Indoor Plant Care Tips Guide

In the comments on the Coffea arabica profile post, Anonymous has asked for a picture of my plant now, as opposed to the picture that was there previously, which was from October 2007.I'm afraid the comparison isn't very good.Then:Now:Some of this is the season: it dropped leaves during the winter of '07-'08, and then dropped another round this past winter. I'm not sure it's finished, actually,

We've seen this before; I posted about this exact same plant about a year ago, before I even knew for sure what it was. But I'm posting it again, because 1) I only have so many things to post about, 2) it's moderately impressive, maybe, that I've convinced the plant to rebloom, and 3) I'm better with the camera now than I was then, so I can do closeups that I wasn't capable of then.This is the

I had an idea today that I was immensely proud of. The perfect cultivar name for the next big variety of Angelonia is:[drumroll] Angelonia 'Jolie.'Please, someone, make this happen for me.

Until I started my current job, I had no idea that Nematanthus flowers were ever any color but orange. But not only can they be orange, they're sometimes pink:and every once in a while, they can even be tiger-striped: Which is awfully cool of them. I've bought a pink one from work, and brought home a tiger-striped cutting, but so far, only the tiger-striped one has bloomed. The pink one is maybe

Check out this page: the first mp3 download on it is The Bootleague's "Groove is in the Black Hole Sun," which combines the vocals from "Black Hole Sun" (Soundgarden) with the music from "Groove is in the Heart" (Dee-Lite) to create something remarkably different from either. Chris Cornell has never sounded more cheerful.

404 plant (Schizocaulus resectus) is a quick-growing, rhizomatous perennial native to Central and Southeast Asia. The fleshy, spoon-shaped leaves emerge from beneath the soil singly, dying back with the onset of the dry season. Leaves are typically about 4 inches (10 cm) in length: they are green on the upper side and orange on the lower.The rhizome grows quickly beneath the soil, and is capable

This is an old picture: Fenestraria, like Lithops spp. (to which they are related), are fall bloomers. This picture is from last October 25. As I recall, they were blooming when they came in, and the excitement was kind of short-lived: within about a week, the blooms were over, and we didn't even get that full week, because they're one of those flowers that won't open all the way if it's cloudy.

I was never a big fan of vermiculite until fairly recently. I didn't dislike vermiculite; I just never saw the point of using it for anything, because what could vermiculite do that perlite couldn't? It's too compact, and breaks down too fast, to be useful for lightening a heavy soil mix, and if you want to make a mix more moisture-retentive, there are a lot of simpler options. So vermiculite

The plugs are beginning to come in, and for me, lately, everything's been about trying to squeeze the tropicals into smaller and smaller spaces so we have room for the plugs we're transplanting. This is difficult.The plugs really ought to be too young to try to flower, but they do anyway. The lighting was weird on this one (yellowish, from one of the grow lights: the flower is really more of a

In late November or early December of 2008, I noticed that we had a flower bud on one of the Sansevieria cylindricas at work. At the time, I figured I'd better take a picture of it, because either it would bloom and be over before I knew it, or a customer would buy the plant -- either way, I'd miss my chance to document the process. I've seen the occasional Sansevieria trifasciata bloom, but

I've been experiencing technical difficulties with the computer, so no commentary. Fortunately, I don't think these pictures need a lot of commentary anyway.

Yes, we've seen Pilea flowers before. A couple times. But these are different: they're pink.They're borderline attractive, even, though they have the same basic molar shape as the Pilea cadierei flowers did. Click on the picture for a really really close-up look. 'Moon Valley' is a plant I was reluctant to buy at first, because I'd read accounts of people finding it difficult. It doesn't seem so

Plant toxicity comes up a lot at work. People who are buying a plant often want to know if it's safe for dogs, cats, birds, children, or what have you, and this is something that houseplant books are surprisingly reluctant to cover. We do have a (cat-specific) list at work, up at the front counter, and I refer to it sometimes, but it's not entirely accurate (it lists Sansevieria trifasciata as

It's transmitted-light photo time again! (Mostly because I've been too busy to come up with a real post and I'm doing this at the last minute!) The previous transmitted light posts can be found here. Philodendron 'Moonlight.' Looks like there's a bit of reflected light happening in addition to the transmitted light. Dieffenbachia 'Tropic Marianne.' This is a difficult plant to photograph:

Spring be sprung, yo.

This one actually happened a long time ago; sometimes ideas for posts have to wait until I'm really desperate for something to post about before I can get to them. It's not that this wasn't an interesting event, it's that it seemed like it would be a long, picture-heavy post. Anyway. So the story begins with us getting in a large Polyscias fruticosa maybe about a year ago. Nice-looking plant. And

Valentine's Day again. I tried really really hard to come up with something cool and original to post here (the picture, at least, is new), but, you know, massive fail. So here's a repost, which I normally don't do and feel really bad about. It's at least maybe more financially relevant than it was last year:Buy more stock in rosesMillionaires will always wooDon't be shocked if rosesMake a

This was kind of an experiment; I got these in at work last summer because I'd seen them at Piersons (Cedar Rapids) not long before and thought well if they're good enough for Piersons. . . .They arrived in 4-inch pots, which we sold a few of. Then I noticed we were having to water them, like, every day, so when the opportunity presented, we moved them up into hanging baskets. And they went nuts.

This album (Forever) was a big favorite a few jobs ago. There were four of us on the overnight shift (8 PM to 7 AM, four days a week), and the radio drove me crazy (the radio ruined Janis Joplin's "Me & Bobby McGee" for me, through sheer repetition: none of the radio stations around here seem to have more than about twelve songs at any given time), so eventually what happened was that we would

Stevia rebaudiana, "sweet herb," is a weird one. So much hype about the plant being the Next Big Sweetener on-line that I don't really know what to think: maybe it's going to save us all from high-fructose corn syrup poisoning; maybe it's going to give us all cancer. Probably it will do neither. The story varies pretty predictably according to the interests of the teller (if somebody tells you

I believe the technical term is bell; they're not quite fused enough to be a wasp. We haven't seen this type before a few months ago; they didn't appeal to me enough to buy them (for chrissakes, I have nineteen African violets already: enough is too much), but they were interesting all the same. I would occasionally glance over that way and wonder for a split second what these were: the shape of

I can't think of anything else in the Aloe / Gasteria / Haworthia family that was flowering at the same time, and I didn't think Gasteria flowers were self-fertile, but nevertheless, we had a pod form. It failed to develop, though, and dropped off shortly after this picture was taken. So maybe it was never all there to begin with. In any case, it's the first time I've seen even the beginning of

Q: Is Coraline worth going to see in the theater?A: Oh my gods yes. Run, don't walk. May want to leave kids under about 8-9 years old at home. But do go see it. It's insane (in the good way). Also gorgeous. The words "instant classic" would not be inappropriate.Special bonus for garden bloggers: the parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are garden writers, who for the first part of the film are

I wish that this picture did better justice to the flowers themselves. It's not that Begonia flowers are that awesome -- we've all seen them, and I'm actually kind of sick of them, myself, because we've got some Begonia hanging baskets that I'm forever picking up after: they seem to always be dropping flowers on whatever's below them -- but this particular spray (technically panicle, the

Not entirely clear why the whole video has to be clips from David Lynch's Lost Highway, but whatever. Nicely done mashup.

I probably should have cropped more out of this photo, but you can see the interesting part pretty clearly by opening the picture in a new window. It's not going to win any beauty contests, I suppose, but I've seen worse. These smaller, plain-leaved Vrieseas offset after flowering like Guzmania lingulata and Aechmea fasciata do. I bought one that was similar to this, long after it had flowered,

Lovely though they are, Primulas are perplexing to me at work. I don't think the greenhouse is quite the right place for them. I have no personal experience trying to keep them indoors, but just based on how and when they fall apart at work, I'm guessing that they need cooler temperatures than what we can provide (especially lately: the weathermen are talking partly sunny and 52F / 11 C for today

Love is in the air, apparently. Or whatever the fern equivalent of love is. Phlebodium aureum 'Blue Hare.' Nephrolepis exaltata. Microsorum musifolium 'Crocodyllus,' newer spores. Microsorum musifolium 'Crocodyllus,' older spores. Cyrtomium falcatum. The very very beginnings of spores on Asplenium nidus. The whitish lines covering the middle half of the leaf will eventually turn brown and

Scene: Work. I'm trying to water plants in the greenhouse, but I've been interrupted a few times already by the CUSTOMER, who has explained that she's looking for a long-blooming plant for a man's hospital room. It's a big deal to her that the plant not be too "girly," though she's also rejected hints that maybe a foliage plant might be a good compromise. The plant must have flowers; they just

The recession (can we start using the D-word yet? I mean, is there anybody who's still unconvinced that this is a depression?) is hard on all of us, of course. But it's roughest on the squirrels. Background on the picture: the squirrel is dead, obviously. I know some blogs have no-dead-rodent-pictures policies, but PATSP is not one of them. Explaining the beer can is harder, but it was the day

The forced bulbs march onward, I guess. Last year we tried forcing some of our own, not entirely on purpose (I forget what the deal was -- some unsold bulbs that got temporarily stashed somewhere and forgotten, that we went ahead and planted anyway?), and they didn't work out so well. I think I planted them too deeply, and maybe they also didn't get quite the full extent of the cold treatment

The vampire begonia (Duggara iridophylla) is not a true Begonia. It gets its name from the supposed resemblance of the leaves to rhizomatous begonias, as they are broad (up to 6 inches / 15 cm across), hairy, and frequently brightly colored in shades of green, yellow, orange, brown, black, and red. Surprisingly, leaf color does not appear to be determined by genetics, but is instead dependent on

I was inspired to write this post because of a recent Garden Web thread. It was one of those deals where I started writing a response about one specific thing, and kept adding in other stuff, and the response got longer and longer and longer until it reached the point where I thought I'd be kind of being a jackass if I posted it. Which is one way that having a blog is nice. So here we go.

The husband and I went for a drive to the Quad Cities today; the objective was to go to Wallace's, and we did go, but it was a crushing disappointment, as they've closed their greenhouses for some unknown period of time, and had somehow whittled down their tropical selection down to a sad two tables' worth of the most ordinary stuff imaginable. Which is not what I go there for, obviously. But the

Hopefully it hasn't been noticeable, but my work schedule and the home watering schedule came together last week in such a way that I spent more or less every second of every day for several days in a row either at work or watering at home, or scrambling to throw together a blog post at the last minute. The botanical names post from a few days ago was also being unusually uncooperative, and had