Sidetracked Charley

Aero/hydro garden First let me say I am not even sure I like celery. At least not the celery you buy in stores. But I had the same reaction to beets and carrots. Then I discovered carrots are not necessarily orange. They are yellow and red and whitish and purple. Beets can be the same. I particularly like orange beets and they don't stain my clothes like beet red beets. Chard also comes in colors beyond green and white. I began my hoop house garden to raise lettuce in varieties the local market did not carry like red leaf. Summer is when I eat lettuce and winter I don't because it is all green, comes in plastic boxes, and sometimes with e.coli. This year I got the aero/hydro garden and have had two salads from it already. You will notice from the photo above it has red lettuce. Wishing I had bought the 9 cell version instead of 6 but spring is like only 78 days away. So time to begin planning for the garden. Yesterday I sat down with my packages of seeds and a chart on...

Crown of Thorns Before I am a lover of Euphorbias . They are from the deserts of Southern Africa and Madagascar. They have evolved physical characteristics and forms similar to cacti of North and South America and are often incorrectly referred to as cacti. My big Crown of Thorns was one of my first of a growing collection of these succulents from the spurge family of Euphorbiaceae. I picked it up as a 6 inch plant in a New Iberia nursery when my sister and I were touring the northern gulf coast. I believe that was 15 years ago. I made an attempt at limiting its height a few years back to allow it to devote more energy to the new branches and make it a denser plant. That failed. And the height of the plant continued to challenge the window space and soon the long branches were leaning over and leaning against the window. I googled and found the proper way to prune this treasured plant. Still it was very difficult to cut off the four longer branches. Even with a plan. The f...