And fall begins?

 Well, we should be seeing some fall weather, but so far, it's been HOT.  Here it is, October 4th (the big "10-4") and it's almost 90 degrees and windy as hell.  But I guess today is the last of it... they're predicting the low 80's tomorrow, then possible storms tomorrow night brining in a cold front that will give us a fall-like high on Monday of the low to mid 60's.  YAY.  I'm tired of heat!  Tomorrow, I will make it a point to get the second east window shut in the greenhouse (I shut the other one a month or so ago when we got cold temps at night...)  Then, if the night temps really go down, I'll shut the south window.  Because the north window is easy to use, I then use that one to open and shut as the weather permits in fall and early spring. The other three are challenging to open and shut, so they get opened when night temps are above 45 and shut when night temps fall below 45.

Today was the last day we will be doing the farmer's market.  There are 2 more weeks of it, but I think it's going to be too cold early in the morning and I just don't care to be freezing my ass off out there!  So I will be giving the last of my "extras" to Michelle.  She runs a plant booth the first week of September at the Holy Cross festival.  I've been giving her plants for the festival for years, and this year I told her that early September is a little too early for me because I'm selling at the farmer's market that goes on for another month.  I asked her if it would be ok if I gave them to her after the festival, and she could winter them over until the next year.  She was fine with that, so now I can give her a lot more.  If she has the room, I think this will really benefit the festival, and it's a lot better for me!  But it's nice to have someone to send my "extras" to because I have trouble finding space for everything in the fall!

I have a lot of catching up to do with posting photos of my most outstanding plants this year.  I spent a lot of time blogging about (or should I say "bitching about") the things that were disrupting my life.  Neighbors, health things... So on to that more fun task!

The Hoya we used to call 'Dee's Big One', now called skinneriana, was one I got from a Florida plant friend quite a long time ago - maybe 20 years or more.  I grew it for a long, long time and when it didn't bloom for me, I got rid of it.  I got another one about 4 years ago in a trade.  It bloomed at long last!  A nice bloom, too...

I have no idea why it's happier than it was before, but I'm not complaining!  There was only the one bloom, but that's ok, too...

Recently, as I was watering plants, I found flowers on a Sinningia I got from Karin, my Plattsmouth plant pal from the cactus club.  This is one of those Sinningias that develops a caudex and it seems a little easier to grow than the fuzzy leaved one I've had in the past.  Here it is...

The leaves are highly textured on S. bullata, and you have to be careful not to let it get too dry or the leaf edges turn crispy.  I hope I can maintain it through the winter - you have to be cautious about giving too much water to caudex plants in the winter or the caudex can rot.  But I can always cut it all back in spring if I do end up with crispy leaves in the winter months...

I enjoyed the unusual flowers on two different weird plants recently.  First was Cynanchum marnieranum.  Many Cynanchums are strangely leafless plants with long hanging stems and are grown mostly for their weird flowers.  I've been reading about some that have leaves, and I think I'm going to go on a hunt for some of those to grow.  Anyway, here's the weird flower of marieranum...

And just so there's no doubt that I love weird, here are the flowers of Ceropegia ampliata...

The smaller one has yet to "open"...But the bigger one is about 2.5" long to give you an idea of the size.  Ceropegias are some of the most other-worldly flowers I've personally grown.  Everyone seems to know of the one they call string of hearts, C. wooddii.  A photo of its flowers:

This photo is from the web... I grow it, but I don't seem to have any of my own pics of the flowers, probably because it's so common and flowers so profusely that I haven't bothered... But I think everyone has grown this one at one time or the other.  Probably my favorite Ceropegia flower is C. radicans...

They call them "parachute" flowers and I think this one illustrates that name best of all!

My Haworthias came in looking like a million bucks this year!  Which proves, in my head, that you really can't get "too much" rain.  C&S folks would have you believe that too much rain will rot your plants, so you should cover them at a certain point.  I don't, never have, and at the end of a particularly rainy summer, they always look great!  Not that I haven't had losses due to rot.  It happens now and then.  If I kept plants soaked with tap water, they would surely rot. So there is definitely something different about rainwater. Whatever it is, the plants absolutely thrive in rainy summers!

So back to my Haworthias.  I'm going to how some photos - I have around 40 or 45 (36 according to my database, but there are several lumped into one species because I'm a sucker for every variant of that species!)  So here are the ones that really knock my socks off!...

First, here are some of the maughanii and truncata and hybrids of those two species that I can't pass up:

They hybridize these like crazy and 15 years ago, they would sell pups for a ridiculous price, some over $500!  The great thing about Haworthias is that they stay relatively small, they grow slowly and they're perfectly happy on a north, east or west window sill.  In habitat, they grow in shady spots, so they don't need lots of light to thrive.  There is nothing interesting about their flowers and they are all exactly the same - they shoot up a tall flower spike and little white flowers open along the top of the spike.  Many growers pull the flower stalks to force the plant to put it's energy into the plant itself rather than flowering.

Other Haworthia that are looking awesome... H. emelyae comptoniana:

H. reticulata v. hurlingii:

You can't tell from the photo that this is one of the tiny Haworthias - that pot is at most a 2.5" pot!  And we have H.pygmaea 'Love Heart':

H. cooperi - I grew this one for years but I think I lost mine in that bad hail storm a couple years ago, so I just got a new one:

A nicely variegated one - it didn't come with a name, but I think it's a form of H. cymbiformis:

One with a lost tag, but I'm pretty sure it's a form of H. emelyae, and maybe even another clone of emelyae comptoniana - there are a lot of them with slight differences:

This is a particularly interesting one... H. magnifica atrofusca.  The leaves grow in a less symetrical way than most Haworthias, but it's the pink tones that make it particularly beautiful!:

This MAY be a splendens hybrid:

And that's all I'm doing today.  My back is screaming at me so it's time to go ice!  More next time!