Vacation care for indoor plants

Indoor plants, 2016

I'm not a happy traveler; I admit it, I'm one of those people who worries whether I locked the doors or left the stove on.  As a gardener, one of my more realistic worries is coming home to dead and dying plants.  I've been growing plants indoors for over 40 years, originally houseplants, although now I primarily propagate plants from seeds and cuttings for planting outdoors later.  I know exactly how much water each plant needs, and how often.  I examine nearly every plant, nearly every day, and water each one exactly when it needs it.  But what to do when I can't be home to take care of them?  Below are some of the ways I help my plants (and my sanity) survive this perilous time.

Isabella had two daddies

Today a piece of my soul is missing, a piece I never knew was there before a skinny, hungry cat, barely more than a kitten, found her way into our garage from the back alley on a September afternoon in 2003.  For not quite 13 years, she became the center of our lives.  Yesterday, I rushed home early from an out-of-town trip to say good-bye to our baby.

Plants and politics

Gardening and politics don't often cross paths, and when they do, it can get unpleasant.  I've avoided political issues in this blog because, first, none ever came up, and secondly, my political opinions weren't the least bit relevant to the subject matter of this blog.  That changed with North Carolina House Bill 2, widely (but inaccurately) portrayed as a "bathroom bill".  In reality, this bill goes far beyond that issue to give a special "screw you" to the entire LGBT community.

Begonias

Nothing to say right now, just a few photos of my begonias.  These are all hybrid seedlings from my breeding program, rapidly outgrowing their space under the lights indoors and needing to go out in the garden very soon.  I really like a couple of them, but will any of them prove to be hardy?  Only time will tell!  Click on the photos to go to zoomable originals in Flickr.

The Beheaded Botanist

Sitting at my computer in my comfortable office, handling herbarium specimens that are often well over a hundred years old, I sometimes forget how dangerous it could be to collect these specimens in the 1800’s, and how many of these collectors came to bad—and sometimes violent—ends.  One such end inspired a story by Rudyard Kipling.

Quick and easy begonia propagation

One reason begonias are so popular is because they're ridiculously easy to propagate.  When I was a kid, I was introduced to begonias when my mother brought home a leaf that a woman in her bridge club had given her.  I already knew how to propagate african violets from leaf cuttings, and this woman told my mother that begonias could be propagated the same way.  It worked, and I was hooked.  I've since discovered that most begonias can be propagated from leaf cuttings.  About the only ones that can't are cane or "angelwing" begonias, which have to be propagated by division or stem cuttings.

It's okay to kill that plant!

Anybody can stage a photo, but can anybody grow a plant?

I recently had a brief online discussion with my friend Marianne, who blogs at Small Town Gardener.  Marianne took issue with a magazine article describing maidenhair ferns (Adiantum) as an "easy" houseplant to brighten the home.  The picture of a pretty little fern (not the photo above) was captioned, "Living things boost energy in a space.  Maidenhair and Boston ferns (shown) get high marks for their hardiness (read: they're hard to kill) and bring lushness to a bookshelf, console, or entry table. For something a tad daintier, try white allium."

What does "boost energy" even mean?  Moreover, what could possibly be daintier than a maidenhair fern, and what the heck is "white allium"?  But Marianne's takeaway was, "Maidenhair and Boston ferns easy to grow indoors?  What?!?!?  This type of cutesy misinformation makes me absolutely crazy.  Why?  Because when people new to plants try and fail to grow these high-humidity moisture lovers well (and I do stress 'well'), they then think of themselves as failures."

I've grown several different kinds of maidenhair fern indoors and I have found them to be quite easy.  Heck, a couple of them are even greenhouse weeds.  I grabbed the plant for the photo at the top from this group on my light stand, where they're growing in the middle of winter without any supplemental humidity: