Winter Interest

I've become completely converted to the idea that the best winter interest in my climate is house plants. And at the moment perhaps my favorite houseplant is the bromelias Bilbergia pyramidalis 'Striata' I grew it outside last summer, where it was perfectly happy. Brought it inside to cool temperatures and pretty low light (an east window, with lots of other plants blocking the sun) and it has kept on growing -- seemingly unfazed by me forgetting to water it. I'd grow it for the bold, vase-shaped, yellow-striped foliage alone, but come mid-winter, it thrilled me with a flower spike covered with bright pink bracts:

Which opens to reveal delicate purpley blue flowers

Easy, lovely, winter flowering... what more could you want? Now I want to collect the whole genus...

Winter flowers

Most of the plants in my house every winter are things I've trying to overwinter for the garden next year. I don't generally expect them to do much or look pretty -- just stay alive. It was with that in mind that I brought in a pot of Solanum seaforthianum. With the common name of Brazilian Nightshade, I didn't really expect it to be too happy with my cool (56F/13 C at night , 64F/18C during the day) house. But sitting close to a east-facing window, and getting watered when I remember it, it seems to be quite happy, vining all around everything else clustered at the window and producing rather charming little clusters of purple flowers

Here are some rather happily posed in front of my favorite begonia, 'Little Brother Montgomery'

And another cluster getting some back-lit action by my variegated agave.


Who wouldathunk? I think I like it better as a winter flowering houseplant than I did in the garden last summer!

Fuchsia decidua: THIS close to amazing

Last year I wrote a post getting all excited about ordering seeds for Fuchsia decidua from Gardens North.

It germinated easily, and grew happily all summer, with really quite attractive reddish leaves.

As fall came along, I brought it inside, let the soil dry out, and most of the leaves dropped off. Then, just as advertised, the nearly bare stems started pumping out flower buds. Lots of them. Big clusters of tiny buds that grow and grow...

They get to the point where I'm expecting them to open soon... and then they fall off. It is rather devastating. Because the amazing thing is these little plants starting sending out buds back in November (I think) and they are STILL at it! If only they would all bloom instead of falling off, it would be an incredible multi-month long display of flowers!
But... they ARE falling off, I don't know what to do about it. I have a couple theories: Maybe my house is too cold (55 at night, 64 during the day) or maybe the humidity is too low (we run about ~40% humidity most of the time) or maybe I'm not watering them enough. At first I wasn't watering them at all, figuring that when it came to a dry dormant period they wanted it DRY, but now I'm trying to keep them very slightly moist (I don't want them rotting out either...) so we'll see if that helps. If anyone else has ideas, please let me know! I want this to be my favorite winter flowering houseplant... if only I can get it to flower.

Friday Cartoon: houseplants

Now that we've had a frost, the outdoor garden is beginning to shut down, and my focus has turned elsewhere...

Bloom Day

Bloom day is destroying my life. I always force bulbs during the winter, so I had a pot of dwarf irises which just finished flowering a couple weeks ago, and I have a pot a hyacinths which are just about to bloom, as you can see in this picture:

Normally I would be perfectly happy with this: Flowering bulbs for most of the winter is a good thing, and a week or two between one finishing and another starting is perfect.

But NOW, thanks to Carol and bloom day, I'm just frustrated that neither of them decided to bloom for the 15th!

Luckily, this little african violet in my office comes to my rescue:

Which is hardly surprising -- it pretty much is ALWAYS flowering. It seems all they really need is warmth -- when I had it in my house, which I like to keep cold in the winter, it pouted all the time. Brought it into my overheated office at school/work, and it is as happy as can be -- even if I don't water it for weeks at a time (persisting lack of water does stop the flowering, but it picks up again as soon as I stop neglecting it.)

And with that: I've survived the last of the truely difficult bloom days -- next month, I should have crocuses, aconite, witch hazel, and snowdrops, and I'll be good until November -- and next winter, I'll be prepared. I'm going to force SO many bulbs next winter I won't have room in the fridge for anything else.

Window sill make-over, part 2

As I have been talking about, I have a goal of redesigning the inside of my house as a garden.

This past weekend, I tackled the long window in the living room:

It is a fairly narrow window sill, with a couch right in front of it -- so about my only option would be a row of little pots all along the windowsill. Which seemed... lame. A whole bunch of little pots would be silly looking, and the windowsill isn't wide enough to make them really stable. I'd have to end up buying nice looking ceramic ones, which the cats would end up knocking off and breaking.

I explained my quandry to my extremely handy partner. He's not a plant person, but he knows building things. We took a little trip to the local home improvement warehouse, and hey presto, he made me this:

 

A water-proof metal tray, to make watering mess-free, faced with a piece of trim, so when you put plants in there, you don't see the (cheap, plastic) pots, just the greenery -- and it cost a total of about $10. (Yes, I know how lucky I am to have him.)
The planted up result looks like this:

Which I am pretty happy about. I'm in love with the planter box -- makes even this fairly uninspired combination of random plants I had around (mostly Ficus pumila, plus the odd aeonium, kalanchoe and philodendron) look pretty nice. I'm also planning, next winter, to force a lot of small bulbs (dwarf iris, crocus, etc) in 4 inch pots, so I can slip them in between the trailing fig as they come into bloom. Some small cyclamen would look good too (and yes, I keep my house very cool, so they'll be happy) if I can find some that aren't magenta. Magenta, fuchsia, and all allied screaming purply-pink colors are absolutely NOT allowed in my garden, inside or out.

Anyone have other ideas of good plants for this spot? They need to be fine with an east-facing window, not too big, and ideally winter flowering -- and NOT magenta.Oh, and don't say african violets. Way too cold in the house for gesneriads. They live in my overheated office at work/school.

Gardening indoors: A much improved window

I'm all keen to get more house plants (even if, as my brother mentioned, this is more of a return to a former interest than anything entirely new) as you recall. So: I went to Van Atta's, our local good, basic (but not really inspired: They have nice, high quality plants but rarely any "I never knew that existed, but now I NEED it" plants) garden center, and looked at house plants. I came home with three: An unknown begonia, a Dracaena with freakishly awesome variegation ('Lemon Surprise' I am thinking, but possibly 'Lemon Lime') and Chlorophytum 'Fire Flash'

Here is the window before:

And After:

(I'm basing my before and after shots for this project on weight-loss advertisements. Before shots taken so as to maximize ugliness (at night, with the flash) and after shots taken to maximize prettiness (all back lit and glow-y).)

While I was trying to photograph it, Smudge decided to come "help"

He later knocked the chlorophytum over.  Hopefully it is tough enough to take it, because I am utterly enamored by it. What a great shade of orange. I think I'll remove a lower leaf or two to show it off better. The only thing I have doubts about is the begonia -- most begonias are fussy, though some are also virtually impossible to kill. We'll see what class this one falls into. I also wonder if it will get enough light there, in front of the other two. If it starts looking miserable I'll have to track down a better dark-leaved plant for that spot.

Therapy for winter: Meijer Gardens

So this weekend I went to Meijer Gardens -- a huge public greenhouse about an hours drive away in Grand Rapids. They were having their annual orchid show this weekend, which was additional reason to go.

They had LOTS of orchids. And lots of people selling orchids. My new Indoor Gardening resolution was burning in my mind, tempting me to buy, buy, buy... But I restrained myself. I simply looked, noticed what I liked, and asked the one orchid freak (and when I say orchid freak, I mean freak I asked him about slipper orchids and he launched into an explanation of how they're not REALLY orchids because their fertile anthers are derived from the wrong whirl. Right. Though I could, if prompted, launch into rant about how rosemary is actually a salvia due to THEIR anthers, so I guess I can't make fun of him) of my aquaintance what he would recommend for my house, which I keep very very cool.

Luckily, the first genus he mentioned is ALSO the genus I had been admiring most in the show: Masdevallia.

(Sorry about the bad photos -- it was dim, and the crowds made it hard to get good pictures -- check out google images for a better idea of how cool these orchids are)

But there weren't many for sale -- because, I guess, most people don't keep their house in the 50s and 60s all winter. So I'm going to read more, and then maybe order some from somewhere.

After the orchid show, we enjoyed the consevatories, as you can see in these photos. Starting with a shot of the arid room for the sake of Germi who is suffering from too much rain.

Warning: Slightly inapproriate behavior with an amorphophallus ahead:

A tillandsia of some sort:

Gardening inside

Here is a time line of the events leading up to today's post. (photos are of most of the windows in my house. The reason for that will become apparent.)

1/15/2010: Carol, as always, hosts Bloom Day. Bloggers in cold areas everywhere complained they had no flowers because it was January and posted pictures of lampshades and chairs instead.

1/17/2010: Mr. Subjunctive posts a rant about the lack of winter blooms stating that: "Winter is not an excuse. It never was. Now go buy an African violet before February 15 or I will come to your blog and kick your ass."

1/20/2010, 8:16 am: I do my weekly "Wednesday Links" post, including a link to Mr. Subjunctive's rant, and make a sort of half-hearted promise to order a lazy cop-out collection of random winter flowering house plants.

1/20/2010, 9:17 am: Mr. Subjunctive comes to my blog and writes a comment. A very long comment. Actually, I think it is so long it technically qualifies as a guest post, in which he details some winter flowering house plants he does and does not recommend.

1/20/2010, 5:00 pm, heading home from work: Hit by a double dose of full strength Mr. Subjunctive, I finally start really thinking about his point and ask myself this question: Why DON'T I treat the inside of my house as just as much a garden as the outside?

1/20/2010, 7:00pm, after dinner: I start getting excited. Way too excited. I look at my pitiful windowsills (which basically are refugee camps for things from last years outdoor garden that I'm hoping will pull through until spring) and start having visions of lush, well-designed gardens of contrasting foliage textures and rich, fragrant displays of winter flowers.

1/20/2010, 9:00pm: I have filled several pages of my notebook with ideas for windowsill gardens. My list of plants to buy starts getting longer. I take "before" pictures of all the windows in the house. My long-suffering partner asks what on earth I am doing, and is subjected to a 20-minute exposition on my rapturous conversion to the cult of indoor gardening.

1/21/2010: I sit in my office at school supposedly writing a paper, but really googling things like: billbergia, trailing african violets and philodendron. I call my partner to tell him we're going to an orchid show this weekend.

So that is the story. I'm going nuts. I'm determined that next winter will be full of lovely and interesting things to post about and enjoy. We'll see how it turns out. By the way, Mr. S.: You need to make more lists. Specifically, I need a list of: House plants with frilly/ferny/fluffy foliage. Also: Plants with a viny, trailing, weepy growth habit. Not to mention: Plants with dark purple/red/maroon foliage. Oh! And things with fragrant flowers. Not to, like, tell you how to do your job or anything, but still. I'd like to see those lists.