• Everything other than hot peppers. Questions, discussion, and grow logs. Cannabis grow pics are only allowed when posted from a legal juridstiction.

Sim’s Flower and Garden Glog 2025

Simcows

Simcows

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Well, it’s been awhile friends! Honestly, the last year and a half has been… rough. I’m hoping I’ve turned the corner and will have bandwidth for everything again so I’m dipping my toe back into THP. This glog is for my indoor plants and my raised bed at the community garden, pictured here close to the end of season 2024. Thoughts on both to come :)
 
Earlier this month I got REALLY into gesneriads. They're the subclass of plants that include African Violets. At this moment I'm more into Streptocarpus or Cape Primroses, but they're all so pretty! The cool thing about streps is that their genetics are just as varied as dahlias - dahlias have 8 sets of shape and colour chromosomes, I don't think anyone has sequenced streps yet but it'll be up there. This means that when you grow from seed, you have no idea what you're going to get. On top of that, you can go from seed to flower in ~6 months. Of course, the day after I found out these plants existed, I went ahead and bought seeds. I love the mystery and anticipation in a general flower mix even when I know what colours are in it, this is something better!

A few days later, I went and picked up some adult plants. I took public transit there, and of course it was a cold snap when I went (-15c, not terrible, but we've had a mild winter so far) so I had to get a little creative with my plant packaging but made it back all in one piece, more or less. I'm not so happy with how the photos turned out but I'm posting them anyway cause the flowers are just too pretty!

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got one more, but damaged the flower in transit and the new one is about to bloom. Expect updates!

The person I got the streps from was so happy to share her hobby with me that she gave me a baby plant of a new to horticulture genus - the Michaelmoelleria vietnamensis, or Vietnam Violet. Mine isn't so happy as I've figured out its watering and light requirements, so it has a tan, but it did bloom yesterday! I'll try and take better photos, it really is such a pretty plant, and of course now endangered in its natural habitat.

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Aside from that, I also got some streptocarpus seeds. I thought seeding poppies was difficult, this is a whole new hell.

You can't just dump them in, you can either start them in soil or on paper, and I opted for paper. And then you don't want the seeds to touch, but the paper is pre moistened, so they all stick anyway, and that's how I ended up wearing the lighted magnifying headband I have for fine embroidering to separate seeds:

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The best part? The filter now has a small spot of mould, so I have to transfer all of them 🤦‍♀️
On top of that, after I found the mould, I opened the cup, then the coffee filter dried out, so I might have killed everything that’s here. Luckily the obsession it me hard and I have another two seed packets to try again with, but I got all different seed parent mixes and was looking forward to it. Can’t always win.
 
Hey Sims 😁
I grew numerous Streptocarpus species (botanicals) from seeds and leaf cuttings. Very easy.
For seeds use cocopeat or similar (must be fluffy) and sow seeds on top - the trick is to mix the seeds with fine sand (equal roughly in size to the seeds) and scatter. Cover with a pane of glass or plastic film (we call it cling wrap I think it's called clinch wrap elsewhere). Keep moist. When the tiny green spots look like little leaves then poke holes in the plastic. Continue as they get bigger. This way they'll be hardened off.
Cut leaves across into three strips. Put the end that was closest to the petiole into the medium (vermiculite works very well) and treat the same as seeds.
 
RobStar said:
Hey Sims 😁
I grew numerous Streptocarpus species (botanicals) from seeds and leaf cuttings. Very easy.
For seeds use cocopeat or similar (must be fluffy) and sow seeds on top - the trick is to mix the seeds with fine sand (equal roughly in size to the seeds) and scatter. Cover with a pane of glass or plastic film (we call it cling wrap I think it's called clinch wrap elsewhere). Keep moist. When the tiny green spots look like little leaves then poke holes in the plastic. Continue as they get bigger. This way they'll be hardened off.
Cut leaves across into three strips. Put the end that was closest to the petiole into the medium (vermiculite works very well) and treat the same as seeds.
Click to expand...
I have fluffy coco coir and perlite etc from my pepper endeavours, a lot of the people up here seem to like paper towel more so I decided to start with that but I think I'm transferring this to another substrate (if these seeds can even be saved at this point, ugh) and starting my other ones directly on it. I already know the roots like to be moved and have nice tweezers to help pot up after they emerge. I'm very, very excited for this adventure and happy that someone else here knows what they are!!
 
Leave them on the substrate. They are plants of mostly shallow fluffy substrate in the wild - either in moss on trees or mossy detritus pads on rocks (but also in soil with ferns etc).
Just keep the humidity high by covering the container with film. They soon make nice root systems and once they have at least one proper looking leaf of about half an inch then you can transplant into growing medium
 
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