Indoor Garden Update

Greetings, indoor gardeners! I'm ecstatic to be posting in this community, especially since I have not done a garden update in very long time. I didn't stop just because it's winter here, but partly because @simplymike temporarily stopped running the monthly garden journal challenge. I hope you are doing well! That challenge often reminded and encouraged me to post about my plants. Well, let's get started, shall we?

Mutant Pinto Beans
The subjects of the first picture are my beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). These beans are small, spherical, and white in color. They are a mutant variety of pinto beans that I've been growing ever since I accidentally bred them outdoors one year. They are very much suited to growing in small containers. One of my ongoing side projects is to further miniaturize them. The plant to farthest right, along with the bigger middle one, are some of those dwarves. The other two are plants from my mutation induction experiment involving minuscule amounts of radiation. They are labeled M2, the second generation after mutagenesis. This should be the generation in which mutations become apparent, if the experiment worked that is. I might have to plant more M2 seeds.
A related endeavor I've taken up is growing black pinto beans. No, not black turtle beans, these are in fact another mutated variety of pinto beans.

I found these brands in Mexico and brought some back home for study. How am I so sure of their identity, you ask? The first piece of evidence is that they came mixed in, very rarely, with normal pinto beans. This may not mean much, as sometimes you may find lentils, pebbles, and even the odd garbanzo here and there. But here is the smoking gun: when the skin of the bean is most for long enough the black pigment (anthocyanin) actually fades to deep purple and reveals spots! That's what lends its name, pinto. I also found a single bean that was half pinto, half black.
I'm excited to grow this variety because I have many questions. Will it produce more black beans? Are the flowers also purple? These are questions I couldn't answer during my time in Mexico because there are just too many pests down there and I couldn't get a good harvest.
Speaking of beans and harvests, for the very first time my heirloom ayocote bean finally yielded some beans.

In the past, I didn't get any beans because I've learned that this variety of scarlet runner bean, like all of them no doubt, need a very long growing season. Furthermore, the winters here are too cold for the perennial tubers to survive so the plant does not come back the next year. I found this bean at a flea market here, though I might try taking it back to its ancestral home, Mexico. I think it'll do much better there. There are black types and purple types but the one I planted was mixed. I'm glad I at least got a handful back because I planted my last mixed type! Now it looks like I have a few more.
My native perennial bean, Strophostyles umbellata bloomed for the second time but I'm not sure if any pods set. And now some leaves are falling again. The same thing happened last time it fruited.

I don't know if you can tell, but the flowers have a hint of pink.

When you grow legumes, be sure to get some of this:

It looks like coarse black sand and holds beneficial bacteria that enable the plants to synthesize their own fertilizer from the nitrogen in the air!

Other Plants
Moving on from the subject of beans, my false rose of Jericho is doing well. I thought it was going to turn fully green but I guess not.

Every morning it looks like this, all closed up into a ball. It requires water every single day. And once you add water, it starts to open up again. Here it is just a few minutes after watering.

I found this plant as part of a dinosaur toy set in a thrift shop. Who knows how long it had been waiting for water in its dormant state. They can stay like that for up to 7 years!

I thought my mini orchid was going to bloom by December but I guess not. At least it's doing well in its relatively new medium and "pot". The pot is made out of an old luffa and the medium is coarsely ground up maple bark with some perlite. The bark I got from my dying tree and I broke it up in an old blender i got at an estate sale to use exclusively for my personal experiments, not for food.
Next to the orchid are some San Pedro cactus seedlings. They have not really been growing these past few weeks. Maybe because the days aren't long enough.

Trees and such

Lots of the leaves of my trees are falling off.

This is my guamuchil tree, grown from a seed I brought from Mexico. The fruit is similar to tamarind in structure but it is green with white flesh and is sweeter.

Here are some bare branches of my jacaranda, a flowering Mexican tree, in the foreground with my tamarind tree in the background.

The leaves have been falling ever since they got a taste of cold right before I moved them back indoors. I've been putting the leaves in the pots so they could be recycled back into nutrients for the trees.

These trees, along with the following plants, are in my room by the window enveloped by what I call a solar curtain. It is made from 2 aluminized blankets and one sheet of reflective snack bags taped together. This gives them lots of light and also keeps me from waking up too early due to the sun!

Holiday cacti usually like less light but this one is thriving! I think it will bloom around Easters. (I took a cutting from a mature plant at a store!) The flowers look like daisies, which uncharacteristic of this type of plant!
Also in here are a few air plants (Tillandsia ionantha) and one is in bloom!

This is another plant that does not require soil. They supposedly only bloom once in their lifetime but this is the second time this one has bloomed!

This oat plant is the plant that keeps on giving! I originally bought the seeds so that my cats could have some grass to snack on but after I lost my seed collection I had to increase my stocks again. I also want to plant some wheat that I brought from, you guessed it, Mexico. I found the grains on the floor at an agricultural convention. I didn't even think they were viable but they sprouted. I couldn't harvest though because I had to deal with chickens and leaf cutter ants. Luckily we don't have those here.

Lastly, I would like to you show my latest acquisition, given to me by a good friend. It's a turban pumpkin! I like it because it looks like a mushroom. I'm going to try to dry it out like a gourd. Either way, I'm going to get the seeds inside.

Hope you enjoyed my pictures and ramblings! Goodbye!