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.

Coleus flower

I managed to raise 10 coleus from a Burpee variety seed packet this year, and two of them got chewed up by deer when I left them outside three weeks ago. Those two have recovered well, and the green one that looks like lettuce now has a flower stalk.

Flowers are a no-no in the coleus world because they detract from the real show, the leaves. Although this one has unusual leaves, it has no color other than green. I decided to let the flower stalk go and see what happened. Every once in a while I take the greenhouse potted coleus outside and let them sit in water for half an hour. When they go back inside, I put them on top of the beds without the saucers.

A solid green coleus might be interesting if paired with ones of different colors, but for the most part this is what you want when you plant an unknown variety from a seed collection. I moved this one into our bedroom today.

I'm presuming that the 10 Burpee coleus are not sun tolerant and I keep them on the back porch where they miss the morning and mid-day sun. The four ColorBlaze 'Wicked Witch' (original plant and three clones) are fine in the sun. I have some things I want to do next year and I'll probably have to get ColorBlaze varieties to do them. The three 'Drop' varieties (Strawberry, Cherry and Chocolate) have a trailing habit and could be used in hanging baskets or large planters. I also want to get the 'Golden Dreams' variety. I'll have a hard time finding a place for the colorful generics, and the generic greens probably will not make the cut for overwintering in the garage. So flower away, it may be your closing act.

Our long national nightmare is over

I started the Monarda/Bergamot/Bee Balm seeds back in January. It has been quite a journey to get to this point, involving the justified deaths of several million aphids. For months I was soaping down the seedlings every day. But eventually two of the plants became vigorous enough to withstand the infestations and became viable plants more than a foot high, and today I planted them next to the house. The first one is the larger of the two, and its recent demands for water were a motivating factor in getting this done. It was wicking up several saucers of water every day and it became easier just to plant it.

The other one isn't quite as big or as thirsty. I put it next to some other plants that we have had since the beginning (2020) that the deer have been chewing on continuously. I finally caged them today.

I put cages around the two Monarda even though they are supposedly deer resistant. The one at the greenhouse has not been touched, but one at the northeast corner of the house was sampled and has not fully recovered. We also have three Monarda in a new landscaping project at the house, and they have not been touched yet and actually have flowers although they are not as tall as the two pictured here. The plan is to throw a fence around them just in case.

So that's right, we have seven Monarda at the two properties. What makes these two in the images special is I started them from seed. I also have two cuttings that aren't dead yet, and one seedling that appeared from somewhere, not sure where. I'm not 100% sure it is a Monarda, but that's my guess at this point based on the shape of the leaves.

Originally I wanted to plant the two hand-raised Monarda next to our shed. But apparently the Amish who packed down the gravel bed for the shed did an excellent job and it was impossible to plant anything in it. It was like digging into concrete.

I also gave the 2025 petunias and geraniums a trim and moved them out to a new expanse of rocks that were part of the landscaping project. If I could go back in time six years, I may have started that area with wood chips rather than rocks, but here we are. The barrel in the background has not been planted yet, but the current plan is to put a Shasta Daisy May in the center and perhaps some alyssum seeded around the edge. Once again, a Shasta Daisy should be deer resistant according to the interweb, but Red Lodge deer have proven that they do not read the interweb and there will be a precautionary two-foot cage around it at least for a while.

In the greenhouse, I have the big pot of seven Supertunia cuttings and three smaller pots with large, vigorous Bubblegum, Priscilla and Really Red cuttings. Maybe some of those will end up in a big pot in the rock garden but I have to figure out the cage situation. Tunias are what you call "deer candy" and protecting them is not optional like it might be with Monarda. This image of Bubblegum in a 10-inch plastic basket is from June 28 and it is bigger now. Unlike the 16-inch coir baskets, I didn't put water crystals or a plastic plate in the basket to retain water, and it is doing just fine. I may have been overthinking the baskets.

Coleus

Rather than battle aphids to raise peppers, I'm becoming a believer in planting what grows without trouble. Coleus, for the most part, is easy, and I can buy peppers at the store.

Sure, a couple of these "deer-resistant" plants got mauled by a deer a few weeks ago, but they have both bounced back. This one, in fact, is probably the tallest coleus and now has a flower stalk. There's a lot of advice out there that you should just go ahead and clip coleus flower stalks, but I'm going to let this one go. I want to see what develops, and to be frank, this plant has always been expendable due to its lack of color other than green. After it is done flowering, I may put it outside again to see if the deer are still interested in it.

Most of my coleus are out of a Burpee seed mixture, and most have some color. And of course there is the purchased ColorBlaze 'Wicked Witch' that I got along with my Supertunia order from Proven Winners Direct 10 weeks ago. The alleged height of a mature plant is 24-40 inches with a spread of 18-36 inches. That is "garden" size. In a small/medium ceramic pot, my plant is nowhere near that size. I clipped off the older leaves which seemed a bit tired, for lack of a better description, and the newer leaves are smaller. It is very bushy, but small. I'm thinking maybe it needs a bigger pot. I took three cuttings, and one of those ended up in a larger pot at the greenhouse, so we'll see what happens with that.

Lately I've come across ideas for potting coleus and petunias together. I have coleus, I have petunias. I don't have an available large pot unless I relegate one of the chives back to a fake terra cotta, of which I have two. I gave away the saucers for use as fairy gardens, but I can use one of the black saucers instead. I could take the two smaller 'Wicked Witch' cuttings and pair them with 'Jazzberry' and 'Bubblegum,' if I have viable cuttings of those. (Not sure.) Then put it outside the house, swapping out the petunia pot next to the AC unit on the south side. That pot would go to the greenhouse, where there will be room once the potato plants die. One reason I write this blog which no one has access to read is it helps me decide what to do.

The neighborhood has an abundance of daisies this year, so I dug one up out of the vacant lot next door and potted it. I doubt the owners would mind because they mowed the lot a week later. It is blooming on the back patio now.

I was wondering what variety it was and found this on the interweb: "The most common wild daisy in Montana is the Oxeye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare). Originally an ornamental escape, it is an aggressive, state-listed noxious weed commonly found along roadsides and in meadows. Oxeye daisy is highly invasive and spreads aggressively through both seeds and underground rhizomes."

Don't plant it in the ground and deadhead the spent flowers, check.