A Hard-won Prize

 I’m not the first to observe that the best thing about plants is making more of them. I may have missed my calling. I could so easily have been a greenhouse rat, a professional plant maven. A tastemaker, a horticultural influencer. I can pretend, anyway. I grow a lot of things, and I pass them on to family and friends like a joyful gnome tossing gold coins from a treasure chest. “Here. You’ve GOT to have this plant. This is the greatest plant. It doesn’t look like much now, but come the end of July, it’s going to send out some hot pink flowers that will drive you mad with joy.”

Speaking of mad with joy...look at this beauty! 

 I have for years been enamored of a hibiscus named Creole Lady, which I ordered from Logee’s Greenhouse easily a decade ago. I’ve seen lots of nice hibiscus, and I love my glorious yellow and red "The Path," but this one, one of the Cajun hybrids, carries special voodoo magic. 

Early in the morning, her sails start to unfurl.  

Then, BAM!

In come the peachy sunset tones...it's hard to say what my favorite stage is, but this one, ohh.

 Just before closing, it goes all pale yellow and silver. Amazing. 

My decade-plus love affair with this plant has deepend into a mature "I don't want to live without you" love.

 I like its growth habit, its leaves (dark green and shiny) and its enormous flowers, six inches across, with that bewitching color-changing habit. This is the same flower, at the beginning and the end of a summer day. The progression happens faster when it's hot. 

 By the time the yellow and silver flower falls, a new bud is opening with those heady sunrise tones, and you get to do the whole swoony thing all over again. It’s a drama queen and I love it with all my heart.

 

I’ve taken many cuttings of Creole Lady over the years, and every single one of them has turned black and died. My impetus to propagate this plant is several-pronged. First, it’s the best hibiscus I’ve ever seen. Second, it’s really hard to find—there is one grower in Florida currently offering it, but he’s usually back-ordered for six months or more. Third, I can’t keep an individual hibiscus for more than five or six years, because they get too big. Like, scraping the greenhouse ceiling big. Tree big. Redwood big. 

 Fourth, my greenhouse is prone to midwinter freezes, when the gas cuts off and everything dies. I have been burned so many times that I’ve learned to keep a small Creole Lady on hand as insurance, one that I can keep in the house during cold snaps, just in case the greenhouse freezes one single-digit night (which is always when it happens). To go from a glorious tree full of coral and violet blossoms to a sad rack of limp rags is Very Hard on the Heart. But it has happened to her, and to me, several times. Such is the gas supply from our well: erratic and faulty.

 This is why I need an understudy coming along all the time. I’m completely neurotic about it, moreso with time, because Creole Lady is getting harder and harder to obtain. When Logee’s stopped carrying it, I ordered one from Winn’s Exotic Hibiscus one January, and finally received a small, spindly plant at the end of June. I had prepaid, but had to remind him that I still wanted it, and then it finally shipped. With endless love and attention, that spindly plant—grafted onto a stronger rootstock, I might add, because it’s so hard to root—is a magnificent three-year-old. And I’m already foreseeing the time when it gets too big to handle, and I will have to replace it with one whose pot I can lift.

 

You see, there has been a rolling succession of Creole Ladies in my life. What happens with hibiscus in my greenhouse, if they don't die by freezing, is that they all eventually outgrow their welcome. Last January, I finally gave up on the enormous five-year-old Lady who had been frozen down to bare sticks in a gas outage,

 slowly came back into full glory, got huge, 

then became infested last winter with small green aphids that I absolutely could not get rid of. I was spraying that plant twice a day and still it was a living green mat of aphids, infesting everything else in my tiny greenhouse. It was no longer an asset. Attached as I was, I had to get rid of it. But before I dragged her enormous pot out into the snow and kissed her goodbye, I took three small cuttings. It was January 21, 2021.

 Hastening to add that I had an understudy from Winn! or I'd never have euthanized the giant plant.

I washed the cuttings, dipped them in rooting hormone, and put them in clean wet vermiculite in a clean plastic cup. I made a humidity tent with a second clear plastic cup. I provided gentle heat from below with a five watt aquarium heater meant for bettas. The cuttings sat there for weeks, bathed in full-spectrum light from a grow lamp, doing absolutely nothing. Two turned black and died. One stayed green. But it was April 30—three full months—before a tiny white root protruded from its base. You can see the other cutting is black and rotty and dying. That's par for the course. 

 By June—five months later—the lone living one had five roots perhaps a half-inch long. I tried a couple of times to remove the top cup, to get it used to ambient humidity, and each time the leaves wilted like a damp Kleenex, giving me clear indication that it intended to die, and die soon. Back on with the humidity cup. The cutting sulked. The summer got hot and I removed the bottom heater. Still the cutting sat, doing nothing. One day in early July I was alarmed to see two of its leaves turning yellow. They fell off. The stem started turning black. Oh no!! I was desperate. Clearly what I was doing wasn’t working. Time to change things up. 

 

I removed all but one leaf, reasoning that it would lose less water through one leaf than four. I repotted it and its puny roots in real potting soil, and then I put it outside in light shade on my chipmunk-proof propagation table. It would no longer have a humidity chamber. This plant was on its own. It was now or never. And that cutting started putting out green shoots and then it made new leaves. By golly it was alive!! It was growing! I had my tiny understudy!  It had been agonizingly slow, but somehow I’d blundered through and done it.  (Three year old Creole Lady in back).

 

Now all I want to do is try again. That was fun. And I am a true masochist. 

But with good reason. LOOK AT THIS PLANT.

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

Need Joy? Come on Over!

Not that anyone needs color and light and joy right now...I thought I'd offer up a little virtual stroll through the greenhouse, just to stick our noses into a few flowers. This is what greets me when I open the greenhouse door. Needless to say I find excuses to go down there about five times a day. Hooked on it. It was a rough winter, all rain and no sun, but now that the plants are getting some sun and heat, they're exploding into blossom. 

I find this interesting. When my big hibs froze on Jan. 30, 2019 (heating failure due to frozen gas line), there were a few tiny shoots around the base of The Path's trunk that didn't die back. They have grown a little and are blooming like crazy now. I don't know if it's because they're so close to the fertilizer, but they are much the best blossoms this plant has put out. It's dopey looking but I LOVE IT.

Creole Lady is still bewitching, but she's decided to lay back to let The Path, with her dress around her ankles, take center stage. She'll kick it up a few notches when she finally gets outside in May. 

And there's a Lady in Waiting. Look at this tiny baby Creole Lady that I got in the summer of 2019! She's finally coming into her own. More flower than leaf...

Two blossoms at once is very unusual for a little cutting like this. But so gratifying. My huge Lady slumbers behind her. I absolutely love having an understudy that's small enough to carry into the house should the need arise. Like, drastically plunging temperatures, foretelling another disastrous greenhouse freeze.

This plant...I live for its blossoms.

The Thai Giant crown of thorns is just ridiculous, 3' tall and loaded with peppermint-striped flowers.

Started from a 2" long cutting taken in 2016. I have tried to take cuttings of this one but none have rooted for me. Sometimes it just works. Sometimes it doesn't. 

This little Gartenmeister was a tiny shoot that sulked all winter long, then sprang to life when it got sunny. I like to carry this plant over because I'm never sure if I'll be able to find it in the spring. 

Same for Trandshen Bonstet. That one, far as I know, you can't get anywhere but The Glasshouse Works in Stuart, Ohio. Mine is 4' tall now! Roots really well in plain water!

A volunteer impatiens peeking out from under the foliage of my willow-leaved fig. This is the magnificent tropical bonsai that froze last year, and has somehow come back. It looks like a hairy sea urchin right now, but I have faith it will make some decent branches in time.

The geraniums are just spectacular now.

Black Knight is a volcano of the darkest possible foliage and gleaming coals. 

Can't wait for Happy Thought to open its scarlet tanager-red single flowers.

Due to its interesting start in life, this Happy Thought plant has a ridiculous number of individual trunks. 

Both Happy Thought and Vancouver Centennial (shown below) have a really interesting habit of making baby plants amongst their flower heads, way up there on the end of a long stem. It's so weird. I have observed this for years and always wondered what's going on with it. Two years ago I started experimenting with trying to propagate more plants from these funny little leaf clusters. Vancouver's plantlets always got mildew and rotted away in my rooting chambers (just a clear plastic cup inverted over a pot of damp soil).  But two years ago I managed to root a tiny leaf cluster of Happy Thought, and that's the plant in the photo above. It grew painfully slowly, but it grew, and it's a fine, fine plant now.

Of course, I will keep trying because plant propagation is one of my vices.

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.