I have planted peppers and basil in seed trays and am trying out the new window shelves for their intended purpose. The hardest part is going to be keeping them moist. I forget they are there.

The ginger in the water absorbing crystals is not doing well. I think the “crystals” are desiccating it rather than providing life giving water.

I bought ginger root intending to make Singer’s Tea, but left it in the plastic bag for too long and it started to grow.

I have tried placing the root in water (yeah, this has happened before) but the water quickly grew mold and the root didn’t do well. This time I thought I would do an experiment with water storing crystals, with the idea that it might keep the root moist without drowning it. And it looks cool.

Wow do the “crystals” absorb large quantities of water. I thought I was being conservative with the amount of dry crystals, but they absorbed all the water I put in the container, and I had to scoop some off the top. I did add some Miracle Gro fertilizer so there are nutrients in the medium. I placed the root into the container and placed the container in the front window.

I’m not holding much hope on this experiment. The ginger shoot is not radiating happiness in its new container, but we’ll stay the course for a couple weeks to see what happens.

Update: this does not work. The ginger starts to grow, then withers.

I was given a pot of Mums, so decided to plant them in the front garden. If they lived, awesome, if not, at least it was some color for a while. I had some spectacular mums in Colorado, or I remember them as spectacular. They aren’t usually as happy in the Texas heat, but since it is entertaining the idea of winter here, maybe it would work.

I was pleasantly surprised that the plant hung in there and finished blooming. On hot days I did have to give it some more water, but overall it did better than I expected. Then it gave me a shock. It started new buds and bloomed scarlet flowers.

I thought maybe that there was a different plant growing up from the soil, but when I deadheaded the old blooms it was obvious the bright red flowers came from the same stems. Huh. I did an internet search, and wow, is there a load of garbage about mums out there. So much worthless click bait. I gleaned that this and many other different mum color changes have happened to others, but was not able to find a reliable explanation why. Someone did mention that growers will do things to the plants to make the blooms change color, but most of the answers involved mixing up seed color, which is not the case here.

The Gregg’s Mist flower that we planted in the spring recovered from the summer heat and spread with the fall rains. We bought it because it is very attractive to butterflies, but the bees love it too!

Now the test is to see how they do over the winter. If they do well, we just might fill the whole front section of the flower bed with them. It is a Texas native.