Steven, your neck! You have one!

Okay, I was going to be happy with just the skull sitting on the forest floor, but that image of the roots making a neck the last time I repotted it have stuck with me, and today was incredibly warm (almost hit 70... in late January), so I decided to push it a little further.  I decided to give the main project a neck.

As you can see, he currently has a rope around his neck.  Its to make sure the roots pull in close together under the skull to make a proper neck and not just have it be a pile of roots with the head on top of it.

As you can see, its pulled tight enough to even give him a chin!

Only weak spot that I've seen so far is in the back where it doesn't really have the root density to support itself in the proper position right now.  I'm hoping that much like the roots on the face the neck roots will thicken and toughen up enough to lock it into place, but in the mean time he gets more soil under the back of his head to make sure it doesn't lean over at an odd angle.

Wish I had some vertebrae I could stick in there to make a spine to hold him up, but alas.

Next time!

Aphid Free!

The good news is that everybody is growing back nice and healthy after the defoliation and extreme spray down to get rid of the aphids once and for all.  Which worked, btw, haven't seen a single one since I went crazy on them.

Now that they're leafed back out in new growth, I can go back in and take off the older, damaged leaves from the Time of Aphids.  Had to leave some on to make sure I didn't hurt the plant (don't wanna strip one 100% bare when you do that if you can help it), but they don't look very pretty compared to the flawless new growth.  So, time to take them off here soon.

And yes, that was ice in the corner of the grow cabinet you saw in that first picture.  Its been kind of, you know, cold here in winter, and my rain water was frozen rather solid.  Still wanted nice soft water for starting new seeds with though, so I just tossed some rain water ice chunks on top of the starter trays full of soil and left them to melt overnight.

Once melted, I just stuck a heating mat under the catch tray to warm things up and planted half a dozen mystery pepper seeds for a family member.  Not quite sure what they are, they just told me that it had been the best sweet pepper they ever got from a farmer's market that said it was heirloom, and they gave me the seeds from it.  So, I'll give it a go at growing them, see what it comes up as.

Still debating on if I want to bother with ornamentals or not this year.  Can't really eat 'em, and they don't make good root bonsai because they're so small they don't get impressive root systems.  Can't eat 'em, can't display 'em, what good are they?  Eh, I suppose if I kept one going for several years it would end up looking pretty good... they're just not as much of a case of instant gratification as the big peppers are.

I think I'll give the Cumari another go at least, it was an interesting little pepper, even if it didn't do well as a root over rocks.  I'm sure I can find something interesting to do with it.