House Plants Make Me Happy

Like most everyone else, I'm hunkered  down to wait for the world to stop wobbling, for ignorance and willful disregard for truth to subside, for some better times to come our way. This winter with the miracle vaccine finally and oh so slowly coming our way, reminds me of how deer are most likely to die of starvation just as the new green growth starts in spring. It's hard to stay sane and hang on, and I'm thankful for every minute that I have Liam safe here with me at home. Now Phoebe, who's been careful and kept herself safe, has made it home for Christmas, and I'm feeling especially thankful to be confined in a place that I love, surrounded by beauty and deep woods. Really, how lucky can you get?

Since the multiple groanhouse freezes over the years, I've learned the hard way that I must grow plants indoors as well as out in the greenhouse. I rarely get through a year without a greenhouse freeze, thanks to condensation in my natural gas line, which is a plastic pipe that runs over the top of the ground from an oilwell out in the meadow to my house.  The company that leases my oil and gas well has left the broken welljack untended for four years now, and it's grown high with brambles. A big aspen fell on it and I paid someone to cut it off, but the oil/gas company still hasn't bothered to revive it.  My house is heated with gas which comes through that pipe thanks to the natural pressure at the wellhead, not because oil is being pumped. It all makes me nervous and uneasy, and the greenhouse freezes are the manifestation of Stonebridge Operating Company's negligence. Free gas is really great until it goes off on in the middle of the night. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, there is a lot of cussing and sometimes quite a few tears. There's nothing quite like walking into a greenhouse that was a riot of color and beauty the evening before, to find everything frozen solid.

So I decided to have doubles on my favorites, and not to trust the Groanhouse not to kill them. I have young understudies on my favorite hibiscus, and the plan is to bring them in the house when the temperatures plunge to single digits. So... I have a lot of houseplants now. And that turns out to be a wonderful thing. I took a little tour around the house, photographing some of the plants that make my everyday world more beautiful and interesting.

This teeny Crown of Thorns from Kenya is so sweet. Three times, it has self-pollinated, and dropped seeds into its own pot, which have made another tiny plant. It's just the coolest thing to see this little seedling come up and to recognize the fleshy round leaves as those of a Crown of Thorns. Oh my!  Gotta love a plant that does that! I give them to sisters, friends, and wait for the next seed child.

I rarely buy plants at the store, getting most of my material from friends (and giving just as much away), but I couldn't resist the lime, olive, white and forest green Martha Stewart striping on this Dracaena deremensis "Lemon Surprise"  which I bought off a huge rack of foliage plants at our Lowe's years ago. It's just the most beautiful thing, unfurling leaf after candy striped leaf, so shiny and sturdy. I'm not sure what its adult form will be--I suspect it will form a trunk with a Seussian tuft atop it in time? It's almost 2' tall now and has racks of leaves all the way to the soil line. Highly recommended,  slow growing, gorgeous, and it doesn't want a lot of sun. In fact mine got a bit sunburned in a south window in November! This is how they tell me to move them back from the window.

My friend Leah gave me a tiny Haworthia pygmaea pup off her plant, and it's about to bloom, whatever that's going to look like. Knowing a bit about this genus, I'm prepared to be underwhelmed by its splendor, but I'm glad it's happy enough to send up a spike! Looks like the flowers will be white, lined green. If I remember correctly, this succulent is actually in the lily family, so I expect the flower to be three parted. We shall see!

I spotted the first shy bloom of a tiny Lobelia seedling volunteer in my outdoor shade garden in early November, and couldn't believe it was my favorite color of blue. I dug it out with my finger and potted it up and it's so happy to be indoors under a grow light. It makes me think of spring, when I'm always looking for just this shade of sky blue and am only ever able to find the dark purple ones at the garden center. 

I hereby pledge to nurture and propagate this plant until I can fill my hanging baskets with it come spring. 

They root quite easily in water! Have already made one propagule. 

Speaking of rooting, here's a cutting of Fuchsia "Trandshen Bonstet" that finally rooted. I took it in August, stuck it in water on the windowsill, and waited literally months. But eventually it threw out some roots and we were off to the races.

This plant is well worth the wait!

I grow a cutting in the greenhouse each winter, and set it out in the shade garden in May. By frost, it's almost as tall as I am, putting out cascades of these gorgeous, hummingbird friendly flowers. It roots in water and the cuttings bloom constantly while you wait. What's not to love about a plant like that? I got it probably 12 years ago at the Glasshouse Works in Stuart, OH, but thanks to its willingness to root in water and overwinter in the greenhouse, I've never had to buy it again.

I absolutely love this tiny variegated Syngonium podophyllum "Mini Pixie." The mother plant is going on four years old and only 6" tall. Easy as pie to propagate; they constantly make pups off to the side. It's in the arum family, like a teeny Caladium.

Another easy propagator is this jewel orchid, Ludisia discolor, a terrestrial (soil dwelling) orchid from SE Asia. When jewel orchids start sprawling over the sides of the pot, it's time to propagate them.

It's as easy as snapping off a cutting at an obvious joint, dipping the stem end in rooting hormone, and putting it in wet sphagnum moss or vermiculite until it roots. 

I hear a lot of people say this orchid is grown just for its gorgeous velvety black-green and red foliage, but the flower spikes are terrific, beautiful, long-lasting and fun to watch!

I have truly lost count of how many propagules I've given away off my Ludisia over the two decades since my friend Jason brought me a single stem in a 2" pot. 20? 30? Such fun to have friends check in from all over Ohio, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Carolina to tell me theirs are coming into bloom just when mine is! I suspect that in the jungles of southeast Asia, it forms a groundcover, since it crawls and sprawls in captivity. I grow it in a long, shallow planter to give it room to do its thing.

OK, so they're not exactly corsage material, but look at these happy little snowbirds, caught in mid-flap!

Seen against snow, they warm me straight through. 

The last houseplant I'll sing of here is my buttercrunch lettuce. Though we've had virtually no sun this winter, it grows beautifully up in the tower room, where it gets the cool temperatures and constant bright light it needs to make impossibly tender, thin leaves.

Every 4-5 days I go up, pick and water. The seven large planters take 5 gallons of water at a time. 

The last two pickings have been epic!

Enough to share.  I hope you've enjoyed this little tour of my houseplants. I pledge to be vigilant, and bring in the little hibiscus understudies "The Path" and "Creole Lady," when the next polar vortex blows in. Even if I have a greenhouse freeze this winter, I'll still have plenty on my windowsills to dote on--and eat!

Stay home as much as you possibly can. Wear your mask, wash your hands, and hunker down. I'll see you in a few days with a greenhouse tour!

JZ

Orchid School: A Few Pointers

There's a whole lotta pottin' goin' on on Indigo Hill. 

Nothing like about 10 days in the 80's in mid-October to get me out and washing orchids! It's the kind of thing that I have to be in the right mood to do. If I'm in the right mood, it's fun. Not in the right mood: endless wet drudgery. 

What? You don't wash your orchids?  Every couple of years, I repot mine. I knock them out of their pots, rinse every bit of medium off their roots.  Before I put them in new medium and clean pots, I wash their leaves with a hard spray of cool water, rubbing away scale and the sugar deposits they leave. Then I clip off anything rotty: brown spongy roots, old withered pseudobulbs if they're the type of orchid that makes pseudobulbs. 

This year, I'm potting everything in nice long-staple sphagnum moss. It's the blonde stuff that comes in dried bricks. I'm using sphagnum not just because it's way cheaper than Aussie Gold. I'm using it because I've noticed that the best, firmest, greenest roots are forming in the orchids I've potted in sphagnum. They're healthy and not rotting because they've got ample air in this light weight, non-packing medium. For some fine pointers on sphagnum quality, go here.

Your results may vary. Sphagnum works well for me here in Ohio. If you live in a super-humid place,  you might do better with coco fiber medium or even bark. 

I'm sprinkling some Aussie Gold medium into the sphagnum, but overall it's 90% moss.  I soak the moss before packing it loosely around the roots. 

I took the opportunity to hack up a massive jewel orchid that was overgrown and flopping out of its pot. In the center is the mother plant. All around it are the long floppy stems I snapped off at their joints. I got 13 of 'em, and put them all to root in moist sphagnum in another container. 

I noticed that jewel orchids seem to send down roots to about 5" deep in the pot, then quit. The growth habit is to spread, laterally. So what they want is a pot that's wider than it is deep. Not having one of those, I put some  spacers in the form of deli containers and lava rock in the bottom of a big 10" pot, and heaped the sphagnum medium atop that. That should help get air to the roots, and encourage good drainage.

Mother plant to the left, nicely trimmed back and now with room to expand, and cuttings to the right. Discarded stems at bottom. I didn't use any rooting hormone because this is one badass orchid...I think those cuttings will root without any help. 

Add Bacon and sun, and you get happy Zick. I like to say that plant propagation is my only vice. I would happily develop some more, but opportunity is lacking. 

This is what jewel orchids do in midwinter! I love them best in candalabra bud.

But when those little white flowers open: Redonk!! It's too much.

The nice thing about this plant is the glorious velvety leaves with deep maroon reverse. Also the fact that it cannot be stopped, and I've never found an insect that bothers it. So I'm propagatin' on with my bad self.

I have 32 orchids, and tending to them all took parts of three days. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to spend the time it takes to tend them.  I'm not replacing my big orchids as they slowly pass on. I don't need more stuff to care for. But the collecting urge is still strong, so I'm downsizing. The only orchids I buy any more are the mini Phalaenopsis that I find at the grocery store. I love them so.  They fit on my kitchen windowsill: big plus.  I can add just one or two more without too much crowding. And the bunch of them in midwinter, going nuts on my kitchen sill, gets me through February.

If you're an orchid connoisseur, don't walk by ones that look like this one, below.  It may not be the most striking in color, but it's got a secret. It's got Phalaenopsis schilleriana in its parentage, which you can tell by its lightly mottled leaves, pale pink coloration, and heavenly incredible paradisiacal FRAGRANCE. Muguet from Venus.

These get to sit on my drawing board, and get picked up and inhaled about 60 times a day.

Since orchids in grocery stores rarely are warm or happy enough to emanate any fragrance, the other tipoff for P. schilleriana is the little moustache at the bottom of the flower's lower lip. 

This one's a real dandy--beautiful leaves. You probably won't find a beauty like this in a grocery store. But these are the characteristics that say it's going to be fragrant. Keep in mind that they may not emanate if the ambient temperature is under about 75 degrees. When mine bloom in mid-winter, they rarely emit any fragrance. But ohhh those midsummer and autumn blooms.There's a wee schilleriana at my elbow right now.

Good Bye, November

 I was spoiled. I'd go down to the greenhouse each evening and soak in the warmth and beauty. Whatever had gone wrong during the day receded with that onslaught of all that was right. 

I go down there, just sat down there for a half hour, in fact, with the little white lights on, but it doesn't work very well yet. I bought a blooming pink Christmas cactus, but it doesn't have a smell. I found some green nubbins on my Jasminus sambac, yaaaay!! but they're a long long way from blossoms. I threw out four more geraniums today, and discovered that my old Wonderboom fig bonsai is likely dead. 

 I think it's the tuberoses I miss most, that and the orange hibiscus. And I miss that crazy hot-orange New Guinea impatiens, and the red velvet mandevilla. I think I lost all my Graffiti star geraniums, too including the one that was just the color of a scarlet tanager. Oh, I miss them.

Come on, grapefruit, bloom already. Bloom. Stink this place up.

So in the mornings I go out, looking for something, and I find sweeping snowy landscapes, too snowy for November, but I'll take them.

Better with dog. Always better with dog.

I love this dog. He's watching a car coming, and I'm talking to him saying he can't just sit there in the road, but he doesn't want to walk in the snow to get out of the way. He will when I tell him to. 

We go on, and look at the square shapes of Angus against the light. You don't see wild animals quite that square. We've made them so. Frames for carrying slabs of beef. 

Farther on, hayrolls frosted with snow. There is woodsmoke floating on the air as I look at them, a good clean smell in the cold. We will go a bit over five miles today, looking for things. 

We stop and talk with Mr. Gill, whose female chocolate lab Coco has come out to meet Chet. She's a perfect lady, and he's a perfect gentleman to her. They sniff each other and check each other out, then wag and go about their respective business. No snarling, not much posturing at all. Chet doesn't stand in the T position in front of her, but aligns himself alongside her. Polite. All of which convinces me that he reacts badly to Demon the huge black Lab because Demon has never had a chance to learn proper manners. Demon, an overgrown Baby Huey of a puppy at four, is still making sudden rushes and galumphing and knocking people over, and Chet doesn't like that. He clearly likes Coco. 

Mr. Gill tells me that someone dumped Coco out in front of his house. He took pity on her and took her in. And he's bred her three times, and "I've made $3,000 off her. And I wouldn't take a million dollars for her now." It's clear to me, watching them together, that it's not because she's earned him some money. He loves her. A good end to a bad thing. 

Farther on, we find a slob hunter's dump right by the side of the road, from just that morning. The ribcage and spine and assorted bones of a whitetail. Which is surprising, because it wasn't gun season yet, and bowhunters are usually more environmentally conscious than that. At least he didn't throw it in a stream, the usual modus operandi around here. Yucch.  I hope it will be a nice feast for coyotes or foxes, or even hawks and owls.

Nearby, a gray squirrel has patted around in the snow, looking for where she buried an acorn.

And running back I find the ghost of a burr oak, the stencil of a leaf long gone. 

That's my Subaru with a Christmas tree tied on top. Had to drive up there, stop and photograph it again last evening. I didn't find anything cooler than that on my run that day.

Phoebe said, "Somewhere there's a yellow oak leaf." I hadn't thought of that. 

Speaking of things long gone, here's what happens to a tiny notebook, crammed with song lyrics and poetry, when it goes through the washer, then the dryer. Turns out it gets rid of all the writing. I haven't found the pen's innards yet, but everything in that load has green blotches on it. That's OK. They were all my clothes, and they were all play clothes. Nobody much sees me anyway. I could go around with green blotches everywhere, probably will and nobody will say a word. 

 I do miss the poems and lyrics. 

Guess I'll have to make more.

Can't seem to get out of my own way lately.

I stared at the wadded up ruined notebook for a long time, wondering what had been lost. I'll never know. If I don't write it down, it never happened. There was at least one whole song in there, but I might have it on my iPhone, too. I hope so. Afraid to look. Might drop the phone in my tea or something.

I turned away from the notebook and looked for awhile at my groovycool jewel orchid, which is fixin' to bloom before too long. What a willing, wonderful plant. It's a terrestrial orchid, which means it grows in soil on the forest floor, not up high in the branches as an epiphyte. I figure it could be invasive, given half a chance and the right jungle setting. I saw a lovely orchid with similar leaves growing all over the forest floor at Tikal in Guatemala and was shocked to hear it was from Africa, and was actually a big problem. Whoa. Invasive orchid. I'd never heard of an invasive orchid.

I have a friend who used to tend a huge carpet of jewel orchids at a conservatory, so I know it can spread like crazy. I've started many new plants off this one. You just snap off a stem and dip it in rooting hormone, put it in moist medium and off it goes.

I wish I could put this plant in the greenhouse, where I need it most, but it likely wouldn't appreciate the cold nights.

Then I got down and snorgled on a certain warm puppeh in the sun. He's got his Santa beard on. 

How many kisses does one person need? Clearly a great many. Well that is all right. I am a Pez dispenser for kisses. You kiss on all the white parts.

The peace of not-so-wild things, who smell of popcorn and fresh sunny linens.

The (Foolproof) Jewel Orchid

Had enough of this relentless winter? Had enough of being punched in the face with snowfall after snowfall, of shoveling, of white-knuckle driving, of wallowing helplessly in your own driveway, of having your kids hanging around like dirty shirts because their school has been canceled 17 days and counting? Yeah, me too. On days like these, my flowers save me. I took these photos on one of the four sunny days we've had in February.

Ludisia discolor, the jewel orchid, is becoming a favorite of mine. I have to admit that, being a snob about flowers (they must be large, colorful and fragrant to catch my attention), I resisted its modest floral charms until my plantfreak friend Jason brought me one three years ago. I had to admit its foliage was stunning--it's named for the jewel-like texture of its iridescent leaves. They're reminiscent of some flower petals which, upon close inspection, reveal sparkling gems or prisms that catch the light. The jewel orchid is a terrestrial, native to southern China, Myanmar to Indonesia. Many people pot it in regular potting soil with perlite added, or use an African violet mix. Mine is thriving in a bark medium made for orchids.

I wasn't terribly impressed with the short bloom spikes the plant threw out on its first try. But it was just a baby then. This year's bloom, whoa. Thick, fleshy pink asparagus-like stalks started reaching for the sky, and I reached for a sturdy stake to keep the plant from toppling over. Up and up they grew, elongating and throwing blossom after blossom. No, sadly, they're not fragrant, but they're charming nonetheless.

almost there...There! Whoo-eee! The whole affair in full bloom now stands 28" high, with 17" flower stalks! I do believe it likes my bedroom.

Better yet, the plant has thrown out five shoots from its rhizome, and I understand that these can be cut off, rooted in water or potting medium, and given to friends. Nothing pleases a gardener like gifting a friend with an offshoot of a treasured plant. Plant propagation: my only vice.

Luscious, that's all it is, just luscious, the leaves with garnet veins and a ravishing red reverse, and it couldn't be easier to grow.
Here it is in situ, in a south-facing window in the orchid bedroom. When the sun glares in too harshly (rare for winter in the mid-Ohio valley), I drop the Venetian blinds and keep them at a horizontal slant, to let bars of sun pass over my plants. Humidity trays are kept full beneath the collection, and I mist the plants a couple of times a day with filtered water. Doesn't leave spots on the leaves. Makes them look squeaky clean and dust-free.

If you're timid about orchids but you can grow African violets, do try the jewel orchid. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And then it's on to Phalaenopsis! Laeliocattleyas! Dendrobiums! Brassaevolas! Oh! Oh! Oh!

For more encouragement, see this excellent article, "A Foolproof Orchid," on the American Orchid Society's web site.