I came up with a different way to display a spider plant – the aerial way!

This past May 2022 I came up with a different way to display the typical spider plant with babies! Instead of letting it hang like a typical hanging plant, I used a couple of plant supports previously used for orchids. The stems of the new babies are quite thick and with some clips I gathered up all the hanging stems and created a more aerial display. From afar it may look like air plants. You can see from the image in May compared to the one I took in August that the baby spider plant doesn’t grow as big. I keep it trimmed to keep from weighing down.

I love this display as it doesn’t look too messy and it has an architectural touch to it. I searched online looking for any reference or image of this kind of display for spider plant and I could not find any! Is it possible that I came up with an original idea?? Would you display your spider plant this way? If you do, please let me know and share images!

Spider plant with babies displayed the aerial way. Photo credit: Marilou Strait. Taken May 2022

Updated photo of the same spider plant aerial display. Photo credit: Marilou Strait. Photo taken August 2022

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Chamomile flowers for tea

This year I decided to put more effort in my part of the garden and sowed a few different easy to grow plants in a mini greenhouse in early March. One of the plants that survived is the chamomile. I am pleased that I was able to harvest these beautiful and fragrant small flowers. I pick the flowers before the full heat of the noon sun. Since I only have one pot, I harvested several times allowing more blooms to grow. I used a 2-step drying process since I don’t have much room, a small harvest and pick the flowers at different times.

Step 1: Paper napkins secured on both ends to hold the fresh chamomile blooms.

Step 2: I transfer the dried flowers after a couple of weeks to a paper bag.This will allow the blooms to dry more. I reuse the paper napkin for the next batch of blooms to dry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I may only have enough for a cup or two of chamomile tea but it is nice to know that it came from my garden, and that is good in my books!

 

Balcony Mystery Squash

A mystery squash started growing in my balcony amongst my geraniums! It was a nice surprise when I found that there was a foot tall squash plant growing amongst the red geraniums. I did not even notice this plant growing with the densely potted container. Instead of pulling it out, I kept it to see how far it will grow. As shown in these pictures, it  grew quickly. We figured it may be a zucchini plant since we used compost soil to this container. It was exciting to see it grew so quickly. I quick research and I learned that are both male and female blooms from the same plant. Usually the bees do the job of polinating but this one needed a helping hand, it was hand-pollinated. I also found that you can eat the squash blooms. We we cooked it  two ways, one was pan-fried battered squash blooms and the other was with an omelet.

You can see from the picture the progression from a bloom to about 14″ in circumference. I’m still not sure what type of squash this is but my guess is a Kabocha squash. What do you think?

How’s this for vegetable gardening in the city?