so a funny thing about that potted moss rose that suddenly emerged about a month ago: we though that thing had died. we tried to keep it alive indoors during the winter, and it seemed to be doing well at first, but either we gave it too much water, or it had pests, but whatever the case, it ended up shriveling and dying. so we thought. that put had been outside for months for zero activity, until one day i saw the moss rose was starting to grow back. it's one thing to resurrect a plant we thought long dead; it's another for that plant to suddenly thrive and flower, which was exactly the case. i saw a yellow flower and my father said there was also a red flower bud.
funny what a week and some rain will do to a garden: the bitter melon trellis seems to be thriving. despite the 2-month long drought, at least we still have our bitter melons. they're not asian super market sizes, but better than what we've been harvesting so far, which have been sad little melons.
i went inside for wonton soup lunch. afterwards i set my mother up with another apple original show: shining girls with elizabeth moss. she didn't like it at first - said it was confusing - but by the 2nd or 3rd episode she was hooked (a total of 8 episodes, she can watch it in a day).
i had two projects today: harvest my cured garlics from the basement and then clean the basement grow room for the upcoming fall-winter indoor growing season. i started by packing up all the garlics and moving them outside temporarily, where i'd trim them later. i then started cleaning the grow room by vacuuming the floor which had a lot of dried dirt and dead leaves from last season. i even saw some black mold underneath one of the rolling wire adjustable shelving unit, so i had to spray with cleanser first before scrubbing it clean.
once the grow room was clean, it was time to set up the hydroponics station. i moved down the soaked rockwool with mustard seedlings. i set them on two milk crates while a heavy duty led grow light hung from above. on the other side stacked onto two more milk crates was the woozoo oscillating fan set on low oscillation. the whole place reminded me of an antiseptic laboratory you'd see in a movie. i've grown not to like these blurple grow lights because they hurt the eyes. yes, with special googles they look much better, but it's easier just to use white led's. so tomorrow i'm bringing my box of 6 2ft long white led grow lights.
back outside, my father helped me trim the garlics. i chopped off the stalks with a pruning shearer, while trimmed the roots with scissors. we ended up with a large tray of medium-large sized heads of garlic. now i need to decide if i want to keep on growing garlics next season, and how many do i want. i've got it down where i can grow fairly robust garlics now, but they take up space, and they require a lot of patience, plant them in october-november, can't harvest until june-july. we also harvested a bunch of garlic bulbils, but those i'll just plant randomly in the backyard.
i washed outside some trays and containers from the grow room, left them on the plastic picnic table to dry. i also rinsed the rest of my leca beads. can they be stored in water indefinitely? or should they be stored dry, only soaked before using? i know you're not supposed to use them dry, because they'll leech water from the plants.
we bought new pantry and clothes moth traps. for some reason amazon allowed me the option of free same day delivery. so of course i picked that, curious to see if it'd was true or not. an hour later amazon contacted me, said there was something wrong with my order, and that i needed to respond immediately. so apparently they couldn't fulfill the same day request, and needed my authorization for a possible delay. there was something wonky with their system and i kept hitting "update order" with no feedback. later i got half a dozen e-mails thanking me for the approval, even though on the order page it still said approval needed. anyway, the clothes moth traps did arrive today, but the pantry moth traps seem to be stuck in amazon delivery limbo. i put a trap in each of the bedrooms and another trap in the basement. i took home one for myself.
for dinner my father grilled some shrimps outside on the barbecue stove. my parents also made fish and a stirfry of chinese celery, tofu, and smoked ham. the fish was the only thing i couldn't eat, too fishy. the shrimps were pretty good - because they were salty. and the best part of the stirfry was the smoked ham.
after dinner i returned home by 7pm.