Either way, life aside from gardening has been great. I’m learning to play the guitar, the garden while dim has been going okay, school’s been fun, my cat’s alright, and I had a fantastic thanksgiving.

I hope I’ll be able to post some more soon and MAYBE take some pictures finally

Hi dad!

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c81/stoatmax/20080922_6.jpg

CATERPILLARS AND BUTTERFLIES!

This is going to be a ***** if I have to add tags around these for them to show up! ):<

EDIT: Arg, I had to xd

School. Anyways….

My two best papayas, I’ve really pampered them.

My mango seed is sprouting, finally. It looked dead but it has a nice root and tiny sprout.

An Avo seedling, sprouted from a seed from our tree.

Lychee seed germinating!

My pepino melons are doing great. Is it a bad idea to transplant it to a bigger pot while it has fruit on it?

My Stevia Rebaudiana plant. I have two, and they’re just fantastic.

Stop eating my taters!

Allegedly, if you insert one end of a candlewick in water, and the other in the stem of a cucurbit, the water wicked up into the stem will feed the fruit and increase it’s size, moisture, and quicken ripening.

I’m currently experiment with this on a crimson sweet watermelon. I’ve used a piece of 100% cotton. I’ve drilled a hole in the stem, inserted one end of the cotton in the stem and the other in a bottle of water. It’s wicks completely to the stem, and stays completely soaking wet. It uses up water quickly, and seems to be doing the melon good.

I’ll be doing another experiment with water feeding, and taking pictures as it goes along. Expect it soon.

I’ve been stung about 3 times in the past 3 weeks, and I refuse to mow my grass because I want to have bees in the yard. I’ve only ever gotten blood poisoning before, but we’d put mud on the sting and blood poisoning wouldn’t happen.

This time, I got stung and started to get hot. Really, really hot. I rushed inside, and looked up the symptoms and I started itching really bad on my head. I was getting hives, another symptom. We didn’t know much about it, and I was hesitant to get a shot, so we put it off for a tiny bit before I went to the hospital. While my mom drove like a loony, I knew I had to have my dad give me the epipen. I had hives all over, I was so hot, I had severe chest pain, my fingertips and lips were numb. I could feel me breath getting labored. He found a good size muscle on my thigh, I patted it to numb it, and he jabbed in the needle. It didn’t hurt a bit, I counted to ten, and that sweet, sweet Epinephrine took effect. My breathing took a while to get back to normal, but I could feel it helping.

I stayed a few hours at the hospital, and because of Epinephrine (adrenaline) injection, I felt the crash. I got really tired, really sore, really fast. They monitored me for a while and told me that I had an upper-middle severity reaction. Because the reactions get worse each time you get stung, I know I have to administer the injection immediately then go to the hospital. I’m glad I’m okay, my dad was really worried and scared.

It’s funny.. I didn’t even feel the sting much. I heard my dad yell, and I thought something was wrong so within a second I was outside of the house and where he was. It wasn’t an emergency, he just wanted to make sure I could hear him, I had my headphones on. Well, somebody had been careless with picking our squash and uprooted a plant. Unfortunately, in my haste, I ran through the clover and had a small stinger in one of my smaller toes. I scraped it out with a fingernail, we got mud on it, but it was too late, I felt the heat and just had a feeling that this would be an allergic reaction. I’m happy I’ve learned what to do in this situation, it’s a dangerous allergy, but with proper precautions won’t harm me.

In it’s concentrated form, it’s 250-300 times sweeter than sugar.

It’s a shame that the USDA hasn’t accepted it as a safe sweetener yet. I believe it’s due to the sugar lobby.

Anyways, as a plant, stevia is amazing. It’s not very fussy, it’s easy to grow, and if you lay down a chute and cover it with some dirt, it will readily root. A single leaf alone is 25-40 times sweeter than sugar. It can be used in all kinds of applications. Bruise a leaf in your tea/coffee, use the powder for baking, cooking, eating. It has many possibilities.

You can buy seeds online, but I find them very hard to start. Go to your local nursery, and try to find the sweetest one.

A lot of things have been happening. I’ve received a ton of cuttings, sprouted a few papaya, got a ton of new things.

Hawaiin Papaya has germinated. It’s doing really well, I’ve got it in coco-mix and humisoil.

Here’s a large tray of Papaya, Passion Fruit, Date, Rambutan, and Lychee seeds.

My mom’s friend Jack was nice enough to give me some plumeria cuttings. Fun!

I just bought a thompson’s seedless grape today. We’re making an arbor for it soon.

Stevia Jungle! Jealous Matt?

I just bought a pepino melon plant as well. I’ll have delicious pepinos soon!

Our strawberries have stopped producing and are focusing on heavy runner production. Next year..

My greenhouse is FULL of fussy Datura, begonia, impatien, and tropical cuttings right now, thanks to Jack.

I hope they root!

We pulled our Sugar snaps after the powdery mildew became too fierce. Pole beans are now in.

Melons, Sugar Baby and Crimson Sweet.

Avocado…

And last, but not least…

Grobal!

I’ll be writing a review soon on it’s performance. I really like the idea of such simple hydroponics.

‘Til next time!

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