Avocadocumentary: Week 18--Ambition

[ru]

Lots of activity this week, so let's cut to it!





No INTRUDERS this week for Avobaby, which is good. Though on a slightly different note, Potatobob seems to have accquired aphids again, which was enough to send me into a mildly frothy rage. I have NO IDEA how it got them, since it's been aphid free since I sprayed it last. ...unless some of the aphids left their progeny for me. How nice. Anyway.

Avobaby is getting ambitious. Perhaps it is pushing towards the ultimate goal of becoming a tree, or maybe it's taking full advantage of its nice roomy pot, but it's doing more than what appears to be the usual amount of leaves. And friend ruler does in fact show that when you put a plant in a taller pot, it does in fact look taller! Bet you didn't know that!



I got a really good picture of the bud this time around. As you can see, the three main leaves are developing nicely, but you can peek inside and see that there's in fact a fourth leaf coming in. And I believe if you peek even further inside, there's a fifth leaf coming in. This makes me wonder if perhaps there's even a sixth leaf even further in, and that Avobaby is trying to do two leaf sets at once. Even the two puny leaves appear to still be alive. Maybe they'll actually survive. Either way, it looks like Avobaby, ever the rebel, is disproving my three-leaves-at-a-time theory.

I just hope it doesn't overexert itself. Nothing is quite as sad as a plant that's strained its growing muscles.

On a different note, SQUEE! HOUSTON, THAT IS A GO FOR SEEDLINGS, WE HAVE GO FOR LIFE.



The sunflowers are born! They are cute! And they are VIGOROUS little buggers. They only started emerging yesterday. They're also rather sun-loving(being sunflowers and all). Over the course of the day, I've had to rotate the pots three times to keep them growing in a reasonably straight direction. They remind me of Avobaby when it was wee. *nostalgic sigh* They're also rather enthusiastic. The packet said that they're supposed to sprout approximately 21 days after planting, but on the other hand, that little tidbit of information was included with the instructions for planting them outside, so maybe being kept in a nice warm house got them going early.

At this rate, they'll be ready to go outside in no time at all! I've now started keeping a watch on the tomato seeds--supposedly they're supposed to sprout 7-10 days after planting, and tomorrow is day 7. *cross fingers for tomatoey goodness*

Comments

[grant-p.livejournal.com]

Well, aphids can lay eggs as well as live-birth, they may have left you soem 'presents' before you sprayed them.

This growth spurt on everything is weird, my venus flytrap plant is making TONS of new leaves and has budded off a baby, and it's MARCH. It's still in its winter flowerpot, I don't even have him in the summer fishbowl yet! I also had to pinch off an attempted flower bud. I prefer it going asexual, as I'm down to my last flytrap (I gave some of my others away to people on Bragg) so I need the babies faster then seeds.

That or I'm just a prude. I haven't had a date in years, why should my plant have fun?

[grant-p.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot, I had a question you may have an idea on because I'm lost...I've been taking my flytrap plant outside when weather permits, so I don't have to feed him. This works fine, usually, as the traditional raw meat solution has NEVER worked (it doesn't recognize dead stuff as food, the leaves just open and drop whatever is tried that way).

Well, today it started to rain, and I forgot to bring him in till it was a bit late. No big deal, it's a swamp plant, floods bounce right off, but when I noticed two leaves were closed, I held them up to a light and found that it had eaten two small SLUGS. It never occurred to me that that could happen, and both leaves are in digestion-phase now, so...can slugs do any damage to the plant? I have no idea how mucus affects them.

Sorry if this is a really dumb question...

[peppermintberry.livejournal.com]

Hmm...well, my instincts tell me it probably won't be a problem. I'm sure ones in the wild eat anything that moves (and can fit in its traps), so it's probably geared to handle most standard wild things. From what I remember, another reason raw meat doesn't work is because it's too fatty for the trap and'll kill the leaf it's in. I guess it wasn't geared to eat mammals (or birds).

Also, in response to your previous comment (because I'm a goob and sometimes get slack on responding to comments), something has definitely gone *click* in the plant community around here. I think it has something to do with the amount of light being received now--all of my indoor plants are going just as hog wild as the ones outside (on a side note, my spiky crown-of-thorns euphorbia of doom is growing, which makes me happy. ^_^ ).

[grant-p.livejournal.com]

I wasn't sure, because it got a roach once and the trap died, and reference the fat, I had no idea what the nutritional content of slugs were. Another probelm is that they have to have stimulation inside the trap to begin digestion, I foudn that out the stupid way....

Thank you! I know what you mean on light, there's a ton of it. Reason I know,is that the pigment in my flytraps is dependent on it, bright light brings out a reddish color, and dim light makes them green.

Even the normal LEAFSTALKS, away from the 'mouth', have turned reddish this year.

I love euphorbias, though the toxicity of some of them makes for an interesting time.

I'll leave the slugs where they are, i guess, and see what happens.