Indoor Plants

I don't want to kill my house plants anymore

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Spring Blooms

Everybody made it through the winter! 

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Another Bloom

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Morning Light hitting it just right

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More Amaryllis

It is blooming so fast, I wish it would slow down so I could further savor the beauty. 

Morning Image:

Afternoon image:

And a little more because who can resist this beauty

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English Ivy Climbing In The Morning

English Ivy looks beautiful in the winter morning light. The past month this plant has significantly slowed in growth of new leaves but that can be expected during the winter months. 

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Amaryllis Bloomed January 1st

Woke to a surpise bloom from the Charisma Amaryllis, Happy New Year!

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Amaryllis - Charisma

A friend gifted me a Charisma Amaryllis bulb a couple of weeks ago. I added some soil to a medium sized pot, placed the bulb a few inches beneath the top layer of soil, set near an east facing window, and watered. It has been growing about an inch a day. 

I'm excited for the bloom which is expected in the next couple of days.

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Beauty of the Wandering Jew

Tradescantia zebra, a species of spiderwort and more commonly known as a Wandering Jew plant, has beautiful zebra-patterned leaves with deep purple undersides and a deep-green paralleled with a silver stripe on the top side. 

When I first purchased it from Bachman's a couple of weeks ago the instructions said moderate light so I hung it on a northern wall which has indirect light from south facing windows. It began shriveling and the tall, proud stems began slouching, and would drop from the slightest touch. I moved it directly in front of the southern windows and the stems once again found pride and stood tall. Like most plants, it loves light and continues to grow towards the window so I have been rotating it every ten days so I don't feel like it has it's back to me all the time:) 

So far this has been a fairly easy plant to not kill. once I learned that it shows it's true colors in direct sunlight it has been happy as a clam. I keep the soil pretty moist but not too soggy. Supposedly this is a hanging plant but I have it on a table and love how tall the stems are standing. Maybe as it matures with more growth they will prefer to hang down. But for now the pride of those purple, silver, green leaves keeps me smiling. 

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Pothos leaves turning white. Why?

Winter is upon us and the apartment radiators have been turned on. I put boards on top of my radiators and those are my plant shelves. Other than that, there is not a lot of space in my apartment with light. Anyway, the past couple of weeks I have noticed that my Devil Ivy, Pothos, leaves have been loosing color. Right now they are a yellowish color, but I think they are becoming white. I am not sure if this is to do with light, water, or my radiators turning on. 

Does anyone know?

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Climbing Devil Ivy

When I first moved into my apartment in June, I took a couple clippings of my Mom's indoor Devil Ivy (philodendron) as my first house plant. It was a great starter plant for a novice indoor-gardener, as I had a fear of killing plants. But the Devil Ivy has been really easy to care for and doesn't seem to be as sensitive as some plants can be. It can hangout out in dark corners or be near a window, it likes water but doesn't have a break down if you forget to water it on a regular schedule.

Anyway, once the re-potted clippings grew long enough I began guiding it to climb the exposed water pipes in my apartment. They seems to be loving it. 

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Curly Fern Tip

I am not sure why Boston Fern frond tips curl up at various times of the day but they are so cute! This Boston Fern is in my living room, in front of a window, and next to a chair. Last night I noticed that all the tips were balled up super tight. It looked kind of stressful so I hope it is not cold or something. But then in the morning most of the frond tips are more relaxed and a few are still balled up. 

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Is this a boston fern bud?

While checking the moisture in the soil I pulled back the ferns and noticed a bunch of these little, white, fuzzy, growths at the base of the plant. This is my first fern so I don't know what they are but they look like cobwebs! 

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Boston Fern Tips Are Brown And Crispy

I took this beautiful, full, lush Boston Fern from a window box in my Mom's garden a couple of weeks ago. It had been exposed to one early September frost but has been handling the transition to indoor just fine. 

Until, this morning when I noticed that a couple of the frond tips are developing crispy brown edges!

CAUSES:

low humidity

a build up of chemicals such as boron or fluoride

overcrowding the plant

PREVENTION / TREATMENT:

increasing the humidity of the room by either buying a humidifier, spraying/misting the fern leaves on a regular basis, providing a water-catch tray beneath the pot to provide humidity from below

pruning the edges

water with distilled water: I began using the water purifier on the plant water and letting the pitcher of water sit out for a day so the minerals can sink to the bottom before watering

fertilize every two to three during the winter / once a month in the summer

I think the primary cause in this situation is lack of humidity, especially since the radiators in my apartment just kicked in for the winter and they suck the humidity right out of the air. My Boston Fern already sits above a water/catch tray for humidity but I will get a spray bottle today and start misting it too. I pruned the edges this morning and hope it regains strength. 

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Elephant Ear bud popped this morning!

The above photograph of the Elephant Ear (Alocasia) bud was taken Friday afternoon.

Sunday morning I woke up to find that the bud had completely unraveled into a beautiful leaf. 

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Dumb Cane is a little more difficult

I found this Dumb Cane (Dieffenbachia) in a dark corner at Hunt and Gather thrift store in South Minneapolis. It didn't come with any instructions or name so I was learning as I go. I have had a couple of complications but have learned a lot. 

GUTTATION & TIP BURN

First I was getting brown crispy edges and was wondering if it was too much/little water, too much/little light...I had no idea. Then one morning I noticed it was dripping liquid from it's tips.

So I googled that somehow, and learned that it is called "guttation" and if there is excessive salts in the water/soil, once the water droplets evaporate, the salts remain on the tip of the leaf and cause leaf burn. 

So I cut of the Tip Burn and have been wiping down the leaves with a wet towel once a week to remove the salt from the edges. 

LEAF DISCOLORATION

When I first bought this plant, I found it in a dark corner of a store, and it had dark green leaves. Well, I have a south facing apartment with windows in every room, making it difficult to escape light. I put it near windows and have lost some color in the new leaves but there is nothing I can do about that. I know Dumb Cane prefers dark corners with indirect sunlight, I guess I bought the wrong plant for my living conditions but we are doing our best. I hope the plant isn't suffering from having lighter colored leaves. 

You can see the distinct difference the light has made on the leaves. The leaf on the left was an original leaf from when I bought this plant and the leaf of the right just unfolded. 

NEW BUDS

Overall, I have had some challenges with this Dumb Cane but we are learning to live together and more importantly growing. 

This is a brand new leaf which will unroll next week. 

This leaf has been unrolling the past four days. 

So much silent personality. 

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Hedera Helix Ivy is an easy plant so far

I bought this Hedera Helix Ivy a couple of months ago from Bachman's on Lyndale. Typically, I am nervous buying plants from plant stores (I know how silly that sounds) but they tend to go through a shock phase once I bring them home because they are so spoiled from the perfect humidity and temperature controlled greenhouse. I prefer to buy my plants from random thrift and locally owned stores around Minneapolis. That way the plant feels right-at-home once I bring it home. A man at the thrift store in South Minneapolis, Hunt and Gather, recently started selling more plants which I have had a lot of luck with!

Anyway, this particular Hedera Helix transitioned relatively well into my apartment.  I filled a small tin bucket with a couple of rocks from my yard to elevate it a couple inches from the bottom so when I watered it, it would not be sitting in water. When I noticed that some of the leaves on the lower part of the plant were turning crispy brown, I picked it up out of the pot and it had been sitting it water, unintentionally I was waterlogging my new plant! So I emptied the run off water, picked the dead-heads, and the ivy was on it's way to recovery from drowning. 

This Hedera Helix Ivy tends to grow VERY slowly but has such cute little buds. I love the light colored ivy leaves and how little the buds are. It doesn't seem to drink a lot of water so I water it about every two weeks. 

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Elephant Ear surviving the winter?

I dug up this Elephant Ear bulb from my Mom's garden a couple of weeks ago and have been crossing my fingers that it would survive the early frost it was exposed to mid-September. This is my first time potting an outdoor plant and bringing it inside for the Minnesota winter. I went to Bachman's for some advice on how to care for this Elephant Ear and the 'Plant Lady' suggested I strip it of it's leave, take it out of the soil, let it dry out, put it in a paper bag, and leave it in a corner until spring. :( boo. But that wouldn't make my living room look awesome. I wanted to keep this plant thriving and stretching it's branching into the extra space in my apartment. 

Since it had been exposed the first frost, it's first week indoors, it lost a lot of branches which made me worried but after two weeks I started to get new little blooms which I am really excited about.