Good
Afternoon and welcome back to a new episode of ‘Lost In The Farmers Market’. This
blog has been on hiatus for a long while with sporadic updates due to several
personal situations that needed to be sorted out by the author before any new
content could be created. For those of you who are new, and have not checked
our episode archive, LITFM is your weekly guide to growing unusual and exotic
plants both in the garden and in your home. This leads ups to today’s plant on
hand, at prior times I have covered this plant but never before have I had such
a nice specimen to demonstrate the point with. But before I talk about this
week’s plant, I want to share with you an update on the memorial garden. Below
is a picture of the garden at roughly full bloom.
 |
| This garden due to solar lights has a entirely different character at night. |
As a
refresher, planted in the garden are several varieties of Asiatic lilies (Lilium hybrid) all with a white bloom,
Star Gladiolus (Gladiolus acidanthera),
and Hymenocallis. The difficulty in
getting a picture of everything in bloom is due to the fact not all of it got
planted at the same time, and it’s perfectly normal for bulbs to bloom out of sync for the first year because they need that year to settle into their new
home. I can say that I am adding white daffodils to the display next year to
further lengthen the bloom period of the garden. Overall, the memorial garden
turned out just fine and other then a little maintenance I do not plan to
change very much about it other than to enlarge it.
Now
as for today’s plant, today we have the Bed Of Nails plant. Its scientific name
is Solanum quitoense, and yes that
means it’s a member of the nightshade family which includes, peppers, tomatoes,
potatoes, eggplant, wonderberries, ground cherries and two other plants that
will be covered in the next few weeks. I know some of you are wondering at this
point why someone would name a plant ‘Bed of nails’ and the picture below
explains that quite nicely.
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| Surprisingly, the damage to the leaves isn't from insets but the plant's own spines...maybe they should have called it the S&M plant. |
In
this case my specimen is two years old, and has been grown in a pot its entire
life thus far. I bring it in for the winter and give it the same care that I
would if it was a tomato in general. In the garden, bed of nails has a medium
growth speed and will not tolerate cold or frosts so it’s real growth doesn’t
happen until temperatures get above 60 degrees. A decent frost can disfigure or
kill one of these plants and that’s when you find out that even in death it’s
thorns can still be a hazard as they persist even when thrown in the compost
for a few months making compost sifting somewhat dangerous. The advantage to the plant is that you can
grow it just like a tomato, but it never gets blossom end rot and its fruit are
ripe when they turn orange and are edible and used as a flavoring in drinks…that
is if you dare brave the thorns to pick the fruit. As an ornamental, the bed of
nails is so exotically strange that visitors to your garden cannot help but
look at it. The bright purple spines catch the light it’s large white and very
obviously nightshade family styled flowers dare visitors to your garden to
identify the mystery plant. Unlike tomatoes peppers and potatoes, the bed of
nails gets none of the same pests; even the voracious Tomato Horn worm will
touch it which says something about how tough the bed of nails plant can be.
Propagation of Bed of Nails can be done through tip cuttings like one would
with a tomato or, collection of seed from matured fruit (you might have to wait
for the second growing season for this). If you bring a bed of nails into a
sun room for the winter, I recommend moving it indoors before the first frost,
and putting it in the position that gets the most sun if possible. If your sun room
is unheated, you may need to use a thin plastic drop cloth to protect bed of
nails from drafts and temperature micro-climates. Do not fertilize this plant
once you bring it in for the winter, water only when dry and try to make sure
that none of its leaves come into contact with windows as those leaves may
suffer contact frost and then possibly some form of rot.
This
concludes the discussion of the Bed of Nails plant and if you have any
questions about it feel free to post them in the comments below. Additionally,
I should note that I am still a vendor at the Fayetteville City Market, and if
you check out Leclair’s General store at 1212 Fort Bragg Road, some of my
exotic succulents and cacti are available in decorative clay pots which makes
for a fine gift or a nice item for the collector of unusual succulents. You can
check out LeClair’s General store at the link below:
Those
crazy looking succulents next to the terrarium books are some of the stock I’ve
shipped to the store, but the plant list changes fairly regularly. You can of
course request specific stock through the store (ask for Pat) or stop by the
City Market on Saturdays between 9:00am and 1:00pm to make requests or see an
entirely different selection of items. In the next month or so (probably the
last Sunday of October) I’m planning a house plant blowout sale, so stay tuned
to LITFM for more info. Thank you for your patience and thank you for reading,
see you next week.
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