Archive for December, 2005
December 30, 2005 at 4:28 pm
· Filed under African Violets, General Plant Stuff, New Plants, Succulents and Cacti
At Wal-mart tonight I found Christmas cacti on sale for 50c each.. so I had to get a couple, of course. No blooms, and kinda beat up, but Im sure some time in the green room and they will be fine.
They also had the *most* gorgeous African Violets there, and I got two.. a burgandy and white bi-color, and a purple with white edges. When I got them home I did the typical bloom-plucking and grooming on them, to which my beau automatically started squealing, and I had to explain to him that the grooming is to make the plant feel better.. and yes, I like the blooms, but most likely there are thrips on there, and they need to go.. he just rolled his eyes and sat back and watched me go at them with an exacto knife. But Im sure they feel better without all of those suckers. And I started to groom off the assymetrical leaves, but thats a thing that takes time, I dont want to take all of the big leaves off at once.
They had some beautiful (and huge) Kalanchoe at Wal-mart, but I had to remind myself not to get it. Ill just keep checking until they are marked down, and then bring a couple home. They also had a few other different houseplants, but I wasn’t familiar with their upkeep, so I didn’t want to bring in something new right now. And I am sure that I’ll be there again, soon enough.
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December 29, 2005 at 4:27 pm
· Filed under Citrus seed propagation, General Plant Stuff, Propogation, Uncategorized
Last night I actually found a citrus at the grocery store that had seeds. It was a tangerine, and it had a good number in it. So I soaked the seeds to help leech out any growth inhibitor, and I planted them in small plastic pots in the green room. Im interested to see if I have any that germinate.
And here I thought plants were supposed to go dormant at this time of year, and everything is growing and doing great. Im still not fertilizing, to give everything a rest, but everything seems to be doing happy and green.
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December 28, 2005 at 4:27 pm
· Filed under Green Room, Propogation
Laid down 3 Kalanchoe tomentosa and 2 other un-id’ed succulent plant leaves. I need to take a picture.. I’m sure someone would be able to ID it. Im curious to see if I can propagate it. Also had to throw out some propagating AV leaves that were showing the signs of rot.
A heat lamp burnt out..I’m gonna have to get one soon.
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December 26, 2005 at 4:27 pm
· Filed under Citrus seed propagation, Green Room
The heating in the green room is staying a steady 66F degrees. Humidity is still around 40%, but I’m gonna make sure the temp stabilizes before I worry about anything else. But everything is thriving, my spider plant and all my rex begonias have growth. I almost came home with some new succulents tonight, but I behaved myself. The AV leaf propogating tray was heated nicely tonight, I was happy about that. The heat lamps are working great.
The green room got a good cleaning today. I needed to do some watering but had to deal with some family issues, so I’ll do that tomorrow.
I read in one of my houseplant handbooks where you can start a houseplants from seeds from lemons or oranges. You won’t get any fruits, but the trees themselves make nice little houseplants. So at the grocery store tonight I bought 2 oranges and 2 lemons — different types of each. I know some are made seedless, so I figured I could see what variety had seeds.
They were ALL seedless.
And to boot I have alot of hangnails from the cold weather, and that lemon juice found EVERY SINGLE one of them.
I guess I’ll do some more research and see if any other stores carry different varieties. I want to try to see if I can grow houseplants myself, and I think that would be a good place to start.
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December 26, 2005 at 4:26 pm
· Filed under African Violets, General Plant Stuff, Green Room
I received a box of violets from a friend in PA, and at first they looked ok, but they went downhill. They didn’t die, but the leaves turned brown. She shipped them at the coldest time of last month, so considering the circumstances she did great in packing. But I have noticed new growth and every week or so I lightly groom each plant, and they seem to be doing well. They still don’t look good, but condsidering the growth I’d say they are doing fine.
I also have a covered bowl with anacharis that I have under the lights. It’s an aquarium plant, and I keep some with both my betta and my sister’s fish. It grows just fine, and since the fish bowls arnt in the sun, the plants with them tend to die over time. So it gets replaced from time to time. But I placed some in fertilized water today, a 20-20-20 at quarter strength. I’m curious to see if it grows faster than anacharis in plain water.
My father also found a remote thermometer and humidity gauge, so to see the levels I dont have to walk downstairs. This is good, because I am curious about the temp dip during the night, and when the peak temp in the day is.
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December 23, 2005 at 4:25 pm
· Filed under Green Room, Propogation
I got heat lamps for my green room, and the temperature went up to 70F but the humidity dropped 30 percent (from 70 percent to 40). Not good, but Im going to stablize the temperature before I worry about the humidity. I need to get more circulating air through there — I saw a fungus gnat tonight. But Ill just keep on the bleach drenching. I only saw one, and there are bunch of plants, so I may be over reacting.
Home Depot has seeds out already, but not much of a variety — considering its December, thats understandable. But I picked up a pack of coleus seeds, and Im gonna try my hand at that. I wanted to find cactus seeds, like they had last summer, but no luck yet. I might try eBay if my coleus seeds work.
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December 22, 2005 at 4:24 pm
· Filed under Green Room
Just got done doing a bleach drench on the houseplants to prevent fungus gnats, and put my succulents in clay pots. I wouldnt say that I repotted them, because I slid them from one plastic pot to another clay pot of the same size. I have a big tendancy to overwater, so I think that this should prevent (or help) that over the winter. I also got a Panda plant today, aka Kalanchoe tomentosa. I killed my last one from UNDERWATERING (Imagine that!), because I figured since it was a succulent I should withhold watering more than I would with another plant. But its leaves promptly fell off and it withered away, dead from my inexperience. So after a long talk with the greenhouse owner and $2 later, I walked away confident that I wont kill this one as quickly. I need to pick up heat lamps tomorrow, because the temperature in the greenroom is a tad too low.
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December 18, 2005 at 6:04 am
· Filed under Green Room, Propogation, Uncategorized
I just got done setting up an experiemental propogating system downstairs. There are cups filled a layer of perlite with a later of vermiculite over that. Each layer is about an inch thick. The cups (which have holes on the bottom) are set in a tray with water in the bottom, about 1/2 inch high. I put down 2 african violet leaves, 2 strawberry begonia babies (without roots so far — right off the plant) and a rex begonia leaf. Then a lid is put on the whole thing to raise humidity and stop water from evaporating so fast. It should be interesting to see if I have anything rooting.
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December 17, 2005 at 6:01 am
· Filed under African Violets, General Plant Stuff, New Plants
I found a pot for the paperwhites, and potted and watered them. They already seem to be coming up, so hopefully we will have blooms soon. Its a pity that you have to throw them away after you are done with them, but being in zone 5 I doubt I would have any luck getting them to rebloom.
I did a little bit of African violet grooming last night, and in a week or two Ill do alittle bit more, and hopefully get them back into shape.
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December 15, 2005 at 6:00 am
· Filed under New Plants
I found a new greenhouse in town tonight, and it is great. Right now it seems to cater to people like me.. houseplant folks. They said during the summer they have alot of outdoor plants, but everyone was very knowledgable and I got to pick alot of brains, with questions I had about some plants. They also want some named violets when I get them going. I bought a Kalanchoe for $1, it has orange blooms, and I got 5 paperwhite bulbs. But they have alot of quality plants that you normally cant find in this area– I can see me going back there alot.
I think I successfully killed a snake plant, which I know is pretty hard to do. But everything else is growing well, and its nice to have the green when its all white outside.
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