First baskets

I put together my first baskets today. Actually my first Supertunia baskets; the pea baskets were planted weeks ago and have sprouted.

Winter is going to have its (hopefully) last gasp Thursday and Friday, and I was thinking about putting off doing the baskets until next week. But today I asked, "Which of the eight would I miss the least if they froze," the answer was Honey and Blue Veined. I've been having a hard time finding a match for Honey, and I have two purple varieties that seem to be more interesting than Blue Veined. So those are the two with which I began this experiment. I kept it simple, doing just one plant per basket. If my cloning program works, I will have 2-3 plants per basket, but Supertunia advocates claim that one plant will fill a basket.

First is Honey, and it is already flowering. The Blue Veined basket is next, and the question may arise whether you should plant the rootball in the middle, or try to balance the plant in the basket. The Blue Veined rootball was a bit skewed to one side, but I planted the ball in the middle. All the more room to add a Royal Velvet clone if that works out. (Or spend another $7 at Nana's.)

When I put the potting mix in the strawberry and petunia baskets a few weeks ago, I used half Promix, half compost, and a dose of vermiculite. Everyone says the pH test strips are mostly useless, but for what is is worth I came up with a pH of 7, neutral. Both strawberries and petunias prefer a more acidic soil. Today I dumped the two baskets, screened out the bigger chunks that came in the compost, scattered some water-storing crystals, added two tablespoons per basket of soil acidifier, and planted the tunias in that mixture. I plan on doing the same for the other 10 petunia and strawberry baskets, and the three strawberry grow bags. I have already tried to incorporate the acidifier into the strawberry planting bed.

While I was making petunia baskets, I was distract by helicopters attacking a 1,500-acre forest fire on a nearby mountain, five miles south of the greenhouse. Everyone is hoping that this does not spread into a 30,000-acre bomb like the one five years ago, just to the left (east) of the current one.