The Fruit of My Labor -- Well, Almost

This evening, after doing some routine compost maintenance, I decided to take one of my big cherry tomatoes planted in February and transplant it into a large 2 gallon planter. I filled the planter with potting soil, seed starter, not-quite-finished vermicompost and a handful of crushed, dried egg shells. Then I planted the seedling and mulched with the remaining sphagnum peat moss I have. I watered it with compost tea and put it beside the mini greenhouse in the kitchen.

It's a beauty! I'm very proud that I was able to take some of last summer's cherry tomatoes, collect and ferment and dry the seeds, save them in an envelop all winter, plant them in February and nurture them to the point that I now have a fresh new plant growing in my kitchen. The beauty of this is that until last year I had never successfully grown any vegetables other than one or two dried up jalapenos that yielded a few inedible peppers. It just goes to show that with a little determination, even amateurs like myself can garden successfully.

Luna Moths and White Birch Seeds

Sadly, my last living Luna moth is near death. All the others are gone, having petered out indoors or flown away. We released the beautiful #5 two days ago -- he happily flew off, never to be seen again. Now I'm left with three dead moths, one clinging to life, and two trays full of tiny eggs.

I'm not sure if all the eggs are fertile. I never saw #4 mate, so I separted the eggs of #3 and #4 as best I could, simply to find out if #4 did the deed in the middle of the night, or if she simply dumped her unfertilized eggs. Either way, she is now desperately laying the last of her eggs with whatever remaining energy she has. I've been dreaming about Luna moths for about two years, so at this point I kind of feel a little girl with nothing to do on the rainy Sunday after her birthday. Blah.

It's not really over, though: the big question now is whether the eggs will hatch, and, if they do, whether we'll be able to find leaves for them to eat this early in the spring. I'm crossing my fingers that we'll have White Birch, Sweet Gum and/or Black Walnut tree leaves before we have Luna moth caterpillars. I have a Black Walnut and my neighbor has a White Birch, but I have no idea what a Sweet Gum looks like. Guess I'll have to spend some time at Google Image Search to do an ID.

In the meantime, I manged to clip some seeds from my neighbor's White Birch. I read online that white birch seeds can be germinated under light; while the process described in the aforelinked .pdf is elaborate and complicated, I'm hoping that my oversimplified method of letting the seeds dry out under plant lights and then sowing indoors will work. This experiment, if successful, will involve an attempt to grow white birch in containers, outdoors in the summer and indoors in the winter. I would prune to control height and possibly use the leaves as a food source for future generations of Luna moths, mostly to supplement outdoor tree leaf harvesting.

Plant Recovery

Despite the unhappy events of Friday afternoon, my tomato, cabbage, watermelon, cilantro, jalapeno and chamomile sprouts are recovering in the indoor greenhouse. They survived the crash!

Baby Strawberries

I just transplanted my four adorable strawberry sprouts (from seeds I'd purchased on a whim from Target's "One Spot") into 4" pots. For now I'm going to keep them under my kitchen grow lights to see how well they do there. I may end up planting two outdoors and keeping two inside.

Here's a photo, provided by my own personal photographer, Steve. The strawberry in the picture is actually about 1 cm. tall!