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Monday, May 02, 2005

I'll admit it

So my balcony is getting a bit full of plant life. This weekend I purchased the Bears Lime plant I wanted (after eyeing the blood orange varieties for a while).

Ervy and I undertook the task of repotting our large kaffir lime tree (large for my garden, probably like 6 ft tall) into a 20" container that will probably be its final home. It actually came free of its terra cotta pot fairly easily (wasn't horribly rootbound, but had enough of a wonderful root system to ease itself out). I potted my new small lime plant in the kaffir lime's old pot which will probably be the Bears lime plant's final home (if it survived the repotting, it's root system sucked... of course, that's why we bought it at home depot... yay for 1 yr guarantees!).

I've decided if my kaffir lime tree fruits again this year (as it looks like it's intending to do again), I will actually harvest the seeds from the fruit and try to raise some seedling kaffir lime plants. Kaffir limes are apparently a true citrus (not a hybid whose seeds will produce something like a grapefruit or whatever) which is lovely. I know many citrus grown from seed do not ever flower, but of course with a Kaffir Lime plant, the leaves are its main commodity, so it's not an issue.

I've discovered what the beautiful flowers behind the Woodside Deli are:


It is in fact the flower of a passion fruit! I've never actually eaten one of these treasures, but I hear from my coworker at the GSB that they're quite excellent! They also grow SUPERBLY from seed, and I think I may try this if I ever get ahold of the fruit. (I may fertilize some of the flowers behind the deli, and see if I can get ahold of some fruit that way...).

I have lofty goals for growing... but of course, as I mentioned, my deck is getting pretty full... Do most edible things in the garden require full sun? What container edibles prefer light but not direct sun? I'd like to plant whatever those could be on the other side of my house :)

5 comments:

Marina said...

That brings back memories. I had passion fruit vines in both my homes in Singapore & Australia. There are different varieties. The one in S'pore had a yellow-orangey, thick "skin" which was easy to bite into. The other had a more leathery, purple skin. It is mainly used in desserts, jams, etc. in Australia.

Anonymous said...

Sigona's has passion fruit all the time.

Moze said...

Passion fruit is an acquired taste, but once you have acquired it--yum. Try it in some yogurt, or as ices. Slurp!

Wendy, R.N. said...

Oooh, and the passionvines attract butterflies like crazy. I have one in my backyard just for butterflies. Completely took over my clothesline.

W. :)

Wendy, R.N. said...

Hey Lori,

You had inquired how big the passiflora can get. Well, here's mine:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v200/wlwhitley/Picture016.jpg

With my evil cat in it for scale. It is about 6 feet high, and totally took over the support for the clothesline.

It started out as a little weedy looking thing, and this is a year and a half later.

I don't know what your growing situtation would be, but it would need a pretty big trellis to be managable.

W.:)

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