Spring is in the Air - Cactus and Succulent Flowers

With the warmer and sunnier weather, a lot of my cactus and succulents growing on my balcony have a been a lot happier. During the Fall and Winter there is not a whole lot of direct sunlight and along with the cooler weather the plants of course become somewhat dormant. But now in late Spring and with Summer right around the corner, my plants are starting to boom with growth. It's great to see this. I wanted to take this opportunity to show off some of my flower plants. Why not? :)

The first one is a type of crassula. I don't know the exact variety though. It's similar to a watch chain crassula which I also have some of but the flowers are very different. Watch chain crassula, as far as I know, have very tiny flowers that barely extend from the plant but the flowers on this crassula are rather beautiful and much larger relatively (while still on the small side). Check it out:

Blooming Crassula

The next one I want to show off is some type of rebutia species. That unfortunately is as specific as the tag that came with the plant is. The flower is also on the small side (the plant is also pretty small) but it has a very deep and rich pink color. I probably need to repot this cactus soon too.

Blooming Rebutia

Lastly I want to show a cactus (I'm not sure the variety yet!) that is growing some buds. I can't wait to see the flowers when they bloom. I have no idea what color they're going to be at this point either. I need to try to do some research to identify this cactus. But in the meantime I'll enjoy watching the progress of these flower buds.

Budding cactus

I hope to share more photos of my blooming cactus and succulents in the future. I'll also try harder to identify them at least with their type if not the specific variety. Look forward to it!

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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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