Spring Building

Spring Break! So much to do and only a week to get it all done!

Aside from everything else in my life (ie office work and school) to take care of, I spent the better part of this week doing more research on SIPs and taking care of my plants.

Repurposed storage bin from Salvation Army.
Cut up bottles and Zippy's take out container as watering
reservoir/air chamber.

As of right now, I have about three bins I purchased from Salvation Army that I'm converting into SIP containers.  I've recycled some old (and WASHED) bottles and zippys take out containers (those buggers are actually pretty thick...) to use as reservoirs and I'm hoping they work out.  Although, at the moment I don't really have anything big enough to transplant into them, but hopefully in a few days they'll be ready for their new homes.

This is the other SIP container I built.  It's basically the same set up for all of the bins, with a few differences based on what materials I could pull together to be recycled.  This one is filled with a potting mixture of coir, peat, perlite and some hydroton. Not sure how the media will perform, but it's light and fluffy, yet somehow pretty dense... There's a drainage hole on the side of the container facing the wooden board. I will turn it around once I put plants into it. Probably some Manoa lettuce.

Keeping with the SIPs, I also put together two new ones out of a gatorade bottle and a water bottle.  They were built with a bigger reservoir, so I had to put in a wick.  The container is filled with hydroton pellets.  The plant inside is catnip (nepeta cataria) that was sprouted in coir pellets.  The hydroton hasn't been able to wick up a lot of water over the past two or three days.  The top 1/3 stays pretty dry.  I've been watering the pellets a little every day. If the hydroton doesn't wick up more water in the next day or two I'm going to add some coir to the hydroton to help pull up more water.

SIP from water bottle

SIP from gatorade bottle

In other parts of the garden, my spearmint root cuttings have been sprouting and now I've got three little mints popping out of their containers.  They've been in a very shady spot so once they get a little bigger I'll stick them in a more lighted place.

Smartwater SIP with wick.
Bottom Layer hydroton.
Top layer coir, peat, perlite.
Chocolate mint cutting.
Hood removed for photo.

The chocolate mints have yet to be repotted, but I'm in the process of making SIP containers for each of them.  The two from Home Depot are doing pretty well, but are on their way to getting root bound, so I need to get them into new homes really soon.  The injured plantlet I purchased from the Urban Garden Center plant sale still looks really sad, but there's another node that grew, so I guess it's not doing too badly.  I took a cutting from it and stuck it in a smart water SIP and put a hood on it.  Supposedly, mint from cuttings is supposed to put on roots really fast (when they don't have roots already intact) so we'll see how that goes.

Chocolate Mints

Original Miracle Fruit.
May be suffering from overwatering.

In sadder news, my miracle fruit (synsepalum dulcificum) plants aren't doing too well.  Apparently, I didn't check the ones I bought from Lyon Arboretum very well because there was a black spot and mealy bug infestation on one of them.  Thankfully, the mealy bugs hadn't moved over to any of my other plants.  I tried to remove as many infected leaves as possible, but one of them ended up pretty bolo head... Hopefully it pulls through.  Two days after I pulled the leaves, I sprayed the plants with Safer 3-in-1, so hopefully it gets rid of any straggling mealy bugs and helps get rid of the black spot.  What's worse, my SIP experiment hasn't been going too well for my original plant.  The leaves started turning red/brown. I think I overwatered it.  I stopped giving it water, so I'm hoping it will dry out a little.  Once that happens, I'm going to give it a little fertilizer since it hasn't been fertilized once since I bought it about 9 months ago.

Miracle Fruit from Lyon Arboretum.
Was infected with Black Spot and Mealy Bugs.
Sprayed with Safer 3-in-1.

Other Miracle Fruit from Lyon Arboretum.
Was only infected with Black Spot.
Infected leaves were removed.
Sprayed with Safer 3-in-1 to prevent further outbreak.