Balcony Make Over Pt.4

The day had finally arrived to when we would choose our new plants. We biked to the store and looked around — there were so many nice ones! Big flowers, small flowers, flowering cacti, flowering mini trees, flowering bushes...you name it. It was kind of hard to pick. Eventually we settled on an orchid (not the pot kind), a hibiscus, a "flower" (don't know what it's called), miniature roses, and a japanese rose!

 It took a bit of fadoodling to get all of the plants to fit on our bikes, but we managed. Once they were home, we got to repotting the ones that needed it. The hibiscus (a lovely yellow one), miniature roses, and japanese rose got a new pot.

The "flower" and the orchid (—> both on the far right) were kept in their original pots because A) we didn't have any reasonable sized ones for them to go into, and B) at that point, we couldn't be bothered :3.

 

Now for some reason, my phone ate all the pictures of the new flowers when they first arrived. So, all these ones you're seeing are from the "future." This one, for example, is from the hibiscus in its new pot, happy and starting its first blooming!

The hibiscus settled into its new pot very nicely and bloomed almost immediately. It's still blooming now; all nice and happy!

It might be one of those plants that bloom all year round, like the Purple Flowers and the Magenta Flowers. It would be cool if it was! Unfortunately, like the Purple Flowers, the hibiscus flowers only last for a day in full bloom. Very short lived. Still, they're beautiful while they last!

The other plants did fairly well: the "flower" had a blooming spree before settling down into green-plant-mode, the orchids lost their very pretty flowers to a storm and replaced them with two extra stalks, and the japanese roses did nothing (so I guess it was okay). However, for whatever sad, sad, reason, our poor miniature roses withered and died within a few weeks. We think it was transplant-shock, but it shouldn't have gotten the poor plant that badly... Then, I saw it.

Bugs. They were back. And they were on my new plants.

How could this be? How could they have invaded the new ones so quickly? I don't know, but they were there and they were causing trouble. I first spotted the mildew bugs (easiest to kill, phew) on the japanese roses. When I pulled back a stem, I saw a whole line of the dratted things. The japanese roses had it bad. No wonder they were doing nothing!

Grabbing my q-tip and rubbing alcohol, I got to work swabbing those little things off my precious plant. There were a lot of them, and I was sure I missed some eggs or bugs on the first swipe. So, thus started a daily check for the mildew bugs. It took a couple of doses to get all the bugs under control, but it seems to have balanced out for now.

However, those weren't the only bugs I saw. On the buds of the hibiscus, this white, sticky 'fluff' started to appear. When I poked it with a q-tip, it revealed itself to be yellow eggs. I never actually saw the bug, but I kept finding its eggs. So weird. Anyway, I swiped it all away, adding it to the list of check-this-plant-all-the-time. The hibiscus never seemed to be effected by these eggs, luckily.

The last bugs I found were scale on the Magenta Flowers and the Purple Flowers. This was nothing new; they've been recovering from it, and it only required some scraping. The Magenta Flowers perked up quite nicely and even started blooming in earnest and growing back in the places we trimmed it!

Sad news: the Purple Flowers died. Yeah. The long-living, ever-flowering, flowers died. The scale got to it, I think. Or something ate its roots — it just started loosing leaves and flowers like fall time until it had no more left. Just as we were accepting it's death, BOOM new leaves. They were tiny at first, a small hope of life, but slowly they grew bigger. Now they have a decent amount of leaves on one stem. Hopefully they stay alive!

So, that was the Great and Long War Against the Bugs. I can't quite say that's done, but now we've reached to the point where I'm 90% they're all gone and my plants are safe. We'll have to see. Anyway — back to plants!

These are the japanese roses about to bloom! After the mildew bug feasco, they took a little while to get used to bug-free life. When it did, though, they bloomed, bloomed, bloomed!

I was a little surprised when they came out magenta and pink (why are there so many magenta flowers over here?) as the pictures online indicated they were going to be yellow. Still, they're majestic and definitely one of my top favorite plants here. You can obviously tell that by how many pictures I took of them :D

 

Somewhere around here, Mom found some pumpkin seeds sprouting, so we planted them. And boy, did they grow. I was totally expecting them to go, "Dirt? BLEH!" and die. But no, they took root and shot up; becoming a full-fledged plant in no time! Now they're currently refusing to grow on the stick I placed near them and are instead poking my chinese evergreen (that's red) and growing around the balcony rails. Silly, stubborn plant. Here's it newly potted.

                                      

 So yeah. That was my very long, semi dramatic balcony makeover. Plants died, plants thrived, bugs were fought, and flowers were appreciated along the way. Now things have stabilized, the view from my workplace is nice and planty, and I'm glad things are finally in place. The balcony garden is not completely how I imagined it in the beginning, but how it turned out is much better.