Mangoes, Tomatoes, Petunias and Mums

Here's my mango plant today. As you can see, the leaves are already green and upright.  It looks like it's well on it's way to becoming a big happy plant.  I hope it has totally put the experience of being attacked by cats behind it. Yey!  Of course, that's still a 10% success rate for me, but hey, I'll take it.  As long as this one grows up to become a super mango tree.

As for my attempts to graft a mango stem into our big old mango tree, well there are no updates yet.  The stem is still green, but no new leaves have grown.  It's a wait and see. 

My tomato seeds provide a different story.  I will show you before and after photos: one dated Feb 20 and the other dated Feb 21.   So tell me how that happens!  One day, there's barely a white root showing (so small my low tech camera can't focus!); the next day little tomato sprouts were shooting all over my little recycled yogurt (strawberry flavor) cup.  What sort of plant grows over an inch in a day?!  ;-)  Within this week, I will be transferring them to my newly purchased plant bed (yes, the one I bought on Valentines).  Hopefully, they grow up to bear big red tomatoes.  Wait and see...

My red and white petunia had a major crisis last week.  After I moved both of them to be exposed to direct sunlight, the red and white one started wilting all over.  At first I thought I burned the leaves because I got trigger happy with my soap & water solution, but then the situation persisted while my other petunia (the purple one) was fine.  So I checked for bugs and stuff and found lots and lots of ants in the soil. I was scandalized of course!

So I was at a loss on what to do.  At first I figured, I'd transplant it to some ant-less soil, but then I thought of trying something else.  It was 4 PM and the sun was pretty strong.  I decided to drown all the ants!!  Die ants!  Die!!  How dare they attack my 3 for P100 plant! So for about half an hour, I submerged the plant in water.  It's a plant.  It can't possibly die with too much water for just half an hour.  And the drainage was good too.  After the deed was done, I moved it to another location (hopefully with less ants).

Today, it's looking good again.  Of course I pruned off about half the leaves but I see signs of recovery.  More importantly, I don't see any ants in the soil. Meanwhile, after deadheading the purple petunia, it also looks like its about to blossom again.

My mums have been quiet for a while.  After struggling for a couple of weeks, it looks alive, but still pretty bare.  I've applied some fertilizer so it would bloom again.  For a P30 plant, mums are high maintenance!

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