Diana Moves Home

Before I talk about my wonderful, wonderful Wonder Woman pomegranate, Diana, I thought I'd give a quick update on my Black Widow pomegranate, Yelena. I did, indeed, love Yelena to death and she did not make it through the winter. I know I said I'd give her until June, but it was pretty obvious a few weeks ago that she had shriveled up and said "screw this". I can't blame her. She was a tough one, and probably would have made it if I hadn't messed with her so much.

Diana was a cute little thing when I got her. Here's a flashback of her baby pictures.

So she wasn't little-little, but compared to
her recent pictures, she was tiny.

She looked rough for a bit during her
transition from Georgia to Colorado, but she rebounded.

Move-in day to the greenhouse at work.
Diana, Pina the pineapple, and Lemony the lemon plant.
Pina looks great, but Lemony kicked the bucket a couple
of months in.

Diana thrived in the greenhouse! I put here in there to just survive the winter, all I wanted her to do was not die. She thought she went on a tropical vacation and exploded. At one point, she was growing between 6-8 inches a week.

Diana's last week in the greenhouse.

I had to move her out of the greenhouse in the beginning of April, because I was afraid that she'd get too big to move. Luckily, L.E. has a beautiful south-facing window that she has loaned us.

She's thriving in L.E.'s window as well

Being a Colorado native, I was completely ignorant of how pomegranates grew until I saw my first pomegranate tree in Italy, so I've been completely fascinated by how the fruit grows.

The buds grow very quickly
into this elongated thing before blooming.

As the bloom forms, but before it opens,
it looks like a demagorgan from Stanger Things.

You blink, and next thing you know,
there are fruits growing!

Diana will live with L.E. for a few weeks, probably until mid-May, before I move her to Whimsy. This time with L.E. is a great time to harden her off. Not that L.E.'s house is cold, but it is cooler than the greenhouse at work, and we're able to wean her off the drip system she was on. She'll get watered on a regular basis, but no more IV fluids for her. Once she moves out to Whimsy, she'll get a good trimming to start to train her to be a tree rather than a bush. And, sadly, I'll remove most of the fruit to encourage her to grow strong roots so she'll be ready for the winter.

I have a few things left to finish in Whimsy before Diana goes in the ground that hopefully won't take me too long to complete. I want to change out the insulation and put screens over the windows so she doesn't try to grow out of them over the summer.

Putting Maggie to Work

Following last year's failure to get any seeds to germinate, and the subsequent building of the Magical Potting Shed, we finally got to put Maggie to work. I'm not finished insulating Maggie, she's about 60% complete, and I need to buy a couple more sheets of insulation to get her to the point that Chief can put up the OSB walls. However, between the insulation I do have, and the warmer nights, L.E. and I decided it was time to start our seeds.

Not only did Maggie get to work, but we got to use the re-purposed potting bench! I've been looking forward to this day for a long time. Maggie isn't a large shed, but she's big enough for the three of us to work in there side-by-side. The pull-out dough board was perfect! It allowed me to work between L.E. and the Bionic Cowgirl without us bumping elbows.

This pull-out dough board is the
reason I fell in love with this piece.

Mom donated vintage trays to use.

L.E. getting going on her seeds.

L.E.'s seeds happily hanging out in a
south window.

My seeds in the other south window.

L.E. always plants a much more diverse garden than I do, but I'm getting there. This year, I'm attempting sugar snap peas, potatoes, and onions, which are already in the ground. The peas are starting to come up, but the potatoes and onions aren't doing much. They went in a week after the peas, so I expect to start seeing something in the next week or two.

The seeds I planted are San Marzano, brandywine, and cherry tomatoes, along with some small watermelons. I've become such a hoarder re-purposer, that I couldn't let L.E. get rid of a pallet stand thingy that her house windows came on. Instead, I'm going to enclose the bottom pallet, add dirt, and plant the watermelon so it can climb the pallet-formed trellis. 

I realized that after I plant the watermelons, I will still have a lot of area in the pallet that was going to be full of dirt, and I can't let that be unused. I looked up companion plants for watermelon, and found that I'd planted most of those elsewhere, but did find that they do well with peppers, so I'll buy some jalapeno and serrano starts to keep the watermelon plants company. 

I've also been trying to figure out what to plant on the north side of the pea patch, because I can't let that good dirt go to waste. I think I've settled on glass gem popcorn. I have a couple of varieties of sweet corn that I planted last year, but we have a very generous neighbor who allows us to harvest his sweet corn, so it seems silly to grow my own, if I can get some guaranteed good stuff from him. My glass gem popcorn didn't do well last year, but maybe this year, with more space it'll do better. Also in the pea patch, I'll plant cucumbers.

This is a huge increase from my attempt last year, but I've made some tweaks to my gardening plans, which basically means container gardening is out and in-ground gardening is in. 

Send all of the green thumb juju my garden's way, please. It'll need it.