Gasp! Blooming Gasteria!

Yep, you read that correctly. Blooming Gasteria! That sounds like a phrase that would be uttered by one of the Mystery Gang in an old Scooby Doo cartoon. But it's actually a plant that I have growing out on my balcony. Gasteria is actually a type of succulent and the one that happens to be starting to bloom. I'm not certain the variety of my gasteria but I think it Gasteria pillansii or commonly known as Namaqua Gasteria. It's is quite a striking succulent that grows much like a fan with leaves only growing in two directions. Mine is starting to grow a flower stalk. I should grow much longer by the times the flowers start to bloom.

Blooming Gasteria! Namaqua Gasteria growing a flower stalk.

Gasteria are known to have some bright colored flowers so it should be interesting to see them once they bloom! I'd also love to see this plant produce some new plants as well. I always enjoy propagating my plants :) which is why you might notice some of the other random succulents I have in the pot with the gasteria including a hen and chick and some crassula varieties.

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Windowsill Radishes - Day 31 - Death of the Cotyledons

The radishes have been growing for 31 days at this point from the day I plopped the seeds into the dirt. As of day 31, I've noticed that the cotyledons, or embryonic leaves, for both plants have finally started to yellow and die. I was curious how long these would last. They've grown very large throughout the life of the plants thus far too. The radish bulbs do seem to be plumping up nicely too. I'm excited to see what they look like on the day I decide to pluck them from the dirt. I'm really curious to see if there's much more to them than meets the eyes (above the dirt in this case). Day 31 Side View Day 31 Top View Radish Close-up Good-bye Cotyledons

Radish Season is Over - I think...

Much like shell art is over in Portlandia, I think it's safe to say that radish season is over in my neck of the woods. The weather has just warmed up too significantly as of late. If you saw my post from yesterday, I ended up harvesting some of those radishes as they didn't appear to be growing any more. I will post something about that in a few days or so. Upon sampling, they were much too spicy to my taste. I think the window of growth opportunity is over. I probably should have started in early spring or late winter but this was more of a fun experiment stemming from the shelter in place orders. Anyhow, I'll probably be plucking most of my radish plants in the coming days except for a few that are or might be bolting. They'll serve to make a nice dish of radish greens. Some strange looking radishes

Windowsill Radishes - Day 35 - The Radish (singular) Harvest

So day 35 rolled around and I was still committed to harvesting a radish - curious to see how it's grown. I decided to pull the radish that was already more exposed above the soil first. I had no idea how much of the radish was actually below the soil. Have a scroll through the images below to see the harvest. I suppose I should really be putting harvest in quotations. "Harvest." But after plucking the radish from the dirt, my first observation was, "wow, this radish is pretty small." But upon closer inspection and after cleaning off the dirt and stray roots, I got a sense that the radish was plumping up below the dirt. I think I probably should have let it grow longer but hey, my curiosity got the better of me and plus the seed packet said matures in 29 days. I'll be writing up another post to talk about the taste of the radish and the radish greens. But after plucking the radish, I have committed to leaving the other radish growing for at least another fiv...

The Capsule Garden

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