Magician's Garden,  Sephira Alchemy

Mandrake Musings

So when I arrived home from vacation I noticed my Mandrake looked super healthy. My nephew had obviously done a fantastic job of caring for all of my houseplants. Of course within a week, the Mandrake’s leaves were beginning to brown again.

For a few weeks now I’ve been wondering where I went wrong with Dwight the Mandrake.  Then this morning it hit me. I did notice that the jug of drinking water (purified by reverse osmosis) that I keep for my carnivorous plants was a lot lower than it should have been. After all, my carny plants don’t drink that much and are in a terrarium, so their water doesn’t evaporate that fast either. We were only gone for three weeks.

Now I think I know my Nephew’s secret.  He was giving Dwight purified water. Eureka! So I think I’ll go back to giving him purified water and see what happens.  I’m happy the rest of my plants are just fine on tap water, but it makes me wonder how beautiful and healthy they would be if I gave all of them purified water.

Okay, so on that note I think I’m going to re-pot Dwight this weekend. I want to take a look at the root and see if I can separate it to start another plant. It’s been almost a year since I got Dwight as a gift from a friend (who bought it from a nursery up in Oregon). The root was between 1-2 inches long and it had one tiny leaf in the beginning. I imagine I will notice a great deal of growth in the root.

The mandrake infusion I’m making from the leaves that were browning is still in process (for the tincture I’m preparing).  And maybe this weekend I’ll get all the aeroponic gardens set up for the winter growing season. I have tomatoes, peppers and lettuce to start! I love winter gardening.

Steph is an award winning and bestselling author of thrilling steamy and paranormal romances, dark urban fantasy, occult horror-thrillers, cozy mysteries, contemporary romance, sword and sorcery fantasy, and books about the esoteric and Daemonolatry. A Daemonolatress and forever a resident of Smelt Isle, she is happily married and cat-mom to three pampered house cats. Her muse is a demanding sadistic Dom who often keeps her up into the wee hours of the morning. You can contact her at swordarkeereon@gmail.com

2 Comments

  • Harold Roth

    Mandrakes like foliar fertilizer. I spray mine regularly with a solution of liquid kelp and water. I don’t use purified water, only on seeds. Then I use filtered water from my “Berkey” (ceramic/carbon block filters). Have fun digging them up. I always enjoy that.:)

    • Steph

      Oooh, I hadn’t considered a foliar fertilizer. I’ve been using a fish fertilizer in the soil once every two months or so. I still can’t get mandrake seeds to germinate. I’ll have to get some and try-try again. I’m really excited about digging him up. 🙂

Leave a Reply to Harold Roth Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

What is 8 + 3 ?
Please leave these two fields as-is:
IMPORTANT! To be able to proceed, you need to solve the following simple math (so we know that you are a human) :-)