Here's the picture I posted right after I had repotted it when I got home.I used some potting soil I had stored in an outbuilding over winter.
Oh, balderdash! This is what the same plant, in the same pot, looks like today.The potting soil I used was stored in a 5-gallon pickle bucket with a lid which has never fit properly. I remember once during the winter I saw the bucket and noticed the lid had been knocked to the floor. I picked the lid up and put it back on the bucket, ill-fitting though it has always been.
Well, apparently while said wonky lid was off the bucket, some little creature used the potting soil in the bucket as a cache for some wheat he was very industriously gathering and stowing away for a rainy day. Then when I brought the soil in, warmed it up, used it for repotting my new plant, and watered it, great things happened to the seed. But not so great for my shamrock plant.
Now I guess I'll have to take the plant out of the pot, try to remove as much of the sprouted wheat as I can without harming the plant, and repot it in soil from a new (unopened) bag of potting soil. And then find a new bucket with a tight fitting lid in which to keep my potting soil. (Nice, healthy stand of wheat though, wouldn't you say?)
15 comments:
Or, you could just make Blarney Beer!
Hi, Claire - Damn! Why didn't I think of that? Lemme go out and see if I can resurrect the wheat sprouts from the compost . . .
That's hilarious! MamaPea, I just knew you were growing some "grass" up there, LOL! Reminds me of when I inadvertently started a vegetable garden in my front yard last year: I made a new flower bed around a tree and filled it with compost from our backyard bin, yah, the one hubby had been throwing rotten tomatoes in all year - Brandywine tomatoes in the front yard! They never grew right since it's shady, but I let them get about 2 feet tall because I couldn't bear to kill them!
Hey, Erin - And another story . . . I know a gal up here who tried so hard to grow cantaloupes, which obviously ain't easy with our cool, short summers. But she tried everything she could think of to get them to mature in her garden but finally gave up after a few years. The very next year a vine started growing in her compost pile which she let go to see what it was. You guessed it. A cantaloupe seed from a commercially purchased melon took root in the compost and actually gave her a couple of edible cantaloupes! Guess it goes to prove it's easy when you don't try.
Hey -- I've got that same 'Garden Primer' book that you show in your header photo! It's been awhile since I looked at it, though. Maybe I need to pull it out again.
Congrats on your healthy stand of wheat! Don't rich people pay big bugs for wheatgrass in their smoothies?
That should be big bucks, not big bugs. Ha!
Hi, Jo - I really like that book . . . "The Garden Primer" by Barbara Damrosch. She's had the experience and knows of what she speaks! Plus she writes with such common sense which really appeals to me.
I'm kicking myself now for not snipping off all that wheat grass and throwing it in our smoothie. I tasted wheat grass juice once and it wasn't bad! But I was so frustrated that it was literally choking out my beautiful plant that I just wanted to get it out of there. I also had to dump the last of that potting soil because there would have been no way I could fish out all the wheat seeds!
Thanks for putting a smile on my face today! :)
Hi, Beth - I'll be smiling, too, if the poor thing lives! It looks pretty sad and beat up today. You wouldn't believe how strong a root system that wheat had and I had to tear away a lot of the shamrock's roots to get the wheat sprouts out. Oh, I tell ya, if it ain't one thing, it's another!
Oh gosh, my kitty would love to have a crop of wheat like that to snack on.
Hi, Ruthie - Doggone, I should have sent the plant down to Rochester or you should have sent kitty up here!
Loved the post, Mama Pea! I hope your plant makes it despite the raid from the wheat! So are you going to go ahead and garden this year? I remember you had thought about taking a break. On a side note, we had a squash plant grow in our compost pile last summer after many unsucessful attempts over the years to grow them in the actual garden. The one fruit it produced tasted mighty fine. I'm hoping it'll happen again.
Oh, gosh, that's funny.
The cook thing about the shamrock plants is that they are very forgiving. They are also tubers (Oxalis, I think), so you could always screen out the tubers, repot them, and then wait for them to grow again.
this is what happens under by birdfeeder in the spring!! Real healthy looking growth, of something I wouldn't plant there!!
Hey, Melissa - No, no rest for the wicked, as they say. I'm going to do our usual garden this year. I'm thinking our country's whole shakey economic system warrants putting as much fresh, organically grown food by as we can . . . and the best possible way to get it is from our own garden.
Hi, Jody - I was reminded that the plant has tubers as I was pulling it apart . . . I remember dividing them and starting new plants that way in the past. Happily, my ravaged plant is really showing signs of perking up so I think it's gonna make it.
Hi, Karen Sue - Yup, we could have a healthy stand of sunflowers if we didn't clean up the mess under our feeders in the spring!
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