Herb Garden

I have four greenhouse planting beds, one each on the east and west ends, and two on the south side. The east bed has strawberries, and the west bed has tomatoes and peppers. I do not plan to change those two allocations.

My current plan is to convert the southeast bed to succulents, and the southwest bed to herbs. Most of the plants will be hardy and hopefully will survive the winter, although there also will be some summer visitors. I figure I have to take more than half the soil out of the succulent bed and replace it with pumice and coco coir, ending up with about 40% garden soil, 40% pumice, and 20% coir. The herb bed doesn't need such a drastic change, although I may mix in a bag of pumice.

The herb bed is currently planted in onions, with a tomato and pepper at one end near the others of their kind. I have cleared away enough onions to christen the herb garden with its first plant, a Greek Oregano cutting that happens to be flowering. It has some little branches on the bottom, and I probably should prune off the top to encourage bushiness. I also have an English Thyme plant that is ready to go in, and eventually will have permanent plantings of Italian Oregano, Lemon Thyme, sage and chives. Rosemary and Marjoram are not hardy enough to survive the winter unless I provide some heat, and even then I may have to switch to more hardy varieties. Basil, cilantro, peppermint, dill and others will be part-time residents.

The succulent bed was supposed to be a flower bed this summer, although the main thing that is flowering now is alyssum. The nasturtiums put on a show for a few months but were starting to look ratty, so I took out the last of them a few days ago. The alyssum and nasturtiums were not supposed to be the main event, just support players. The sunflowers were supposed to be the headliners. They have barely gotten to a foot in height but finally might be on the verge of blooming. The marigolds provide some blooms, but I have dug a few out and put them in pots to give the sunflowers some room. The zinnias never grew. I put a few Bachelor Buttons in their place and have plants, but no flowers yet. I have mixed in a few coleus where there is room, both in the dirt and in pots, and a couple have gotten bigger than anything else in that bed.

The sunflowers in the giant (16-inch) plastic pot on the north wall are much more successful than the ones in the bed. The zinnias have grown in the outside window boxes but haven't flowered yet, in part because the deer don't know that the internet says they are not supposed to like to eat them. I have planted a few coneflowers but too late in the season to do anything but get established for next year. Most of the flowers I have gotten this year such as petunias and geraniums are in pots or baskets. I'm still going to try to grow a lot of flowering plants, both annual and perennial, but will not have an inside greenhouse bed allocated for that purpose.

Caged

My 2025 petunias, which at this time last year were scraggly little stems in baskets, are mounding like crazy. Less than a month ago I gave the pots a severe trim, and they have bounced back with great vigor. Petunias are tender perennials, so they will survive the winter if kept in a warm place, like our garage which is heated to 50 degrees. After I got the greenhouse a year ago, I transferred the petunias from the baskets to a pot in the greenhouse, moved it to the garage in November, and this is the eventual result.

I have another pot identical to this one, and a mixed pot with geraniums and more of these petunias. I still do not recall what variety these are, but I probably got them at Home Depot in Spring 2025 and I suspect they may be Waves or some other named variety instead of just generics. I'm sure they are hybrids, but are not sterile because I've had a few volunteers with flowers that are pink, not purple. The oldest image I can find of the purple petunias is from October 18 after they had been in the greenhouse for about six weeks. This is a healthy group (at least three plants, maybe more), but nothing like what we have today. Over the winter I did get a some clones going (see below) and that's how I ended up with 2.5 pots of purple petunias this year.

The other thing to notice about the top image of the big mound of petunias is it is caged. Maybe I have have mentioned this before (a few hundred times), but deer eat everything here. I saw this morning that the deer topped off the Rudbeckia (Black-Eyed Susan) in the front yard AGAIN. It was in a two-foot cage, but there was no top and they bent the cage as they dove in. I gave it a taller cage today, and maybe that will allow the plant to flower this year. And as a reminder, may I quote the internet:

"Rudbeckia plants are generally considered deer resistant, with top varieties like 'Goldsturm', 'American Gold Rush', and Brown-Eyed Susan frequently skipped by hungry wildlife. Deer usually avoid them because of the coarse, fuzzy hair on the leaves and stems along with a bitter taste."

Lies, lies, lies. Our deer do not have access to the internet so they don't know they aren't supposed to eat Black-Eyed Susans and Shasta Daisies. I have Shasta 'Daisy May' in a barrel next to our new trees. I have a cage on it, and it will remain for at least the next year.

An alternative to caging is to use baskets. (Another alternative is an 8-foot fence, but the HOA is not cooperative.) This is probably as good as the Really Red/Latte basket has looked this summer.

Even though it is summer, overwintering is always on my mind. I have been trying to clone the nine Supertunias since I got them in April, and have had occasional success. The 2025 purples were a challenge to clone from cuttings. My first attempt failed completely. I had a little better success after I started using rooting hormone. I think my main problem is overwatering followed by underwatering, which means appropriate attention every few days rather than drowning them and then forgetting about them for a week. This is my first successful clone, image taken January 8 after taking a cutting in mid-November. This clone and at least one other one are the basis for one of the big mounded pots we have today, the source for the other pot being the original plants.

I haven't kept meticulous records of the petunia cloning success rate, but I'm guessing it is maybe 25%. With Plectranthus 'Velveteen Aromatic'™ and Coleus, the success rate this year is 100%. Persistence is a virtue with the tunias. There are two Supertunia Jazzberry cuttings in the garage right now that look very promising, and that is the variety that I most want to have success with. I've gotten something from most of the others, with Latte being the biggest challenge so far for some reason. Even Priscilla, which (to be frank) sucks in the big basket at the house with Hoopla gave me a good clone that I have in a small basket by itself in the greenhouse.

One year

A year ago today I took delivery of the greenhouse.

At first, all I had to put into the planters was a pot of basil.

I planted what I could in August and kept a few things going until November. I turned the heater off Nov. 30, but I still visited every few days to get ready for the spring awakening. The allium bulbs started coming up Feb. 5. I turned the heat back on April 4 and started planting.

Our last frost date is not until a week into June, and petunias have to grow in the greenhouse until then. This image is from May 13.

And this is what it looks like now.

I'm growing strawberries

Nasturtiums and borage would take over the strawberry bed if I let them. I cleared all of the nasturtiums out of the strawberry bed, left just one borage, and put down some more straw mulch. I took the last nasturtium out of that bed a few days ago. In the adjacent flower bed, I removed all but two nasturtiums. In both beds, I thinned out the alyssum just a bit so it wouldn't stray too far from the edge. This should give the strawberries and sunflowers some more room to grow. This image also shows the two cucumber baskets hanging from the rafters. The cucs have been hanging outside on the west side of the greenhouse for about a month, but the foliage is on the verge of hanging low enough for the deer to eat. The interweb says, "Cucumbers are generally considered deer resistant. Deer typically avoid them because of their prickly leaves and fuzzy vines." Red Lodge deer do not have access to the interweb, so they eat all sorts of things they are not supposed to like.

On the other side, I chopped down all the underperforming broccoli and seeded that area (to the right of the tomatoes) with cilatro/coriander. Also in this image at lower left, I dug up a marigold that was being overshadowed by the tomatoes and gave it its own pot. The basil plant in the left corner and another basil that is obscured by the tomatoes will get the same treatment in a few days.

Here is the west side of the greenhouse where the cucs used to be. I hung the Priscilla and Bubblegum tunia baskets there just for the photo, then they went back inside. I might put them there on occasion, but not all the time. Down below are 12 'Velveteens,' two peppermint, a Greek Oregano cutting, and one lonely coleus that I wanted to transition from inside. As I was getting ready to leave, the coleus looked sad and wilted from being outside in the wind, so I stuck it back in the greenhouse. "Hardening off" is a thing.

The Teddy Bear Sunflowers are starting to bloom, and they are crawling with ants. I wondered why that was since I hadn't seen aphid infestations on the leaves for quite a while. (Ants raise aphids like milk cattle.) I didn't have the answer until I took some macro images and saw them in the flowers. The interweb says, "active aphid populations begin to die off when temperatures consistently exceed 90°F," and I have not seen aphids on the pepper plants since it got really warm. But apparently the sunflower aphids are more hardy or are better protected inside the flower.

Expendable

I followed through on yesterday's post and planted one of the green coleus on the north side of the house. We have small rocks surrounding the house, so I cleared a spot and punched through the landscape fabric to dig the hole. The soil under the fabric is greasy clay. With some of the other plants I have put in, I amended the soil with coco coir to make it looser, but did not do that this time. It is planted in clay under the rocks.

I decided to cage it to give it a chance to get established before I throw it to the wolves, uh, deer. I really want to see if the deer will eat an established coleus, so will take the cage off in a few weeks. With average first frost around Sept. 12, this plant is doomed in perhaps seven weeks, so I want to see how big it gets planted in the ground...if it survives. This will help me decide what to do next year.

Meanwhile, at the greenhouse, the tomato plants on the west side are getting huge and I removed one of the marigolds that was getting shaded out. I potted it and put it outside. I might even have to move one of the pepper plants to a pot or a new location in the bed. There are three basil plants mixed in with the tomatoes that also will benefit from being moved eventually.

Behind the tomatoes, there are four broccoli plants. Two of them have finally produced heads 140 days after I started them from seed. That is almost two months longer than it should take, and the heads are very loose. I now believe that the location I have used for broccoli both last fall and this spring just does not get enough light. It is in the northwest corner, so it gets little morning light, and now the plants are being shaded by the tomatoes. I should just harvest what little there is and plant some cilantro back there.

If I was trying to grow nasturtiums and borage as primary crops, the east side of the greenhouse would be a roaring success. But I have to remind myself that I am trying to raise strawberries and sunflowers, not borage and nasturtiums. There are still a couple of nasturtiums in the southeast bed with the sunflowers and in the outside window boxes with the flowers, but I took the last one out of the east strawberry bed today. I have decided I will take some good pictures of the borage plants in the east bed tomorrow, then remove them, except maybe one. When I started removing nasturtiums, the alyssum got thick along the edge. I will keep some of it, but not all. The alyssum outside in the barrel has not grown quickly but it is alive. I might try to transplant some from inside, but it might not work according to the interweb.

Tower of flower

I am not going to overwinter all of the coleus, and the ones that are mostly green are the first ones on the chopping block. The usual advice for coleus is not to let them flower, but I decided to let this one go to see what would happen. This is the one with green frilled leaves that was mangled by deer just a month ago. I planted it in the greenhouse planting bed a few weeks ago and the flower stalks are now at least three feet high. It's actually rather impressive and I'm reconsidering its status for the upcoming cull.

To the right, over by the window is another coleus raised from seed. It probably will make the cut. Back in the corner is one of the ColorBlaze 'Wicked Witch' clones and it is a shoo-in. All of my coleus came from a Burpee variety seed pack, except 'Wicked Witch' which was Proven Winners Direct purchase.

I look this image on the 17th. It is one that I put in the planting bed, which implies that I wasn't planning on saving it. This is another one that is getting reconsidered. It isn't very tall but was producing a stalk with little purple flowers, so I nipped that in the bud.

So far the bushiest coleus, besides the original pot of 'Wicked Witch,' are a couple of mostly-green plants that I have at the house. I've been thinking about planting them on the north side of the house since, to be realistic, they are expendable. Unlike 'Wicked Witch,' these seed-raised plants don't seem to do well in full sun, so the north side probably would be an optimal location. The questions I want answered are (1) will the deer eat them and (2) how big will they get in the two months before they freeze.

Coleus foliage is considered mildly toxic to deer (Yay!), but that didn't prevent them from mangling the one shown in the top image. But that was at the greenhouse. The deer a mile away at the house have not bothered the coleus that are on the back patio. Those plants are either surrounded by stinky herbs or are close to an active part of the house. If I planted them on the north side, they would be on their own. I have found depressions in the stones on the north side which lead me to believe the deer nap there once in a while. Time for an experiment.

Sunflower

I'm finally getting something resembling sunflower blooms. This one is a Teddy Bear in the big tub in the greenhouse. The sunflowers behind the house shed are probably going to be next to bloom, and the ones planted in the southeast bed in the greenhouse are lagging far behind.

The tomato plants in the greenhouse are getting tall, and the two strawberry baskets above the southwest bed were getting to be in the way. But between those two baskets, another basket was suspended to hold four 4-inch pots of stapled strawberry runners. It was going to be difficult to move all three baskets at once, but I determined that the runners were rooted and were ready to be cut loose. The four pots went under a grow light in the mini, and I moved the two baskets to the hooks above the mini along with northeast wall. I extended the cage for that tomato plant in the southwest bed. It is the biggest one in the greenhouse and might be bigger than the ones at the house. The greenhouse hasn't produced any actual tomatoes yet, but there are two green ones on that plant. That plant along with the three in the west bed are starting to shade the rest of the greenhouse from the late afternoon sun, not necessarily a good thing.

Anyway, moving the four pots to the mini freed up a 10-inch basket. I decided to plant Supertunia Priscilla in it. Priscilla has not done well in the 16-inch basket at the house with Hoopla Vivid Orchid, but has been OK in the 6-inch pot in the greenhouse, and it was the only alternative. The only other Supertunia clone available was a Really Red that isn't very far along. Priscilla is in the blue pot at upper right in this view facing east, looking over the tall tomato plants. The strawberry baskets are off in the distance at left in their new location.

From the opposite window, facing west, there's an obvious size discrepancy between the Priscilla and the Bubblegum planted in the matching blue basket.

The two small blue baskets might end up at the house someday. I have hooks on the front porch, but the light there probably isn't enough to keep them there full time. I have similar green baskets that current hold sedums (visible in the photos above), but eventually I might turn those baskets over to tunias or bachelor buttons.

I need to trim the six big baskets at the house. The Blue Vein on the front porch in particular is long and lopsided. The other front porch basket is the Hoopla/Priscilla combo, and the Hoopla portion only needs a light trim. In the back, the Bubblegum/Jazzberry is most in need of a trim, followed by Honey. The Latte/Really Red needs a light trim at most, and the Royal Velvet look OK and might not need a cut. I stuck a Blue Vein clone into the Royal Velvet basket, and that single stalk is hanging down much further than the rest of the basket and will get a trim.

And finally, an image of a sage leaf. I water inside the greenhouse by hand when we are in town, but I have irrigation set up outside. I use misting nozzles because the water pressure isn't sufficient to get water to the end of the line with dripping nozzles.

New phone who dis?

When is 50 Mp not 50 Mp? When you are comparing a 50 Mp phone camera to a 45 Mp Canon R5 Mark II, The World's Most Powerful Mirrorless Camera. There is no comparison.

I ran over my phone last July 29 when the greenhouse was delivered. For almost the past year I have been using a hand-me-down from my spouse until it also met its end, less spectacularly, being dropped onto the bathroom floor. The screen fractured, then died over the next few days. Today I received the replacement, a Samsung S25. (By the way, when Walmart says 3-day delivery, they are LYING. It took seven days.) The S25 is not a flagship phone, but it is the closest I have ever gotten.

It took maybe 10 minutes to set up the new phone. I popped the SIM card out of the old phone and into the new one, and it was easy from there. Compared to other attempts to activate phones, I feel like we have finally arrived in the 21st Century. Then it was time to check out the camera. Let's jump right to the Expert Raw phase of the testing.

The original for this image is 5712x4284, about 24 Mp. This phone has some modes that go up to 50 Mp, but from what I can tell those are a waste of time and space and I don't think they are available in RAW. Anyway, here is Sempervivum Little Survivor

Those parts of the image that are in focus are sharp, but the problem that is immediately apparent is there is no depth of field. This image was shot at f/2.4, and I did not see any way to adjust the f/stop. You can change ISO, shutter speed, white balance and exposure compensation, but not the f/stop. When I shoot images like this with my ancient (c. 2017) M100, I usually shoot with f/8. When I use The World's Most Powerful Mirrorless Camera, I take up to 36 images at different focus points and combine them with Zerene Stacker.

Here's a little easier challenge from further away. These are the Supertunia Hoopla Vivid Orchid blooms in the basket on our front porch. There also is a Supertunia Priscilla on the back side, but it has been a disappointment and you can't even see it. It looks good at first blush, but closer examination also reveals a lack of depth of field. Focal length is (wait for it) 5mm. That is a small lens and a small sensor. There's your problem.

This Supertunia basket on the back porch is a bit better. I took it in telephoto mode, which increased the focal length to 7mm and f/2.4. There is no obvious depth of field problem, so standing further away is good. It was shot in golden light just before sunset and I fiddled with the color a little bit. The magenta Jazzberry Vista mixed in with the Honey is not blown out, but it is close. Strangely enough, this is probably our best basket at the moment. A month ago I put it in greenhouse rehab because it was looking sad. Now the Bubblegum/Jazzberry basket needs a trim, and the Blue Vein basket is very lopsided. The other three baskets aren't as bushy.

My way-too-early conclusion is the S25 camera phone is good at medium to wide images, but absolutely sucks at anything resembling a macro. Despite its near-flagship status, it is still a point-and-shoot.

Then the question becomes, is this the camera I take on my next couple of trips? In both Michigan (August) and Switzerland (September/October), I don't expect I will need a telephoto lens for wildlife. But I would like to have a capable macro camera. The best solution is the R5 with the 100mm macro lens and the 14-35mm zoom, my only two RF-mount lenses. (I have converters for EF wildlife lenses such as the 100-400 zoom and the 500mm monster.) The lighter solution is the M100 with the 22mm f/2, or its native 15-45 zoom lens. The latter is not a real macro setup, but it does well enough. BTW, you can still buy a new M100 with a 15-45, no longer supported by Canon, for $859 on Amazon. I don't think I paid that much in 2017.

Priscilla

The weak link in the Supertunia baskets so far is Priscilla. It is in the same basket as Hoopla Vivid Orchid and just isn't keeping up. But it is one of the few successful cloning efforts so far and it is doing well in this 6-inch pot.

Now the question is, what to do with it. The Bachelor Button Cornflowers are coming up, and I'm thinking about doing a combo pot with it. Maybe even add in a 'Wicked Witch' Coleus. It might be awful, or it might work. Or maybe have the flowers in one pot and the Coleus in another.

Since it was impossible to dig a hole next to the shed due to the dense gravel pad, I'll probably put the pot in front of there. I have more 3-foot fencing arriving in a day or two, and that's the right height for flower pots.

Gratuitous view of another successful Supertunia clone, Bubblegum.

Let's rank the nine Supertunias I got this year. The criteria is which have been successful but which I also want to successfully clone and carry over to next year.

• Vista Jazzberry - Vibrant magenta purple. I paired it with Bubblegum, and also stuck a clone in with Honey. I want six of these.
• Royal Velvet - Deep purple, unlike anything else I have. Swapped clones with Blue Vein, and will do it again next year if I can.
• Vista Bubblegum - Pink. Very vigorous, almost too vigorous. The Jazzberry is showing through in the shared basket, but I think something other than another Vista might get overwhelmed.
• Blue Vein - White with blue vein. This is the surprise so far. Very vigorous, right up there with Bubblegum. Great pairing with Royal Velvet.
• Hoopla Vivid Orchid - Purple with white edge. Successful in its basket with Priscilla.
• Really Red - A last minute addition since I thought I needed a red. I paired it with Latte and could use it in other combos.
• Latte - Ivory white with dark veins that almost appear brown. The basket with Red is doing OK. Not spectacular, just OK.
• Honey - The most interesting thing about this is the blossoms shifting from yellow to salmon and some other colors. But the flowers often look a bit wilted. It is in a basket with a much smaller Jazzberry clone and I recently gave it a few weeks in the greenhouse to get right. It looks as good now as it has, and all the blossoms right now are yellow. Hard to figure out, maybe it is making a comeback.
• Priscilla - Purple and white double. As mentioned, not successful so far in the basket, doing better by itself in a small pot. The big double blossoms do not self-clean very effectively and it is often necessary to deadhead the dried-out remnants. You can see a dried-out flower in the image above that I neglected to remove.

Vermin

Deer are cute. Deer are vermin. Both things can be true. Keeping them from eating my plants, including plants they allegedly don't like, is a never-ending process.

I was leaving the greenhouse a couple days ago when I had a nagging thought that I hadn't latched the door. Nah. I dismissed it. Then checking the trail camera today, I saw this, my biggest nightmare.

The wind blew the unlatched door open and there was a deer, being given the opportunity to ravage my strawberries and whatever else it desired. But it cautiously stuck its head in the door, then backed away. A few seconds later, the door swung shut.

And then there is the cute part.