No Easter Eggs This Year, But I Do Have a Pompom

Posted Apr 12, 2009 by Loren Omoto

Updated Apr 12, 2009 at 11:47 PM

My son’s girlfriend, Sarah, is passionate for pomegranates and, bless her heart, she likes gardening. So a couple years ago, I started searching for a pomegranate plant for her birthday.

In Tampa, you can buy starfruit trees, persimmon, mango and longan, but pomegranate? Not. (Pomegranates are THE fruit these days. I may be onto something. Don’t tell anyone about what you read here.)

In 2007, while grocery shopping, I noticed pomegranates in the produce section. I bought one and went online to read up on growing them from seed. The instructions I found made it sound difficult, but it wasn’t. I washed the pulp off some seeds (as instructed), put them in potting mix, and within two weeks, I had seven plants.

Everything I read said you have to have more than one plant to get fruit. So I gave three to Sarah at Christmas that year. I put a couple in the ground, and one in a pot. The last went to pomegranate heaven.

The ones in the ground didn’t do so well (I dug up the scrawny survivor and gave to a Dirt reader.) But I kept watering the one in the pot. It gave me leaf, which I figured was generous and deserving of water.

Over the winter this year, it shed leaves and died back quite a bit. I pruned it in February, and it popped right back with lots of new leaves. This week, I disovered something else.

A baby pom! And when I say baby, I mean fetal. Here’s a picture for perspective.

It’s a bit like viewing an ultrasound. Look hard and maybe you’ll see it.

It might grow fast enough to be Sarah’s 21st birthday present in June.

OK, maybe a pomegranate and a scarf. I like Sarah.

 

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Drought? What Drought?

Posted Apr 11, 2009 by Loren Omoto

Updated Apr 11, 2009 at 05:29 PM

Kim, Todd (another Trib plant lover) and I headed out to the Spring Festival at the USF Botanical Gardens today. I fully expected great parking and the run of the place. Who plants in a drought when we can’t water but once a week during teen curfew hours? Or whatever the restrictions are now. (I really need to check those again.)

Yeah, we were there, but we’re obsessed. We didn’t figure we had so much mentally unhealthy company.

The plant fest was PACKED. OK, not everyone’s planning on outlaw-watering. Potted plants don’t take much. Or bougainvilleas. (I got one of each. Can’t say as much for my two friends!)

It’s hard to resist shopping for plants you don’t find at your local nursery or big box. I guess that’s why we go. I’m told you can talk your local retailer into stocking some of the great stuff you see. It’s worth a try.

The Spring Festival continues tomorrow (Sunday) from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is $5 for ages 13 and older. Tomorrow there’s an Easter egg hunt and workshops. To get there, head east on Fowler Avenue from Interstate 275, north on Bruce B. Downs Blvd., and east on Pine Drive about a block. You’ll see lots of free parking.

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Baby Prehistoric—A Gift With A Point

Posted Apr 9, 2009 by Loren Omoto

Updated Apr 9, 2009 at 10:19 PM

Susan in Davenport likes growing plants from mystery seeds she finds at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando. Ever been to Animal Kingdom? It’s Disney meets Africa, with 1,000 animals and 3,000 species of plants and trees, many of them exotic transplants from Asia and Africa.

Here are a few of her little newbie starts:

Susan is very nice (come to think of it, I don’t know a gardener who isn’t. Kim has her moments, but she can be nice, too.)

Last Christmas, Susan sent me a potted seedling. When the weather finally started warming up in February, I got him planted outside. He settled in nicely,  growing tall and filling out. A real cutie. I thought he might be a money tree. I planted him by the garden swing.

It’s bad timing to ask, “By the way, how big will this get?” after a plant is already well underway in your garden. But that’s what I did. 

“It will grow about 30 foot tall, and the trunk about 2 feet around,” Susan emailed back this week.

Yikes!

But there’s more.

“That one I call a Prehistoric Tree because of the thorns that will come out on its whole trunk,” she wrote.

Thorns?

“When it matures it will bud out huge seed pods that look like cotton balls. The leaves look similar to a pot plant but it is not.”

Small relief.

I told her I better uproot Baby Prehistoric because he’s next to the swing, where I like to enjoy a glass of wine or two of an evening. I could find myself impaled, which would be inconvenient.

She assured me the lower thorns drop off. (And land where??)

Here’s her freeze-recovering Prehistoric Mama (or Pops).

Cuttings anyone?

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The Bloom Report

Posted Apr 4, 2009 by Loren Omoto

Updated Apr 5, 2009 at 12:24 AM

Angel’s trumpets are simply amazing. This tiny “tree” was a cutting that I stuck in a pot last summer. It never got very big, but after our killer freezes, it was bigger than the two that had been flourishing (bloomless) in the ground. The pots came inside on those freezing nights.

In February, I stuck Little Guy in the ground, and today, look what I’ve got!

Yes, that’s a stick propping up the great big bloom. Little Guy has nowhere near the strength—or the height—to hold it up alone. And it would be a shame to allow such beautiful petal-age to drag in the dirt.

Full disclosure: I gave everyone in the garden a Happy Spring cocktail of Miracle-Gro Bloom Booster the second week of March. (I’m trying to get off the plant crack, but it’s a hard habit to break.)
That may account for Bloom Tremendo—and three others in the offing.

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Surprise! There’s More Than Weeds In The New Veggie Bed

Posted Apr 2, 2009 by Loren Omoto

Updated Apr 2, 2009 at 07:03 PM

I started my little organic vegetable bed just three weeks ago, and already it’s making me very happy. Look what I found on one of my Sequoia bean plants this morning:

I knew the bean pods would be purple, but it never occurred to me the blossoms would be such a fetching shade of lavender. Forget the beans. I like the flowers!

Beets are also new for me. I'm growing them only because my sister swears they taste delicious roasted for an hour then chilled in the fridge. Take off the skin, chop them up, add olive oil, balsamic vinegar and basil for a delicious salad. That's what she says, and she gave me the seeds, so I'm game.

I'm not sure how I'll like eating beets, but the plants sure are pretty.

What was really exciting were the Asian baby leaf salad greens. I already had a bunch ready for picking.

Those seeds, officially Gourmet Mesclun Salad, came from Renee’s Garden, reneesgarden.com . It’s the first time I’ve tried the brand and I’m impressed. The seeds all sprouted quickly, and the young plants are healthy and growing fast. The company offers lots of mix packets. Mine was $2.79 and included Komatsuna, Mizuna, mild green and red mustard, Rocket, Totsoi and Chinese cabbage.

Good seeds are important, but if you’re serious about growing organically, I recommend a strongly worded sign. It worked with the lettuce.

My first harvest ended up in my lunchbox today.

I got the instructions for a very easy-to-start, inexpensive organic vegetable garden from Rick Martinez, founder of Sweetwater Organic Community Farms. If you scroll down to my March 10 post, all the instructions are there.

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