Seedling catalogue

I'm still working on that list of seedlings - now that I have many of them "numbered" I am trying to get the corresponding labels into the right pots!

This morning before work I went out and tagged a few more, since my plans for doing so were rained out yesterday evening. So far I'm at just over 50 and need to get close to 200 of them documented and labelled. I want to get the photos to enter in my book, too, so that will take some time.

For example, this little guy in a 2" pot (who is all of three and a half years old) is JGS0050 - Matucana myriacantha.

A week already??

What have I done for the week?? Time is just flying by and I'm not keeping up.

I went to an Orchid Show on Sunday but since we got there very late and it had been raining they were just about finished by the time we got there. We managed to buy a few things - not that I wanted any orchids but my aunt did! I got about 4 bromeliads and will see how I do with them - they are kind of interesting and seem to be easy to care - the conditions they need don't seem to be much different from those for the cacti and other succulents.




This week I sowed some more seed - but not many because I'm trying to work with manageable amounts. I've started to see growth in the ones I sowed last weekend and I only hope that they stay healthy and strong, since I got the seed from a friend in South Carolina and I'd love to be able to show him some plants in a few months (or years).

Tomorrow I plan to pot up some offsets that have been languishing in a tray, so that I can start them growing again, since I'm thinking about preparing for the Horticultural Society Show in April - I had planned to display but not sell, and now I'm reconsidering. So since I don't spend much time propogating, I figured I should start now to give them time to grow up and be ready - just in case.

Maybe I will sow some more seed on the weekend - I have some seed that is now quite old, and I suppose I should just sow them and see if I have any luck with germination. No sense in keeping seed until it's no longer viable, even if I don't really want more of the particular plant (can always sell them, right?).

I have taken photos of some of my Mammillarias that are now in bloom - not the fancy ones but I still appreciate them. Those I will post (hopefully) during the week.

Just a quick word

I had set out last month to do better at blogging and have fallen behind again! Not that there has been nothing going on with me and my plants, I just haven't kept up with posting.

Much of my focus has been on my seedlings and getting them documented and catalogued so that I can keep better tabs on them. Turns out that I have just under 200 plants grown from seed (by me) that are over two years old. Come January that figure will jump to about 250. I figure the two-year mark is one at which I'm fairly comfortable to record a seedling as a "real" plant with a considerable chance of reaching maturity. My success rate hasn't been very good since that's from thousands of seeds sown, but I think I'm improving. I've been sowing more seeds and so far things are looking better, but based on my rule just set, I can't record those seedlings until 2008.

I now still need to label them all to cross-reference the numbers with the list and the names and the dates and to take photos, and then I can move on to the ones I didn't grow myself. That will be quite a task, but in the long run it should help me see how things are growing and to not mix up the where, when and what about each plant. Is that important? Of course it is! (To me , at least.) That's part of why I date my photos to track progress.

November is a new month - maybe I'll get to catch up on my blogging, and maybe not. I'll just have to see how things go. To be honest, if I have time, I'd rather spend it outside with the plants than at the computer writing about them, but I guess I have to strike a happy balance somewhere.