Green Thumb Festival - Chapter 2

Click on images to enlarge and see the detail of these amaizing plants!

Yes Julie, I did buy an orchid. LOL Isn't it beautiful? There were many orchid sellers there. I believe they were only out numbered by the cactus & succulent vendors. The festival was BIG this year :)

My eco-friendly shopping bag filled with bromeliads purchased from the Florida Westcoast Bromeliad Society. Great prices, especially on the bareroots.

This is where they escaped from the shopping bag, LOL. All laid out and ready to photo.

Aint's she purty?

So colorful?

Purple & bromeliad? What's not to like?

My bare rooters - cross your fingers.

Neoregelia 'Sheba'

Neoregelia 'Osser'

Neoregelia 'Candy Apple'

Neoregelia Galaxy

Added to my new border - newbies are toward the front

Another shot of the new border

Green Thumb Festival

Here's my photos from the Green Thumb Festival in St. Pete that I attended over the weekend. It's like a gardener's carnival! They have demonstrations, a plant auction, flower show,. kid's activities, free mulch, recycling info, county extension services, etc. Oh, and tons of vendors, of course! (click for larger photos)

The entry

About midway through

The food court

My lunch

My lunch on pants ;)

My purchase from the Florida WestCoast Bromeliad Society - the guy was grumpy but I was happy with my purchase anyway.

More bromeliads

"Sparkle" - who needs Mickey Mouse??

CACTUS MONDAY

Succulents

Succulents

Succulents

Succulents

Plant shoppers

more vendors

Cacti

Jewled flamingos!!!

Pottery mushrooms

Orchid vendor

Very busy with shoppers

Lots of garden art vendors

All sorts of outdoor items

Aren't these little carts useful? You can borrow them. I just brought a fabric bag that I usually take to the grocery store - hey, it worked!

This orchid vendor had lots of interesting outdoor art

ORCHIDS!

What your feet look like after walking around an outdoor venue for a couple hours. My husband was appalled that I would post this photo on my "bog". I explained my blog readers are mostly gardeners and they will "get it". LOL

As Seen On TV

DH got an assortment of merchandise in his store that is known as "As Seen On TV". I understand there are actually stores that sell only ASOT merchandise but I've never seen one. I'm not one to buy from TV but when I see the ads I sometimes think how cleaver something is or how useful it looks. I was in DH's store on my way to Green Thumb Festival today and just HAD to purchase 3 three things; afterall, I am helping his sales!

First was the Topsy Turvey tomatoe planter thingy. My Dad has ordered some and suggested I get one since I am not a good vegtable gardener - I let my brocolli go to bloom because I prefer flower gardening. Here it is all filled up with dirt and TWO tomato plants. I was going to buy two of these contraptions but he only had 1 left. The instructions said you could put two plants in it-----we'll see. It was easy enough to assemble but a word of advice - it gets heavy when you fill it with soil and very heavy when you water it so plan accordingly.

When I saw these I always wondered how the bottom worked. Well, it's a spong with a slit in it and you put the plants through the slit. I guess I must have moved mine a bit when filling with soil because the photos I am not perfectly positioned. Drat! You can't fix that for risk of breaking off the plants. This device is actually much higher quality than I expected.

Next are the aqua globes for automatically watering plants. I have one teeny little area that I cannot reach with the hose and wouldn't you know that is exactly where I want some potted plants! This looked like a good solution.

Here they are all filled up and ready to use. They are glass and look much nicer than I expected. I was worried they were glass with like a decal for the color/design but they are not.

The green one........

The multi color........

And finally the cobalt blue one. When I left them they were doing a little girgling as they began to work. Between these items, and what I bought at Green Thumb today, I have done my part to stimulate the economy - at least in the gardening industry!

P.S. The third item was the bra strap adjuster things but I wanted to keep my blog G rated, LOL.