind, and so some degree of knowledge and effort must be undertaken in order to get corn to produce edible kernels if it is grown indoors.

Well, that’s it for today.  So far I’ve prepared eight different plants to grow from seed.  Check back tomorrow to see what other interesting things I’m going to start growing!

Day 1 – April 1, 2025

Posted on by Len W. Brown

Here I am at Day One once again!  I honestly was starting to think I’d never get this opportunity again.  You see, fourteen years ago I owned this domain, my namesake, and I wrote a fun indoor gardening blog until a series of events led me in another direction.  I allowed the domain to expire, and (as is so often the case), an unscrupulous squatter laid claim to this domain.  While not at all uncommon, it was unnerving to receive an email from said squatter, offering me my own domain back – IF I was willing to pay them an unconscionable $16,000!  I said no, of course.  And thus began a nasty eleven years in which the squatter kept this domain and gradually lowered the asking price.  First $12,000.  Then $8,000.  And on down to $4,000, and finally $1,000.  Each time I refused to respond to their requests, hoping they would ultimately come to believe they were wasting their own money paying for this domain and being unable to sell it, as the name was extremely specific.  There are not many people on this planet who have a use for the domain “lenwbrown” dot com, or dot anything for that matter.

Ultimately, my patience paid off, as they finally let the domain expire.  And that’s when I snatched it up for the standard $9.95 registration fee.  So, while my domain name was hijacked all this time, my interests have never changed.  And now today I have chosen to utilize this domain in much the same way I had fourteen years ago – as a personal site and blog of my interests and hobbies.

So today, April Fool’s Day of all days, I begin a new blog in the spirit of my old one – documenting my daily hobby, growing a variety of both common and uncommon plants within the confines of my home.  As I did fourteen years ago, I start by preparing a wide variety of seeds for germination and gradually move on from there as they grow and mature, documenting my progress (and inevitable failures) along the way.

Today I’m placing five seeds each of four different plants on damp paper towel in baggies: Coleus, Four-O-Clocks, House Tomatoes, and Mouse Melons.  Bear with me, as the first week or two may be a bit boring.  But as these seeds begin to sprout and grow I will have much more to talk about and do.

01Coleus is a favorite of mine.  The leaves have bright and varied color patterns and they are both easy to grow and easy to propagate.  Coleus thrive in semi-shade to full sun and add much-needed color to areas that might otherwise be unsuitable for flowering plants.  They are also exceptionally easy to propagate, as any cutting you take will very easily grow roots in water, making them especially easy to multiply.  As a result, if you discover a particular one with characteristics you are especially fond of, you can readily end up with a multitude of clones of it.  You can also overwinter them as houseplants and they can survive for many years – I’ve personally seen a single Coleus plant last upwards of twenty years!  So today I begin with five seeds, though I have plenty more.  But within the limited space of my home, five is more than enough to get started with.

02Four-O-Clocks get their common name because every day their flowers open around four in the afternoon.  They remain open all night and then close the following morning as the sun begins to rise.  If you are looking for a plant that has a particularly noticeable and pleasant scent, these are definitely the plant to grow!  They release a very strong perfume-like scent that lasts all night long.  Which makes sense, as they are primarily pollinated by large Sphinx Moths that appear at night and feed on their nectar.  The trumpet-shaped flowers are each open only one night and each one produces a single large seed.  I plan to use these for hybridizing, as their flowers are large and their reproductive parts are easy to identify, photograph and work with.  It’s been an interest of mine to write a tutorial on hybridizing for some time now and these plants are a great example for me to use!  I’m starting with just five seeds for now.

03The House Tomato is one I am extremely excited about!  The tomato plant itself is one of the smallest you will find anywhere in the world – growing only ten to twelve inches tall, referred to as a “micro-dwarf” tomato, making them very suitable for pots and likewise indoor cultivation.  They are a Russian heirloom that go back a few hundred years and were brought to parts of Northern Canada in the 1890’s.  They have been “lost” and “rediscovered” multiple times over the decades.  They are indeterminate, meaning they continuously produce tomatoes once the plants are old enough.  The tomatoes themselves are small and cherry red.  They are perfectly suited for growing in pots and can easily be overwintered on a bright windowsill to provide you with fresh tomatoes all winter long.  I have only ever found them from a single source and am excited to be able to grow them myself now.  While I have quite a few seeds, like with the other seeds I’m starting today, I have only selected five seeds to begin with.  This is one that I plan to save seed from, since they are heirlooms and therefore come true from seed.  If all goes to plan, you will find me selling seeds of this remarkable tomato on eBay later this year.

04The Cucamelon, Mouse Melon or Mexican Sour Gherkin is a tiny melon that grows on absolutely adorable miniature vines.  The melons themselves are about the size of a grape and are mottled with dark and light green and look very much like a tiny watermelon from the exterior.  Inside, they are a pale green and look like what you’d find if you were to slice into a typical cucumber.  They are very crunchy and taste like a cross between a cucumber and a lemon.  The vines alone are enough reason to grow them for ornamental value.  They do well in full sun and will either climb on trellises and fences, or can be left to hang down from baskets.  I find it nearly impossible to walk by them and not pop a few of their little melons into my mouth every time.  They easily self-seed as well.  As with the other plants today, I am starting just five seeds.

So that’s it for today.  Check back tomorrow as I select more plants to start from seed!