Growing Challenge: Unusual Plants

As a gardener, I love going to gardening centers and the Denver Botanical Gardens in the spring. Love it. I love to see the new offerings plantsmen come up with every year and sometimes I bring one or two new varieties home with me to see if I can kill them quickly or slowly. Errr...that is, to trial them in my yard.

Sometimes these trials are a lot more trying than the plant can handle.

I, and many gardeners I know, have the Drawer of Shame. The drawer in which you have stashed all of those little plastic tags that tell you all about the plant you purchased and then doomed.

Face it: You're not a real gardener until you've killed a few hundred plants.

Sometimes, though, you come home with a real winner and you keep it going season to season.

Here's one I've had for almost seven years that I'm really proud of that just sprouted again today. I took a series of time lapse photos of it, because it's just that cool.

Yes, it's a container planting. Takes a big pot, too. That's a 24" pot!

Spring!

Here it is putting up its cotyledons or seed leaves.

Sprang!

Here it is in full bloom. I call it the Hatchetus offspringia primus 'Caitlin'. I've got two others that I just started recently. They're only 6 months old, but they look pretty good so far.

Sprung!

This is what it looks like when it closes up in the evening. It's very light sensitive.

Happy April Fool's Day!

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Just so I don't leave your plant lust unsatisfied, here's another unusual plant I've grown from seed this year: the Sensitive Plant.

I first came across this plant as a young child while visiting my grandmother in Jamaica. It grows wild there and I've heard it referred to as "Shame Me Makka". I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. This was my most favorite plant ever. Why? Because when you touch it, it does this:
Can you see that?! It folds up its leaves and drops its tiny leaf stalks to the ground. How cool is that?

It may not be as sturdy here in arid Colorado as it is in warm and humid Jamaica, but I thought I'd give it a try. It also gets thorns when bigger, to fend off grazers, so you've got to watch out for those.

In case you were wondering whatever happened to my huge pile of tomatoes, they've been going mad. Mad, I tell you!

On the floor.

Tomatoes, tomatillos and rosemary. Oh my!

On the window shelf.

All lined up with no where to go.

On the basil-free shelving unit.

Two spots are empty because the tomatoes are too tall to fit under the lights anymore. Oh look! Space to start more plants! A silver lining.

Upstairs is hardly any better.

My business partner came over yesterday and we repotted like mad women. We potted up 7 trays of very small plants that I was slowly killing in their tiny strip row homes. Unfortunately, that only accounts for 126 plants. We still have all of those basils (~216) to separate (Almost every cell has two plants in it, so there are potentially 432!) and pot up the remaining flat of tomatoes (~48). Oh, and the remaining, very stressed, tomato plants (32) in the strip row.

Not to mention all of the other herbs in the basement.

Or last season's survivors in the garage. I'm looking at them as an experiment, rather like Schrodinger's Cat. Are they alive or are they dead? I won't know until I can pull them out and let them warm up but since it keeps snowing! I'm not ready to expose them to Certain Death.

Maybe in another week I can show you what lurks in my garage.

Muahahahahaaaaa!