Resurrection Plant Rose of Jericho

If you're the kind of gardener that likes to grow holiday-themed houseplants, allow me to introduce you to resurrection plant, also known as Rose of Jericho. The Easter Cactus, and Easter Lilies are grown this time of year because they have come represent rebirth and hope. While a resurrection plant isn't as pretty as the aforementioned plants, the way it springs to life when exposed to moisture makes it a great representation of the season.

Resurrection plant is a bit of a novelty plant. I picked mine up at a flea market a few years ago. As such, I don't know whether this Rose of Jericho is an Anastatica, or an Selaginella lepidophylla. Considering that I picked it up a flea market popular with the Mexican community of Chicago, and S. lepidophylla is native to the Chihuahuan Desert, I think it's safe to assume this plant is S. lepidophylla.

Watch Resurrection Plant Come to Life

Here's a quick time lapse video I recorded of me bringing my resurrection plant to life for the Easter holiday. Vendors at local flea markets and swap meets usually sell these plants around the Easter holiday for about $1.00 a piece.

Coleus "Under the Sea" Hort Couture Collection

I’m a big, big fan of coleus. As far as I’m concerned there is no wrong coleus to grow in the garden. Granted, there are some coleus color combinations I’m not too fond of, but to each their own. I always thought the only way coleus plants could be improved is if they were bread to produce large flowers. Then I was introduced to the “Under the Sea” collection of coleus plants at a garden show a couple of years ago and fell in love with them. This year Hort Couture sent me a box of sample plants to trial in my garden. Below are pictures of the plants from the “Under the Sea” collection that performed well in my garden, and that I’m comfortable recommending to gardeners looking for unusual garden plants.

'Bone Fish'

How to Save Cockscomb Seeds

If you’re looking for easy-to-grow annuals for your garden, you can’t do better than Celosia cristata. Commonly known as cockscomb or woolflowers the flowers of this tough annual plant resemble the comb of a rooster, hence the name. Saving cockscomb seeds is easy, and I recently learned a new trick for collecting these seeds.

'Indigo Rose' Tomato: Another Blue Garden Tomato

If you're a regular reader of this blog you may remember that last year I grew some 'OSU Blue' tomatoes in my container garden. This year I'm growing 'Indigo Rose' tomatoes. 'Indigo Rose' is another blue tomato by the same plant tomato breeders at OSU. You should read the post on 'OSU Blue' if you want to know the history of the tomato and what causes this unique blue color in the tomato fruits.

OSU Blue Tomato

Over the winter Colleen from In the Garden Online offered me OSU Blue tomato seeds. Having never heard of this tomato variety and seeing how cool the fruits looked I figured I’d give them a try. Yes, there is a blue tomato and it is as unusual a tomato as you imagine and will see below. My first experience with these tomatoes was trying to get the seeds to germinate, a task that seemed so daunting I was about to throw them away before I noticed the seeds had sprouted. This blue tomato was developed by Jim Myers, OSU's Baggett Frazier professor of vegetable breeding and graduate students Carl M. Jones and Peter Mes. The first thing you should understand about the OSU Blue tomato is that it wasn't developed using genetic engineering, but using traditional plant breeding techniques.

Garden helper holding OSU Blue Tomatoes.

Cucumber 'White Wonder' From Burpee Seeds

When selecting vegetables to grow in my container garden the first thing I always consider is the color. While flavor and productivity should be the most important I can't help but to be drawn to the unusual, be it color or shape and texture, fruits and vegetables. That's how I came to grow Burpee Seeds' 'White Wonder' cucumber this year. In the 2011 seed catalog there was an offer for a free pack of these seeds with an order. 'Long White' and 'Albino' are synonyms for 'White Wonder' which Burpee introduced in 1893 after receiving the seeds from a customer in western New York.

Colocasia esculenta 'Mojito'

I believe the first time I saw Colocasia esculenta 'Mojito' was at the Independent Garden Center Show in the booth my Hort Couture Plants a couple of years ago. Since then I've seen it at the Mid-America Horticultural Trade Show and most recently being sold by the Duth bulb sellers at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show. Perhaps it was the lighting, setting or maybe the growing conditions the plant had been endured, but I wasn't ever really impressed by 'Mojito.' Elephant ear plants are interesting and beautiful in their own right and I didn't really see what this new elephant ear plant had to offer to the average home gardener that grows these to provide a tropical flair to the garden.

Algae in Marimo Aquarium

Maybe aquarium is too lavish a word to describe where my Marimo lives, but he doesn’t seem to know or care about that. Maximus, as I’ve named him, was living rather contently in his little jar on my desk until late last spring. That’s when the position of the sun shifted in the sky and the morning sun began to shine through the window and hit the desk on the other side of the room. Because I was busy with the Amaryllis bulbs and seed starting I didn’t really pay attention to my Japanese “moss ball” and where it was sitting in relation to the sun. If you’ve ever kept an aquarium you know where this is going, right? Algae!

Lemon Cucumber

This past spring I got lemon cucumber seeds from Botanical Interests to grow in my garden. I decided to try the lemon cucumber seeds chosen because I'd never eaten one of these cucumber varieties before. Due to a series of gardening setbacks, I may not get a chance to eat a lemon cucumber this year, but I'm enjoying growing them.

I started my cucumber seeds late and then pretty much neglected the seedlings and planted them out even later. By the time the cucumber vines were about 10 inches long they were covered in blossoms, but there weren't many bees working in the garden. I watched as the blossoms unfurled, then withered without any signs of fruit being set. I panicked and started to hand-pollinate them, which has worked marvelously. Take that, stupid bees.

Lemon cucumber blossom & leaf.

Echinacea purpurea 'Double Decker'

Have you ever wanted a plant really bad and then were left feeling let down once you bought said plant for your garden? Echinacea purpurea 'Double Decker' also sold under 'Doppleganger' is a garden 'mutant' first discovered by German plant breeder Eugen Schleipfer. It is said that he found an unusal Purple Coneflower and spent many years selecting for the unusual flower we have now.

I purchased mine two years ago at a local Home Depot garden center and that should have been a big enough red flag. The Home Depot is good for a lot of things but specialty plants for the garden, IMO, is not one of them. After having seen many beautiful photos of the 'Double Decker' flower on the internet and plant catalogs I was eager to add this weird plant to my garden and when I found them for $5.00 I couldn't pass them up.

Climbing Lily Flower

This is my second year growing these plants and two of them have just started to bloom in the container garden. Last year I planted one of the tubers in the ground and cut it when I was going to pull it up at the end of summer, I decided to plant them in containers this year to minimize the chance of damaging them when I lift them.