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What type of plants are you interested in growing? This poll is closed. |
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| Perennials! |
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142 | 20.91% |
| Annuals! |
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30 | 4.42% |
| Woody plants! |
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62 | 9.13% |
| Succulent plants! |
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171 | 25.18% |
| Tropical plants! |
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60 | 8.84% |
| Non-vascular plants are the best! |
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31 | 4.57% |
| Screw you, I'd rather eat them! |
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183 | 26.95% |
| Total: | 679 votes | ||
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I'm usually pretty good with plants. I have a 22-year-old pothos in my bathroom that's happily trucking along, and I occasionally take cuttings when it gets too rangy and root them in water to be replanted in various other containers. These I water thoroughly when they start to droop. The small cutting in a glazed pot in my son's room is doing fine. The plastic pot full of rooted cuttings in a ridiculous fish cachepot on our kitchen table: happy as a clam. The cuttings rooting in a glass of water on our east-facing kitchen windowsill: thriving. The rooted cuttings hanging in one of those biodegradable pots in the corner of that same window: extremely unhappy. The first time around, the leaves yellowed and the cuttings died, so I started over with new soil and new cuttings. This batch has green, curling leaves--but often with a healthy green leaf on the same stem. I understand the curling can be due to underwatering, so I put the hanging plant on the usual water-hard-when-dry pothos watering schedule, but it's still not thriving. What am I doing wrong with the hanging plant? Since the cuttings in water are doing so well, can I just hang a fishbowl of water full of pothos cuttings instead?
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Apr 4, 2017 14:06
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 07:39 |
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I get how that could be the case, but it's weird because that's how I started all of these plants, and only one is struggling. Maybe I'll put those bits back into water, get them stronger, and put together a water pot. Or one with those gel beads, though I've never used them before.
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Apr 4, 2017 16:38
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cheese posted:Anyone have experience building planters for railings?  And my planters are really shallow in the middle, such that the root portion of most nursery plants won't easily fit. It's going to take a lot of soil and watering to stay on top of them this year.
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Apr 30, 2017 22:29
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I just learned about a beautiful little plant, a perennial with lovely deep-pink flowers, that likes things dry, dry, dry, and loves sun. I'm phone-posting now and away from my plant/nursery notes, but I'll post with more info and a photo tomorrow. I got one for free (probably wouldn't have chosen it for my garden) and will try it in that shallow deck-railing planter just for kicks.
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May 3, 2017 04:21
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Okay, here's that plant, a lewisia longipetala "Little Raspberry": The tag says: Full sun; height 6", spread 6-8"; long-growing alpine plant becomes covered with brightly colored flowers. Blooms late spring and early summer. Tolerates hot, dry conditions; prefers fertile, sharply drained soil. I don't expect it to do well here in SE MI (zone 6b), but I'll give it a fair shot, anyway.
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May 3, 2017 14:12
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Apparently they can grow larger and faster than expected and wind up cracking sidewalks.
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May 10, 2017 17:05
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Looks like a tulip tree. Beautiful!
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May 15, 2017 18:59
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Fantastic--thanks! And just in time for my nursery run this Friday. 
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May 17, 2017 16:10
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I have a plant that I ID'ed once and discovered that it liked being rootbound. (I don't remember what it is; it was a gift for my grandfather's funeral in early 1998 and it will. not. die.) But it tilts like a motherfucker and is now pulling all the soil up with it--only slightly, so far. I'm going to pick up a bigger pot for it later this week, but in this case, should I try to shake the roots free or just plop that sucker in?
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May 17, 2017 23:51
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Whatever this is: Closeup of its leaves:  (There's the remnants of a different plant sticking up in the middle, way dead, that I'd tease out and toss away in the process of repotting.) Edit: Schefflera? Hirayuki fucked around with this message at 00:19 on May 18, 2017 |
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May 18, 2017 00:04
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Looks like calibrachoa to me, but GIS around to be sure (mobile posting here). If I'm right, you have some very reliable, very pretty plants there!
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Jun 13, 2017 04:25
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They come in tons of colors, and in single- and double varieties, too. Very reliable. I'll try to post some pics of mine later. If you like petunias, also consider Calitunias (or Petchoas), a cali/petunia hybrid that performs equally well in a broader spectrum of soil pH. I think calis prefer alkaline soil--although frankly I've never had to amend anything to get them to thrive in containers. eta: Here we go! I can't believe I only have these three this year.  I like the top one especially because it looks like it was colored in with crayon. 
Hirayuki fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 12:32
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And they attract harmless but PITA box elder bugs.
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Jul 2, 2017 00:24
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Can spider mites skeletonize a plant? I left for a couple weeks and came back to a dahlia that was a mere shadow of its former self. In all honestly, I should just chuck it out. I was gone while it was being eaten (and my husband apparently didn't notice  ); while I didn't catch anything red-handed, there are a couple very fine webs toward the base of the plant that look like the spider mite webs on my indoor/outdoor fig. But they never did that much damage to my fig.
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Jul 14, 2017 16:41
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I can't help with your other questions, but that looks like plain old English ivy (or "common ivy") to me. It'd be beautiful trained all up on a wall or fence, but it can get unruly and go everywhere, yeah. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedera_helix
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Aug 9, 2017 17:01
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listrada posted:So, my voodoo lilies (Acanthophallus konjac) are doing really well. The big ones are three years old now, and are taller than the table.
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Sep 5, 2017 18:26
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This might be straying off topic, but: does anyone know a good way to get rid of box elder bugs? We've had a real infestation (mostly outside, thank goodness) for two late-summers in a row, and they stick around well into winter. We smack stragglers hard with a fly-swatter, but they're congregating in significant numbers on our south-facing brick back wall. The natural roach/ant/etc. spray did nothing but rile them up; I wound up smashing one into the back of my bare knee before hot-footing it back inside to regroup.  We do not have any box elder trees. We do have a maple, and I understand they can come to like those as well.
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Sep 22, 2017 23:31
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Good news! I've had one for years (I can't remember when I bought it, seriously) that I have not yet been able to kill. In fact, I cut it down to size every now and then and propagate the cuttings, to varied success (the cuttings ooze irritating gunk and can be difficult to deal with). You can find more info about this particular plant (related to poinsettia!) by Googling "Euphorbia millii". Yours is blooming and has nice big leaves--that's great. If it has reasonable light and isn't too wet, it should do fine. Mine is potted in coir (all I had at hand when it came time to repot) and in an east-facing window over my kitchen sink. I water it maybe every couple of weeks. A few cuttings I gave to a friend are flourishing in a west-facing restaurant front window. It's pretty low-maintenance. Good luck!
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Nov 9, 2017 20:50
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Speaking of Miracle-Gro: I picked up some of the easy-dumb liquid pump houseplant feed and gave it to all the plants on my kitchen windowsill. They all reacted well or not at all, but my mature and robust peace lily now seems to have some outer-ish leaves that are always drooping. At first I thought it just needed water, but these leaves didn't perk up. The leaves don't look overly yellow or dead, but maybe a little blah; can/should I just trim them off and leave the central "core" of leaves to flourish? What are the odds the Miracle-Gro did this?
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Nov 14, 2017 22:25
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Thanks for the tip! I never guessed one squirt of fertilizer could shock its system so much. This particular plant was down to a slim stem and maybe one sad leaf when I pulled it out of its arrangement (from my grandfather's funeral in early '94!) and nursed it into the beefy specimen it is today. It was so thready and meager back then, in fact, that it took a good while for it to grow enough to be able to tell what it was. I'm confident it'll recover from this upset just fine.
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Nov 15, 2017 21:28
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Yes, a ladybug larva! Ugly bugger, isn't it. More here: https://www.aboutanimals.com/insect/harlequin-ladybird/
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Dec 3, 2017 16:20
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Your peace lily looks fine! You can remove the spent "blooms" to tidy it up, and you don't really need to water it until it droops. They do well in low light, but mine gets a fair amount of sun in an east window and is pretty happy. More sun means more "flowers," but direct sun can fade/brown the leaves. The thready bits at the bottom look like Spanish moss or another kind of moss that florists use to cover up the dirt. You can remove it or leave it there; it's just for looks.
Hirayuki fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Dec 27, 2017 |
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Dec 27, 2017 18:52
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It looks like a croton!
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Jan 1, 2018 00:41
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I just moved one out of a gift arrangement; it's down to just a stem, so it'll be a long road back to looking half as healthy and beautiful as yours. I had one in AC, too.
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Jan 1, 2018 01:37
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I'm always surprised to see the giant tuberous root when I pull up my outdoor Ipomoea at the end of the season. Yep, that's a sweet potato, all right. I had received an arrowhead plant (Nephthytis) from a neighbor years ago when they moved away and had kept it in water this whole time. I just now put it in a proper pot with proper soil and a prayer that it flourishes in its new home. 
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Jan 1, 2018 02:35
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EagerSleeper posted:Begonia rex-culturums are Devilman Crybaby: the House Plant. I had 'Escargot' one year, a Rex hybrid with beautiful snail-whorled leaves. But no, I would never have one as a houseplant. My croton is not doing well. It had lost all its leaves, so it was just a short stalk when I repotted it. It hasn't done anything since, and now I see a spot of white mold or mildew right at the base. Boo. My one sunny windowsill is still too drat cold. Dennis McClaren posted:Where would one even view pictures of such bushes online? So that I could know what to look for when I contact nurseries.
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Jan 16, 2018 21:15
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The Snoo posted:can you grow clumping or any other type of bamboo in a pot? I know that my parents' bamboo survived fine over the winters. I'd love to have a pot of some kind of bamboo, maybe 4 feet tall (kept trimmed) on our balcony but I don't know if it's possible for that to do well or survive. EagerSleeper posted:In regards to the croton, yeah, cold windowsills are the devil for humidity issues. With any luck, the stem might still be pliable and alive inside, but the only thing I could think of to do at this point would be introduce on to an outdoor porch that's blocked off to any windchill and snow, or maybe to try having an artificial source of light indoors. It's a shame what's going on, because crotons are pretty cool... I suppose it's no great loss if this one bites the dust, but I'd rather do my best to save it just in case something works. Thanks for the tips.
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Jan 17, 2018 21:26
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Alstroemeria send out stolons under the soil to the edges of whatever container they're in. Eventually they can lift the whole plant, soil and all, out of a too-small pot. They're also beautiful plants that are extremely easy to grow, at least here in the upper Midwest (the Princess series, anyway--not the tall gangly ones grown for floristry). Pull off any spent flower or blind stem from the soil and it'll throw up more in its place. For the first time, I'm trying to overwinter two in containers. I hope they make it, but I'm also not afraid to buy a couple more to have guaranteed low-maintenance color and performance. I really can't say enough about these plants!
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Mar 23, 2018 21:29
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Nosre posted:This is my jam, I've been planning/working on the garden, but have been wanting to establish some sturdy potted perennial flowers. Here's a gigantic photo from my garden. I'm sorry the closeup doesn't give a good idea of the overall habit or anything, but I thought the flowers were pretty. 
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Mar 23, 2018 22:48
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Man, we're not safe from frost till mid-May. Hell, we've woken up to snow two days in a row now. I just want to put my fig back outside so it can be happy!
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Apr 11, 2018 21:16
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Tremors posted:Shout out to listrada for shipping me some voodoo lily bulbs! I can't wait to get them in some dirt.  Thanks again!
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Apr 26, 2018 03:23
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Wow, goddamn, that is a lot of slugs! I might see one tiny thing in a whole season, and rarely ravaging a plant.Mozi posted:If the sun is suitable, raspberries or similar would be nice. In other Midwestern spring news: our raspberries are coming back (we cut them way down early last winter), our rhubarb is beautiful, the peonies are sprouting nicely (even the Itoh peony in our shady front, though I'm pretty sure it'll once again fail to produce any blooms this year), and we have our first spear of purple asparagus.  We'd planted leeks for the first time last summer, and to our surprise, the five or so plants we left in the ground over winter are still green and pert and waiting to be picked. The Yoshino cherries at the local outdoor mall should be in full bloom this afternoon, and our pear and crab trees will follow shortly.My biggest garden worry this year is our lawn. It's pretty shady up there, and one part in particular is always patchy. After several years of overseeding it to coax it into at least kind of matching the rest of the lawn, we gave up and resodded the whole front (it's not huge). It didn't work, and that area went patchy again. More reseeding (and telling the fertilizing service not to use preemergent weed spray on that part) got it to a reasonably good place last fall...but no, turns out it's still poo poo. I'm considering restructuring the planting we have up front to eat into most of the bad lawn section and planting it with pachysandra, which we've seen thrive in an almost identical situation a half-mile down the road.
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May 2, 2018 16:37
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Shame Boner posted:I'd be interested in what you have to say about this if you don't mind indulging us.
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May 3, 2018 00:51
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I have an irrational hatred for Hicks yew, which sounds like the Midwest's version of box: a mainstay in every goddamn yard around these parts (whether professionally landscaped or halfassedly thrown together by the subdivision planners) and boring af. We have three in our front--I think our designer worked around them (WHY)--and I've been threatening to get rid of them for a couple years now. I only recently realized they're arranged as two flanking the porch and a third off behind one of those, so we can put in a pair of nice plants and something else fun behind one of them. (In deep shade, which I know complicates things.) I also think hens-and-chicks are kind of creepy, but I don't hate them like I hate those loving yews.
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May 3, 2018 20:25
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Hubis posted:I think I basically hate lazy shade gardens. Plant a fern or something, people! Sincerely, Someone who grew up with a yard rendered no fun for playing in thanks to ivy and ferns 
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May 3, 2018 22:18
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bitchtard posted:
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May 16, 2018 03:55
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Is the archway used a lot? My concern with something like honeysuckle (which I love, too--amazing fragrance) would be the bees and other insects it would attract that could make braving the archway gauntlet a daunting experience.
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May 21, 2018 15:46
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Does anyone have any suggestions for sunny shrubs or beefy perennials (Zone 6a) that like it wet? ( )We have two patches about 2' by 3' on either side of our rain barrel that are bare dirt and quickly fill up with weeds. The patch between the rain barrel and the house, in particular, gets very wet when the barrel overflows. (I don't want to think about what the moisture might be doing to the foundation there.) In front of each patch are two raised beds in which we grow our annual and perennial vegetables, so there aren't really any concerns about having to match existing plantings or anything. In fact, if we plant real plants in those two patches, there's less chance of weeds spreading into our veggie beds. In other news, I did all my annual-plant buying today and am really excited to get down to planting!
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May 22, 2018 23:03
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Some kind of dianthus? Odd foliage, though.
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May 31, 2018 14:28
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 07:39 |
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How gorgeous--I'm jealous! Our clematis never took.
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Jun 7, 2018 21:29
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