Indoor Plant Care Tips Guide

Bad news would be good news on this one. I've had two large Cereus peruvianus since 2004, and they did really well for me for quite a long time, tripling in height the first year and then growing more slowly thereafter. Never any problems, until they got mealybugs a couple years ago. I fought and cursed and agonized over the mealybugs for a good solid year and a half, at least, before finally

(All prior pictures in the transmitted light series can be found here.)It's that time again, and I have to say, this is my favorite batch to date. Hippeastrum NOID. Well okay, this picture isn't so much a favorite.Syngonium podophyllum. Or this one. Though I must note, as I often do, how happy it makes me when even the boring pictures are in focus.Scindapsus pictus. Okay, now we're getting

We're trying to overwinter some of last spring's sweet potato vines. Mostly it's worked. There have been a few casualties. It's kind of a long story. In any case, they flower off and on, throughout the winter. And the summer. And the other seasons. 'Blackie' seems to do this more than the other variety we have, a chartreuse kind called 'Marguerite.' 'Blackie' also does a weird thing that kind of

Periodically on the garden blogs, questions will arise about whether common names or scientific names are "better" for some purpose or another. (The biggest recent such post I've seen was at Garden Rant.) I've seen people at Garden Web asking about whether or not they "need to know" the botanical names for everything, and I've been snapped at for using the botanical names at GW and at work both.

It's actually a little weird how identical all Neoregelia flowers turn out to be. Both pictures below can be enlarged to ridiculous proportions if opened in a new window.This does clarify pretty well how the taxonomists can be so certain that 'Gazpacho,' 'Nuance' and 'Fireball' all belong in the same genus, though. The flowers look pretty much interchangeable.

Not a lot to be said about these; I think they pretty much speak for themselves. Before seeing these, I wasn't actually aware that Crocuses could be more than one color like this. (I've lived a sheltered life, when it comes to crocuses.) So I was impressed.I also got a closeup of the stigma, just 'cause I thought it was interesting. Also 'cause I knew if I photographed it, I'd be able to look at

Some of you who are linked in my blogroll may have noticed that the "Links to this post" section of your own posts, at your own blog, have been filling up with links back to PATSP. I know I've seen this at a few other blogs (Rock Paper Lizard, May Dreams Gardens, Wicked Gardener). Today, finally, someone pointed out (nicely) that it was kind of obnoxious, so I'm trying to fix it.I don't

Peperomia caperata is a frustrating plant to research. It's doubly so after an information bonanza like Cordyline fruticosa, where I all but had to fight off new trivia with a stick (and mostly failed, as you know if you read that profile). Web pages that come up when you do a search for Peperomia caperata mostly fall into one of three categories:1. Terse superficial stuff about caring for them

Yet another flowering Tillandsia, this one sadly a NOID because, well, because the air plant display gets stirred up and rearranged all the time and it's very difficult to keep everything where it belongs. It's especially difficult to keep it all where it belongs if you're a little hazy on which species are which to begin with.

I can't answer your e-mails. I've tried. They get bounced back to me.

The flower shop asked me to take this photo a couple weeks ago. This is an Isabel Bloom figurine, or statue (is it still a "figurine" if it's two feet long?), or whatever, that they were unpacking, and something about the hands folded over the chest and the form-fitting styrofoam block struck them as amusing. They have senses of humor over there. I don't know whether Isabel Bloom is well-known in

Two things today. One, I mentioned in the profile for Vriesea splendens that although they form offsets after blooming, like most other bromeliads, they're rumored to produce only one per plant. My plant at home has begun to grow an offset, and it looks like I will indeed get only one:I mentioned in the original profile that with some plants (Aechmea fasciata and Guzmania lingulata among them),

More forced spring flowers. As usual with pictures involving blue or violet flowers, the actual color is very different from this (darker, purpler). I don't remember Irises being involved in these plantings last year; maybe our supplier has diversified. Or maybe (more likely) I'm just not remembering last year very well. It was a little traumatic in spots. Maybe I've blocked it from my memory.

New category (borrowed) for PATSP today. Jasdip posted this picture to Garden Web (on this thread) a while back (on 12 Jan. -- there was a backlog of posts to put up before we got to this one), and I thought it was cool. It will be interesting to see if there are follow-up pictures about the flowers once they open. Open in new window for a much larger picture.From what I've read and experienced

I'm not sure if it's just that I've completely lost track of what time of year it is, or if Ceropegia woodii (string of hearts) just flowers intermittently year-round, but it's doing it again, and I wasn't expecting it. Then there's this older picture (from October), of the actual seed pods, though the seed pods kind of disappeared at some point during the early winter and I'm not sure where they

Some years, when fall arrives, the apartment fills up with boxelder bugs (Boisea trivittata), and then in the spring we find little piles of them, dead, in front of all the windows and near the plant lights. Other years, 2008-09 being one of them, it's not so much boxelder bugs as ladybugs, but the story winds up being basically the same. Once it gets cold out, the boxelder bugs pretty well stay

Saw the start of the new half-season last night, and, well, one of the commenters at the Television Without Pity forums said it best:This episode made me so nostalgic for the happy carefree days when all the characters had to deal with was the near extinction of the human race.That is all.

This is the solution for the puzzle posted on January 8th.

I suppose it's sound advice, technically, but it seems like to most people it would be self-evident -- I'd expect that nobody who needed to be told this would be capable of reading it. Also of interest is its location: the parking lot of the nearest Catholic church. Which may or may not be relevant, but makes the possible interpretations more interesting.-Unrelated: if you visited late enough

Cordyline fruticosa is one of those rare beings: a pretty face attached to a great personality. It's not the easiest plant to grow indoors, alas, but it's been -- and this is not quite the oxymoron it'll sound like -- the easiest difficult plant I've ever had.Cordyline fruticosa 'Florica.'Why "party planner?" Well, if you were throwing a houseplant party, Cordyline fruticosa is the only plant to

Last set of Tillandsia flowers I've got for a while. Promise.Wait, check that: this is the last batch of air plant flowers for a while. I do have pictures of another Tillandsia, but it's T. cyanea, which I think ought not count.I don't have much to say about these; I think they more or less speak for themselves. I wish they were slightly more in focus.

I know I've shown a picture of this variety blooming before, and that this is not necessarily a better picture than that one, but as they say about adorable children, it's different when it's your own personal kid doing something adorable. This one actually bloomed at home for me, without needing any special treatment to do so, so now it's probably my favorite. But don't tell the "Humphrey Bogart

Suddenly, they all have leaves again. Refoliation all over the place. A couple of the larger ones are even flowering. I would be pleased about it if I didn't strongly suspect that they're just doing it to mess with me.(To understand why this is a big deal, check the Adenium obesum profile.)Tangentially related: see this page for some weird-ass . . . I guess you'd call it Adenium-sculpting? It's

If properly installed and maintained, a Cold Fusion Daffodil can supply up to 20% of your home's energy needs for twenty years or more! Buy yours today!Another case of getting a weird effect through error. (The fogged lens thing in the previous post was better, but still.) What I find interesting about this picture is not so much that the flower is overexposed as that nothing else in the shot

This effect is not Photoshop, or special filtering, or anything particularly hard to do at all. I just took a picture after I and the camera had been outside: the haze is the camera's lens fogging up from the cold. One of those lucky errors.

Well, this was a surprise. I bought this plant in June, and not only has it grown conspicuously since then, and not only did it have an offset when I bought it, that I could separate, but it's now going to flower. This is especially unexpected because I thought the plants we received in June were young; I didn't expect any offsetting or blooming or anything for a long time, if ever. I mean, I

I haven't worked this job long enough to accept the idea of daffodils in January as normal. Also I dislike it because it makes me feel like this must be April, in which case I'm extremely behind on everything and have an impossible amount of work to do. Surprisingly, knowing that it's not April isn't much comfort.

Hi again. Another crossword. As with the first one, a fair amount of this is site-specific, obscure, or whatever, and may or may not be of interest to you. But then, what else were you planning on getting done today, right? You can always stop if it's not going well.I recommend printing out a copy of the puzzle image, and then working on the paper. Googling is likely to prove useful.Made with the

My plants at home, or at least some of them, are doing this now, too, but none of those pictures turned out particularly well. This plant is the last one remaining of the five or so that I brought in to work, and it's done shockingly well in the heat and humidity of the greenhouse -- I just moved it into a 6-inch pot, whereas some of the plants I grew at the same time (see older post) are still

Of all the houseplants for which I've not yet written profiles, which one strikes you as the most obvious omission? Which is the glaring omission? Aloe barbadensis (aloe vera) Araucaria heterophylla (Norfolk Island pine) Ardisia crenata (coral berry)

Yet another round of transmitted light photos. (The previous batches can be found here.) These were all taken of work plants, back in October. (Yeah, that's right. Sometimes I plan posts three months ahead. You got a problem with that?)Strelitzia nicolai. Almost seems shameful that the plant would evolve to have these leaves get ripped apart by the wind. I mean, I get why. But still. They're so

Euphorbia tirucalli was originally supposed to go with the Wizard of Oz series of profiles (I intended it for Scarecrow, which eventually went to Cryptanthus spp.), but as I got further into the research, it seemed less and less appropriate for any of the characters there, and more and more X-Filesy. So it was postponed, and now here we are. (I don't have any plans to do an X-Files series.1)My

Weirdly, I'd never seen these flower prior to this job. Or more likely I'd seen it and paid no mind. Whichever. Two winters in a row now, they begin building these elaborate little towers in about October or November, which reach full size in December . . . ish (okay, so I don't know exactly when it happens: sue me), and begin popping out these tiny yellow flowers. It's interesting, but not

You may be asking yourself what "slut glitter" is and why I would be posting about it. Well. It's an inside joke at work, which derives from one day prior to Christmas when I went into the workroom to do something or other and was confronted with a lot of assorted flower shop stuff. Glittery sticks, and gold-painted pine cones, shiny balls of unnatural substances and that kind of thing. The

I hate Top 40 music for roughly the same reason I hate Christmas music: because I'm exposed to it involuntarily, over long periods of time, and most of the time it's in situations where I'm unable to substitute something I like better, so I just have to grit my teeth and get through it. After which it gets stuck in my head for unbearably long periods of time, which is even worse.I also tend to

I love pretty much everything about this video. Not like, not tolerate -- love. Everything. Though it's a little weird to love a song that's in a language I can't understand (in this case, Swedish? I think?). Stay out of the YouTube comments unless you 1) understand Swedish, 2) want to fight about the relative superiority of Scandanavian countries, or 3) want to insult religious people / be

Well, it's taken forever (almost a full year, in fact) to get there, but the first of the offsets that I reported last January have developed to the point where they can go it alone. So far, only two of them seemed ready to pot up, but there are a good fifteen to twenty more where those came from, which will eventually be pottable too. I hope. I don't know what happens then: I probably don't