gardening – Page 2

Night Blooming Cactus

Florida has some very interesting plants. One of them is this night blooming cactus (flowering cereus cacti). It gets a beautiful flower overnight and then in the morning it closes up and wilts.

This is around 9pm in September so it’s getting dark earlier.

Around 10pm they have started to open up.

Early the next morning (around 6:30am maybe), the flower is completely opened.

As soon as the sun comes up, the flower begins to close and by the end of the day is wilted. Because cacti grow in the desert where days can be brutally hot, they flower at night to attract the animals that pollinate it.

To Grow a Honeydew – Flowers

Are you tired of all my melon posts yet? Whew! I was worried you might be.

I was so excited when I went to check on my honeydew plants the other day! They have flowers!! The plants themselves seem very small though and I’m wondering if they’ll actually get melons. For now I’m hopeful.

To Grow a Honeydew – Transplant

Are you tired of hearing (seeing) about our honeydew growing attempt? I hope not! I’m really hoping that we get some edible honeydews! Our sprouts were getting a little too big for their little pots, so we moved them to bigger ones. I’m hoping that they can stay in these pots permanently. We aren’t planning to plant them in the ground because the soil here in southwest Florida is very sandy. If they seem to be struggling as they get bigger, I may try planting one or two of them in the ground and seeing what happens. For now, we wait. Honeydews need 3 months of warm (hot) weather.