By Victoria Torley

Well, I dug out my old seeds, the leftovers from last year, and got my gardener to fill pots with soil for me and set up a new table in the greenhouse. I mentioned toilet paper rolls a few weeks ago – they keep the leaf borer beetles from reaching the stems of squash and melons – and stuck them around the seeds.

The pots certainly look odd with TP rolls sticking out of them, but, what the heck, if it works, it works, and a reader in Florida says it works for him. He also uses plastic and Styrofoam cups which are reusable.

This, of course, is just a test to see if the seeds are still viable. If they are, I’ll start some more next week for succession planting in the garden and in the greenhouse. It was never my intention to use the greenhouse for vegetables as they take up a lot of space, but we’ve moved a lot of the orchids into the orchid garden outside and only kept the more tender of them in the greenhouse so there is plenty of space. And the veggie garden is about 120 meters from the house and downhill. Difficult for me right now.

Melons and squash are other issues. You can control bugs easily in a greenhouse and you can spot the ripening fruit easily as well. I like to put the melons up on pots to keep bugs away from them and it’s a lot easier to spot them in foliage if they are in the greenhouse. Same way with cucumbers. We all know about cucumbers: yesterday they were just a bit too small to pick, today they are huge! A very sneaky vegetable. Zucchini is the same way. Too small on Monday, enormous on Tuesday.

The greenhouse is also perfect for tomatoes which prefer a temperature of over 70 degrees Fahrenheit day and night to produce well. Up here in the hills around Lake Arenal, it dips below 70 most nights and we get a lot of wind which makes the tomatoes very cranky and uncooperative. They also hate wet feet and we get a lot of rain.

If you have the same problems, best to plant them under a sheet of clear plastic as a roof and some nearby stones or concrete blocks to keep them warm at night. My only producing tomato plant is in a raised bed with lots of warming blocks and a roof.

But back to those questionable seeds. If the ones in the pots start to sprout, I will share the remaining seeds with my gardening friends. We all need something to keep us from going bonkers right now.

Clerodendrum thomsoniae, so-called hearts-a-bleeding  or bleeding heart vine, is a beautiful flowering vine for a sunny location. Since it does occasionally get attacked by leaf cutter ants, mine is in the greenhouse where it is protected. Choose a sunny location and well-drained soil for your vine and provide support. Mulch well and fertilize about every two weeks to encourage growth. The vine will grow from cuttings if they are kept misted.

More information on this article or about gardening, Ms. Victoria Torley, gardener columnist, can be reached at victoriatorley1@gmail.com.

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