Well, I am off on another whirlwind adventure.  I am taking the hubby and the kids on a weeklong cruise down the Mississippi River. Not quite Huck Fin style, but we rented our own little version of a water bound RV and we are planning on taking 7 days to fish, sleep, play and drink adult beverages (the kids won’t be partaking in the adult beverages – Somebody needs to steer).

But for as fun as a week away from home sounds, it is still a week away from home.  As an avid gardener, particularly given that I love container gardening, a week away from the garden is a potential time bomb. No matter how well you plan or how well you think you covered things, there is the potential for disaster.

Like 3 years ago when my wonderful but elderly neighbor hurt her leg while I was gone and was unable to water my plants in 90F heat for near a week. Utter devastation. I literally lost half of my potted exotic plant collection and the other half took the rest of the year to recover. Plus, all that vacation bliss I returned with that year got right back on the plane and flew off to destinations unknown.  Plant funerals are not a good way to end a vacation.

So, here is my game plan to come back to a garden that looks lovely and, most importantly, living:

1)      Kiddy pools are not just for kids – The advice for caring for houseplants when you leave on vacation is to relocate them to the tub and place them in an inch of water.  It is a little harder to do that with 20-30 rather large containers. But a $15 kiddy pool makes a great substitute.  Set it up in a shady spot and fill with an inch or so of water. *bonus* Your house sitter will have all your precious plants in one location, which makes making sure they watered everything that much easier.

2)      Be like the A-Team – have a Plan B – As mentioned above, your back up may need a backup.   Ask a neighbor, family member or a close friend to stop by daily to water your plants. Ask another neighbor, family member or close friend to stop by once or twice while you are gone. If Plan A has an emergency (or just flakes on you), Plan B can at least make sure that your plants don’t pull a Death Valley imitation.

3)      Timers are a girl’s best friend – If you can’t find a Plan B (or a Plan A for that matter) consider investing $20 or so in a timer for a sprinkler.  You can make sure that your plants get a little spa sprinkler treatment daily on a schedule.

4)      Take a little off the top – All those annuals that are looking just a little too leggy, those perennials that came, bloomed and went and the herbs that have not been used quite enough. You need to trim those puppies the day before you leave. This is not just about coming back to a living garden but returning to a magnificent garden.   A week while you are not there will give those recently trimmed plants enough time to recover and greet you looking like the height of May.

5)      Give it away – You know that you have some things in the garden that will reach peak right after you leave or that you just won’t be able to enjoy before you go.  Veggies and herbs can find homes with friends, family and your local food bank. Cut flowers are always much appreciated by senior homes and day cares. Think of it as karma to ensure a blissful and re-energizing vacation.

Think of me fondly while I am floating down the Mississippi.  On a slightly related note, in theory I should not be able to connect to the internet while traveling.  This will make the first time in 10 years that I have been away from the internet for more than 24 hours. Wish me luck.

One of the movies on my “Favorite Movie List” is the Secret of NIMH. On the most basic level, the movie is about moving. The plow is coming and Mrs. Brisby must move her family to the lee of the stone or they will all be killed. Pretty basic premis, if you ask me.

Today, Mrs. Brisby and I are facing similar situations. I must move my gardening family or they will die. As a matter of fact, my whole blood family comes together to save my plant family. With the cold nipping at our heels, we hustle pots into the basement.

And so the misery of winter begins for my potted plants. The poor things have been shuttled into a tiny basement room and they will not see real sunlight again until April, maybe even May of next year.

That is a very long time for a plant not to see the light of day. They will survive under the man made fluorescent, but they won’t thrive and they won’t be happy about it. Have you ever tried to water plants who are pissed off at you. It’s not a pretty picture. Plants may not have eyes, but I will swear they can glare.

But the move is for their own good. They will not survive the night, let alone the winter.

I just wish I had a bevy of super intelligent rats to take care of this instead. Not sure how my cats would feel about that, but it make would dealing with seasonably freakish snow storms a little easier.

I grow ALOT of things in containers. I grow so many things in containers that I believe that my mailman may be petitioning for a suspension of mail delivery to my house in the summer months due to the fact that there is only a two foot wide walkway up to my front porch.

My container collection started out as a way to have a mobile garden. When you are young and bit by the gardening bug, you normally have two things working against you.

I found my Holy Grail. The rare and elusive Mangosteen tree. And like the original Holy Grail, it is destined to bring me heartache, disappointment and cost alot of money in my quest to obtain and keep it. *sigh* Why do I do this to myself? Obsession, that’s why.

For those of you who are not familiar with Mangosteen, it is a native of Asia. The fruit is round, smaller than a baseball but bigger than a golf ball. It has a brown outer skin that is peeled away to reveal a snow white center that is sectioned like an orange. Its taste is a creamy rasberryish-strawberryish-peachy heavenly delight. It is call the Queen of Fruit for a very good reason. I would venture to say the taste is better than good sex (but just below great sex).

I first tasted the ambrosia called mangosteen in Thailand about 7 years ago. I was in love from the first moment the white flesh touched my lips. But mangosteen is a fickle fruit and I had my heart crushed when I returned to the US only to find out that fresh mangosteen is simply not available here.

The mangosteen fruit doesn’t ship well and even if it did, it cannot be imported because foreign grown fruit can endanger US food crops. To top it off, mangosteen fields in Hawaii, California and Florida have just not developed as well as hoped so it is not even like I could sacrifice my kid’s college education to have one of the fresh fruit shipped from within the US. I have tried the canned version but the difference in taste is like that between a store bought and homegrown tomato.

I made it my personal mission to buy a tree. For 7 long years I have scoured the internet looking for someone who sells and ships them. Did I mention that the seedlings do not ship well, either? So far I had only found a place in Hawaii but it would cost me $120 for the seedling. I wasn’t that desperate.. yet. The link is in my Favorites list for when I finally did go right over the edge.

I also had a standing email alert at eBay for the word “mangosteen”. Because eventually everything is for sale on eBay, if you are patient enough. Three days ago, I got The Email and I placed my bid and waited anxiously for the end of the auction. I nearly cried when the auction ended and I had won.

This is what obsession does to a person. This is why they have support groups for people like me. Because I don’t think we are quite right in the head.

Professional growers can’t grow these trees in climates similar to their native homeland and I, a mere hobbyist, spends $40 to have a seedling shipped to me. I think I have about a 1 in 100 chance of actually getting this little baby to survive.

Still, I am delighted. My very own mangosteen tree. Let’s say I beat the odds. Let’s say it grows to make fruit. It could happen… of course it takes them 12 years to bear fruit and I may have grandchildren before I have mangosteen fruit, but it could happen.

Last night I went to a little class on Designing with Containers. It was at the Cuyahoga County Library and was sponsored by Master Gardeners of Cuyahoga County and the OSU Extension Service. The speaker was Master Gardener Lee Ann Sepsi. She did a good job.

I know what you are thinking, what does someone with 30+ containers need with a beginning container class? Well, I have found that you can always learn more about gardening, no matter if it is a beginner class or more advanced class. Such was the case last night.

Here is some new things I learned last night:

• Add white flowers into your container garden. White flowers will make the colors of the other flower look brighter and more vibrant. Even just one white flower plant in the container is enough to achieve this effect.
• Pack flowers tightly to encourage flowering. I knew that you were suppose to pack flowers tightly to make a full looking container but apparently packing them tightly also causes them to bloom more. Being in such tight quarters will make the flowers bloom more so as to out bloom its nearby neighbors and thus (if allowed to go to seed) produce more seeds and push out the neighbor plants. It’s kind of like a “keeping up with the Joneses” effect for flowers. Hmmm… perhaps that explains the Joneses phenomena in human as well?
• Herbs taste better if grown in poor soil. Boy, am I glad to hear this. My herb bed has the poorest soil out of all my beds. But, in relation to containers, because herbs prefer poorer soil, you should not mix herbs and annuals in the same container. They don’t play well together because they need different things.
• Use chartreuse plants in containers for shade. I knew this one in the far back of my mind, but had forgotten it. Chartreuse plants brighten up shady areas.
• Trim back annuals in late July/early August. I really liked this tip because every year, by mid-August, my annual containers just look like crap. The flowers are scraggly, the stems are leggy and the heat of the summer is just taking its toll. It never occurred to me to cut them back. I do so with my perennials in the beds but not the annuals in the pots. She said to trim them back by about half and the plants will grown new fuller stems to replace those lost. The plants will also work harder to produce flowers to replace the ones that were cut off.
• Put old potting soil in the compost bin. This one is another one that I kind of knew. It is just one of those questions I see come up alot and everyone gives a dozen different answers. The potting soil does not have to be thrown away but it should not stay in the pot. Put it in the compost and use it again next year in your garden.

Overall, very informative.

And on a related note… The Master Gardeners of Cuyahoga County will be having a plant sale on June 3rd from 10:00am – 3:00pm at Lakewood Park in the Kiwanis Pavilion. There will be several classes throughout the day on different gardening subjects. I will be there. Any plant sale given by a large group of Master Gardeners has to have some choice plants!

There is a legend about a woman who grew an orange in Cleveland, Ohio. No one knows if it is really true, but there are unverified pictures and people who have a friend who has a friend who told them that it is true.

They say that she had the orange tree for almost 8 years before she got an orange. They say that the orange was nearly as big as a grapefruit. They say that this woman grew this orange without a greenhouse. The really amazing thing they say is that the orange in the picture fell off the tree by accident. They say that there are actually 5 more oranges still on the tree, that are still green but close to being ripe. But that’s just what they say. Who knows if it is really true?

I mean, really, how could anyone grow an orange in Cleveland? Especially without a greenhouse. Either the cold or the lack of sun would keep a real citrus tree from producing an orange. But still, there is that picture… There are those stories… It really is just a local legend. The legend of the Cleveland grown orange.

Welcome to my pride and joy. My porch collection of potted plants. I know, what you are thinking. “My, my Hanna… Um… Those plants look a bit… Um… bedraggled and dead.” Well, you wouldn’t look all that great either if you just spent the last 6 months in a 5′ X 5′ room in the basement with only a bunch of fluorescent shop lights to sustain you. For 6 months they are huddled refugees from the bitter Cleveland winter.

Many of the plants go into dormancy. They lose their leaves and kind of just go to sleep. They are in this plant purgatory just on the edge of death. A few do die. I lost two this year and that is pretty normal.

Altogether 32 potted plants and 15 brugmansia cuttings made the journey back up from the basement.

To tell the truth, “Moving Day” came late this year. I normally would have brought them up several weeks ago. Luckily for me, I was out of town and so I did not have them up before the frost last week. It is hard enough to move these once, let alone three or four times for frost.

My really big pots, with my fig, orange and rose geranium are not upstairs yet. The rain last night kept my husband from being able to move them up (The are far too heavy for me).

But these plants are thrilled to see the light of the sun again and feel the rain on their leaves and branches. You can almost here them yelling “FREEEEEEDOM!”