Reorganising the indoor plants

Nutmeg has decided now is a great time to start crawling. She's seven months old and I wasn't expecting it for another two, so have had to rearrange the plants in a hurry. Previously they were all on the floor near the big French windows. Now they are all on the table against the big French windows - I figure autumn is nearly here so we won't be throwing the windows wide open for a few months. Hopefully by the time spring comes she will have got over the desire to put everything she sees in her mouth.

This was a good opportunity to repot too, so the pot-bound number-one avocado plant has got a larger home complete with improved drainage and those little clay balls on top to try to keep the pesky fungus gnats away.
And the passion fruit seedlings have been moved into a very large new pot with a little trellis for them to climb when they get to that stage. I don't know how fast they will grow in winter so opted for the small trellis rather than having a big empty one for months and months.
Finally, the tiny pineapple plantlets have also moved into minute pots of their own. The pineapple top I planted has taken very well, let's hope the babies take too. They're so cute! The bigger one is still smaller than my smallest fingernail.

More indoor plants

Remember those pineapple seeds I put in water to see if they would sprout? Well, two of them have! They are turning into teeny tiny plantlets. So that has taken two months. If I'm honest, I'm not sure what to do with them next. They're so small - almost microscopic - I don't want to plant them in case they dry up really fast and die. Do I leave them in the water, since pineapple plants apparently take in most of their nutrients through their leaves anyway? I have given them some new water this morning.

The pineapple top I planted has grown too. Its middle leaves have shot up, and are even getting a bit spiky around the edges. The ginger root it's sharing a pot with doesn't seem to be doing anything. I think that one might be a failure. Something to try again next year (if dh lets me...)

As for the avocados, they're all nice and tall now. I've pruned two of them back. The websites all say prune them back to about 6 or 8 inches once they get to a foot high, but I couldn't bring myself to cut them quite that much, they're more like ten inches. One is still too small to prune, and I'm waiting for the others leaves to grow a bit. In fact that one has leaves that are turning brown round the edges and falling off. Strange because the two it shares a pot with are fine! I suspect root damage - perhaps those pesky fungus gnats again - and will be pruning it this week to see if that helps.

You may wonder why pruning would help (if, like me, you're a novice), and the reason is that brown leaves usually result from water shortage. I can't water more because that will only make the gnats worse, so pruning the tree will decrease its water needs, meaning it will already be getting enough. That's the theory anyway!

Avocado and pineapples

This morning I opened up the paper towel protecting my pineapple seeds and found that they all looked just as before. So I did a bit of research and found several different ways of germinating them. Now, 4 of them are in a plastic bag wrapped in paper towel as before, 4 are buried in seedling earth and 3 are in a little pot with some water and the lid on. I made a hole in the lid so they can breathe, and I've put them outside in the sunshine to be warm (will bring them in overnight of course). We shall see which ones grow first, if any.

Michelle from Steadfast at Home asked how I got avocados to grow. The classic method is of course the toothpick one, but that hasn't worked for me in the past so I didn't try it this time.

The one I had as a teenager I started with toothpicks, but as nothing happened for aaaages, I gave up, put it in a pot with some water, shoved it to the back of a dark cupboard and forgot about it until several months later when I discovered a large root and red shoot in there. The water was quite manky by then, and it was very happy to come out into the light!

The two I have now were planted roughly one week apart. #1 I put in the bottom of a yoghurt pot, with some water up to about halfway, maybe a bit less. Before I started #2, I read somewhere that making a few small cuts in the sides of the pit with a sharp knife would help it absorb water, so I did that before putting it in a yoghurt pot too. I took the skin off both. #2 grew very soon, and #1 followed it about a month later. I don't know whether the cutting was what made the difference, as #2 was a somewhat larger pit in the first place, so maybe it was riper?

Once the pit split and the root started trying to emerge, I moved it into one of those sundae glasses that are like an upside-down cone, so the root had space to grow below it. Presumably it would have done fine in the yoghurt pot and would just have curled round to come out of the side, like my very first one did, but I felt sorry for it.

The photo I posted the other day was of #2 - #1 only has a root and hasn't finished splitting at the top yet.

I have another 4 sitting in water now, and have just made cuts in them all to try to speed things along. I also have one that split when I accidentally dropped it while getting it out of the avocado. I don't know if that will grow, the bit that germinates could be damaged but I can't really tell.

Have you found any other ways of growing avocados (or indeed anything else)?

A new blog

My other blog over at Not Really Homeschooling was getting so garden-centric that I have finally decided I should have a separate place for that sort of thing. This is it. Welcome!

If you have a blog about gardening, leave me a comment so I can follow you.
If you know anything about container gardening on a balcony or indoors, leave me a comment and a link.
If you know anything at all about good companion plants for pineapples, please please leave me a comment - I am currently growing a pineapple top and want to plant something with it to provide extra nitrogen in the soil and look pretty in the house. Google searches have not yielded anything helpful so far.

Other items festooning our fireplace surround include a newly-emerged mango sapling (hooray!), some strawberry suckers waiting to be dealt with, three baby kumquat saplings, a possible pear sapling (could be another kumquat), five avocado pits in various stages of germination, and a glass of water with some ground ivy and speedwell in it. I have no idea whether speedwell cuttings will root in water, or at all. Ground ivy should root almost anywhere, it's just waiting to be given some earth to sit in.

There will be photos when my husband gets home with the camera on Friday.