Marking Drill Points for Trellis Anchors

Trellis anchors are what support and secure your wall trellis to the concrete wall. Too few anchors and your garden trellis may collapse sooner than you think. They should be strong and adequate enough so they can withstand the weight of the vine. The trellis anchors also provide support to the branches of non-clinging, non-twining garden vines.

It is important that trellis anchors are positioned so that they're evenly spaced. This ensures that the load of both trellis and vine is balanced. And when a storm or typhoon comes, a well-secured and balanced trellis assures that the high impact that strong winds place on the vines do not compromise the trellis' stability.

Vermicompost Applications in the Garden

Once the composting worms are all settled in your vermicomposting worm bins, you may be wondering how soon you can benefit from all this setup. Afterall, you've prepared the worm bin bedding and supplied the composting worms lots of food. So they should be happy.

It would typically take 3 to 4 months before you can harvest vermicompost from the feeding tray. Vermicompost is a mixture of vermicast and unprocessed organic matter. It may also contain worm capsules and small worms. Vermicast is the excreta of worms produced by the action of microbiological life within the digestive tract of the worms.

Pinching Back the Bleeding Heart or Glorybower

In a recent entry on inducing flowers on the bleeding heart, I mentioned the tip of pinching back the top sprouts.

The tip of "pinching back" on plants is nothing new. Although pinching does not guarantee flowers, it does induce the lower branches to grow rapidly, with some branches flowering in the process.

Build a Bleeding Heart Wall Trellis - Part 4

In the previous entry or Part 3 of this how-to series, I wrote about a successful vine thriving on a tall trellis. I also listed some considerations on why I decided to build a trellis made of steel wire.

For the Steel Wire Trellis project, here are the materials and tools you'll need:

Materials:
Steel Wire - Gauge 14, 120 feet
Square Hooks - 2", 21 pieces
Plastic Expansion Shield (tox) - #5 or size for the square hook screw, 21 pieces
Epoxy Clay
Quick Dry Enamel Paint

Tools:
Vise Grips
Channel Type Pliers
Long Nose Pliers
Power Drill
Concrete Drill Bit - size appropriate for the square hook screw
Paintbrush - 1"

Build a Bleeding Heart Wall Trellis - Part 3

In Part 2 of this how-to series, I mentioned about a Bleeding Heart vine that was doing very well on a high trellis. The photo of that vine is shown below.

The name of the proud owner of this vine is Jim R. Stevens and I learned of him from forums.gardnweb.com. Here's the specific entry in that forum.

I asked Jim about his trellis' spacing dimensions and verified that the spacing is 8" by 8". The spacing is a bit tight in my opinion and decided that a 10" x 12" (height x width) would do.

Build a Bleeding Heart Wall Trellis - Part 2

After seeing the sorry state our vine was in, I was determined to find a new home for it. In Part 1 of this how-to series, I simply propped it up temporarily with a couple of bamboo sticks.

I googled the internet for successful flowering Bleeding Heart Vines and saw a couple of photos that blew me away.

This one is quite incredible.

It is in a pot but with flowers aplenty! I couldn't imagine the number of flower clusters in this plant. It's as if the color of the white calyxes simply overpower the green leaves.

Well, as as they say, "to see is to believe". And after seeing the above, I suppose it IS possible to have such prolific flowering.

• EVEN if the vine is in a container (garden pot)
  
• and EVEN if there's no trellis.
  

Bleeding Heart Vine Flower (Glory bower)

It's been quite a while since clusters or cymes of Bleeding Heart (Glorybower) flowers have sprouted. Finally today, the corolla has emerged from one flower giving the characteristic blood-red color.


Shown below is a time-lapse photography sequence of the flower culminating in the sprouting of the dark red corolla:

Build a Bleeding Heart Wall Trellis - Part 1

Two months ago, I learned from DH that we had a Bleeding Heart Vine (Clerodendrum thomsoniae). When I looked at it, the plant was in a pathetic state. It was in a small pot and was probably three and a half feet high. I took the pot and positioned it near a post where it will get ample morning light. The photo below is the plant as I saw it BUT WITHOUT the two bamboo sticks.

Tip to Induce Flowering in a Bleeding Heart Vine

The first bloom of the Bleeding Heart vine didn't last long. The flower's stem was too thin and the flower detached prematurely due to strong winds. In its place though the vine produced more clusters of flowers. Each cluster is called a raceme (rey'seem). A raceme is an elongate cluster of flowers along the main stem in which the flowers at the base open first. Compound raceme or branched cluster of flowers

Shown below is a compound raceme or a branched cluster of flowers. This branched cluster is called a panicle (pa-ni-kul).

Bleeding Heart Vine First Bloom

Several weeks ago, I've been busy working on the trellis of our Bleeding Heart Vine (Clerodendrum thomsoniae). It was hard work, but little did I know that the vine will be showing its first bloom much sooner than I thought! Wow!