A Murder of sorts

What a graceful life it had. I never knew it's name up until a few weeks ago. It decided to put on an inquisitive show, which made me question it's character.....I didn't know it well.....What iwas it? Luckily, GardenWeb has a "Name that plant" forum, and they identified it as a Pepperomia (possibly glabella). What ever, it was one of those plants that I didn't really like, but my daughter decided to keep in her room. Everything seems to flower in her room, I just don't get it. I wasn't really impressed with the flower. C'mon, seriously,I like Hoya's, Schlums & African violets, and this was some weird little green thing, that kind of freaked me out a bit. It doesn't even compare to the flowers of hoya's, schlums, and gesneriads.......it would be like comparing a squirrel to a pancake......exactly my point.....it just can't be done, it makes no sense....lol.



I have been telling my daughter that she can't let her plants go bone dry, but at the same time said don't over water them either. So one day after school, she asked me if it was okay that her plants had been watered last night but she bottom watered them in a tray.....and they were still in the tray, full of water ( I admit to doing it too once in blue moon, and have never had consequences like this. When I saw her plant, I was in total shock. I had never seen a plant that went black like this. I have seen them rot, I have seen the effects of frost damage and I have seen them lose the will to live after being under and over watered. It was the oddest thing......it had to of been poisoning, it had to be murder. **LOL** I salvaged a few cuttings for her, but I didn't even check the roots out, it was way too far gone. And this is why we are told to never let plants sit in water for very long. An hour or two shouldn't hurt too much, but over 20 hours.....that tends to be a little too long. I guess it depends on the plant, and what you are using for mix, but generally this is frowned upon. Proof is in the photo below. A picture speaks louder than a thousand words.



I had mentioned in my post yesterday that the Dragon fruit seeds (Hylocereus) had started to sprout. When I went back and looked at my blog entry, I relized the seedlings were barely visible, so I took a few more shots today, with better close ups of the seedlings.




If you look really closely (clicking on the pic enlarges it for more detail), you can see that a few still have the seeds attached to them. Planting these particular seeds is a great thing to do with kids. My kids actually tried something new.....lol. They were amazed at this weird fruit I had brought home. The seeds are so viable that kids can plant them, and watch them grow, without testing their patience. Mine didn't even have the chance to ask "when are the seeds going to grow?" & "how much longer?"



So my hubby planted a few of these seeds in some rock wool, and they have sprouted already as well. We mentioned the thought of continuing these seeds in rock wool by buying a bigger cube of it (the ones in the pic are 1 inch by 1 inch), and letting them live in rock wool alone. We are going to try and get a hold of some bigger rock wool cubes. I think it will be fun to see what happens, and which ones grow better.