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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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Hi friends! Can I get some Orchid 101? Got one originally late last fall, so it's maybe 7 months here, and a new one just now. In comparison, the old one is having some roots die and so I want to revitalize it and not make the same mistakes with the new one. Anyway, I think we overwatered it (surprise). Did 1/week pretty consistently, but perhaps that was too much in drizzly northern european winter and 10-12 days interval would have been better. Thoughts appreciated, though! In reading, I also doubt that it's in a sunny enough spot to flower, but I'll worry about that once I've figured out the proper water to keep them healthy. Fertilizer (orchid-specific stuff) once every two weeks usually. Old one  a spot of rot in there  Did I do something ELSE wrong to cause all the exposed roots to shrivel, or is this normal? Wouldn't think too much water would cause that, so I don't know. Humidity, maybe? advice needed  New one for comparison  
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May 3, 2017 17:38
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:11 |
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Enfys posted:Their roots need a good bit of air and space to stay happy (which is why orchid compost has lots of big pieces of bark in it to keep it from getting too packed). Yea, I think it might need repotting, not for size but because the material looks pretty dirty. Even if I cut down water I'm concerned there's not going to be much airflow. If I do, do you guys think I should prune those (dying?) yellowish roots?
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May 4, 2017 16:56
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Hi friends, noob pruning question. We started some avocados for fun, and they currently look like this: (man I need to wash the windows) I've looked at a bunch of guides and many of them say when it gets to this height, 8-10", straight up cut it in half. Maybe it's too late for that, though (was on vacation)? Other guides just say pinch off the top leaf node. They'll be staying inside.
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Aug 1, 2017 15:57
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I looked around more and found a forum post discussing exactly this, and it sounds like 'anything can work'. Just gotta experiment! quote:If your plant is experiencing explosive growth, this is as good a time as any to pinch the top. If you have a long thumb nail, select the first leaf petiole from the top ABOVE WHICH you can successfully cut with your nail LEAVING about 1/16" or 2mm of UNDAMAGED stem above it. Pinching crushes the stem so take that into account. (You can also just pinch at random and clean up the cut later after further growth will reveal the best spot, but doing this, you can miss the ideal bud to grow out)
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Aug 2, 2017 12:11
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Anyone got a possible ID for the below? I'd like to look up soil type/fertilizer info. Was a hand-me-down from a roomate. It's done extremely well in this spot, going from 6-8 leaves this spring to the current state, and really needs a bigger pot.  
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Aug 31, 2017 12:01
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Hey, probably! The leaves in some of these pics online look a bit different, but maybe the species just does that--apparently it changes depending on the age/maturity of the plant. This one in an Ikea ad has even blockier leaves, for instance: http://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/catalog/products/80212362/ It did so well I'm gonna read up on how to propagate it. Once it started going nuts it shot out a number of surface roots, which I thought might turn into new plants, but they haven't yet. From reading, looks like dividing the pot might work best. It's two separate stalks, which you can see below (as well as the offshoot roots)  Thanks!!
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Aug 31, 2017 17:13
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After growing up on a farm, but living in apartments for the last decade+, you have no idea how happy this little scene at my new place makes me. Even with the dinky electric mower provided by the landlord Lotta work to do! 
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Oct 16, 2017 15:10
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Boris Galerkin posted:I'm trying to kill a flies/gnats infestation before it gets even worse so I poured some apple cider vinegar into a glass and added a few drops of liquid dish soap to it. Set the glass right next to one of my plants that I've seen flies around over night and only one was killed while others are still flying around seemingly not interested at all. Did I use too much soap? Is my apple cider vinegar too acidic? Am I suppose to stir the mixture? Does it just take more time? I just opened up a lovely can of beer and poured out some into a bowl and dropped some soap in it too. I have no opened bottles of red wine to try but I might just buy some cheap poo poo later today. Yea this works for fruit flies but I tried cider for Fungus Gnats and they ignored it. If you're got fungus gnats, they're a giant pain. I tried cider, potato slices in the soil (they collect larvae), yellow sticky cards, and even saran-wrapping pots closed to prevent new infestations - all this kept them under control, but didn't eradicate. Now I'm doing mosquito dunk watering, supposedly this works on gnats too. Above all else make sure you segregate infested pots so they don't spread. Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis is the best, apparently, but hard to find in mainland Europe.
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Jan 4, 2018 15:20
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I've used neem oil (watered into the soil) with good success against fungus gnats. It's a general insect repellant but also fungicidal. Of course your plant pot will gain the weird peanuts-and-garlic neem smell for a while after, but that's worth it in my opinion. Nice, I'll keep that (and sand) in the back pocket if the current stuff doesn't take
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Jan 5, 2018 13:38
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Fitzy Fitz posted:Fungus gnats: How did you apply the neem oil? I imagine if you've gotta drench the top couple inches that's going to be pretty expensive. I've got 5-6 medium size pots that could use it and I'm seeing 10-15 euro for a small bottle of the stuff
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Jan 6, 2018 17:12
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kedo posted:Usually you dilute it in water and then use a spray bottle. How much you dilute it will depend on the concentration you get, but I think the stuff I use is about 1 tsp per quart of water. Even a small bottle lasts a really long time. For fungus gnats, don't you need to take care of the larvae in the soil? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, I wasn't thinking it'd be a spray solution
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Jan 6, 2018 17:41
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listrada posted:Seconding the mosquito dunk/b. thuringiensis solution. I got the stuff you shake into pools and put it on the surface of the soil. It wiped out my fungus gnat infestation almost immediately. Mine hasn't been that good, so maybe it's the wrong one. It's knocked them down but hasn't eradicated, and all it takes is a couple of the buggers to lay more eggs and keep it going  Synthbuttrange posted:If you plant can handle it, just immerse the pot in a bucket / plug the drainage and flood the pot for an hour. drown all those gnats. Was this serious? That'd be by far the easiest solution if it kills the larvae, but I've never heard of it before my infested pots and lemons and avocados
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Jan 10, 2018 21:30
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Hi thread. I'm super excited to have a garden for at least the next three years, and it happens to come with a rose bush. The landlords basically said "don't kill everything, but other than that shape it how you want" so this is on me, which I'm happy for. I don't know anything about pruning roses, though, and could use some advice. This is what I've got:    (from last fall)  As you can see, it's a big mess. I've got to start with identification. Doing some research, it's obviously not very compact, and the flowers aren't very clustered, so I'm thinking Hybrid tea? Grandiflora? As I said, the flowers aren't very clustered, but that also might be a symptom of the lack of pruning it's had Climber? Whoever managed it last tied up the top together against itself to keep it more upright. Shrub? I'm in Belgium
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Feb 6, 2018 14:50
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For sure, there's a lot of this  which will be pretty easy cuts. The thing I'm intimidated by is the base of this thing. I'm seeing videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRn2CyjxP0c&t=212s or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbyw2GOuk-w&t=49s The bud union of mine is WAY bigger/older than examples I'm seeing, and I don't know if that's because it's a particular variety, or just that it'd been unmaintained for way too long. As such, I don't know how hard I should go down near the base, as they do in these videos.  That massive middle section is dead and as such the whole thing is lopsided to the left, which is hidden by the top being gathered up together with ties 
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Feb 6, 2018 15:45
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I got me some loppers so it's about Go Time on the rose. Been reading up a bit; though exact ID is impossible because it's not flowering right now, if anyone has a general idea the family that'd be very helpful. Hybrid Tea/Grandiflora - flowers last season were probably too small Climbing/Rambling - probably not, but some of those stalks in the middle that have been bent and tied over by whoever worked on this last are easily 10 feet+, so it's a possibility. The bend in that picture is at around 6 feet. Polyantha - didn't have that many blooms as of last October when I first saw it, but maybe that's because it's so unmaintained Floribunda/some random 'Shrub' - maybe? The big question this is leading into is "How hard to go on the base?" It definitely needs some work to open it up and get rid of overlaps/rubbing, but knowing the variety would change the approach towards this big old growth. 
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Feb 13, 2018 16:49
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You mean this dead center piece from the previous pic? I was thinking that; would be nice if opening up the base got some more shoots to come out from the bottom and eventually even it out I appreciate the feedback
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Feb 13, 2018 18:44
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Great, I'd love to see pics and examples of pruning strategies. Issue for figuring out this one is that there's tons of examples like those videos I posted above about yearly pruning of a more... 'managed' bush, but few about how to get a wild old thing under control. Got in today and really checked out the structure. Do you think there's some legit strategy that the last person did when they tied up the top over into itself? Everything I've read says to open them up and avoid crossers, but this person basically intentionally created a ton of that by pulling it in. Thing is, I don't know if I'm missing some good reason for them to do that (like, it's a Climber/Rambler that's in a bad location), or whether that person just didn't know what they were doing. I mean look at this  which created 
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Feb 14, 2018 13:13
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Nice tip. For the moving, too, have a friend who might want me to take over a few bushes of hers and move them. That's a whole 'nother issue, though. I wish my granddad was still alive, he worked at a nursery his whole life. I've got his 1960s rose book, though, which is useful, and charming in its old-school way   
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Feb 14, 2018 14:14
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fuzzy_logic posted:Yeah the internet's really big on prevention and how to keep things perfect but in general if you've already hosed up (or just inherited a fuckup) articles aren't really helpful and most forums are like "well why'd you gently caress up?" Yea, exactly. Speaking of which, though, yall got any other gardening forums you peruse? Some quick googling led me to https://garden.org/forums/view/roses/, for starters
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Feb 16, 2018 19:32
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Can I get some bulbs 101? My girlfriend picked up these, spur of the moment: Thing is, I want to replant them outside. All the sources I can find are for planting bulbs when they're just bulbs, in the fall, at which point you plant them 3 to 4 inches deep. What about for these already-germinating ones? Same depth? It'd bury quite a bit of that growth, so I wasn't sure
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Feb 25, 2018 13:23
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Thanks in general for all your replies, learnincurve. Been a big help. And I'm glad I checked up, because the GF came back with these today (4x Narcissus, 2x Hyacinthus, 2x Tulipa):  Getting a yard has created a monster!
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Feb 27, 2018 01:32
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trip report from a while ago: this stuff actually did work to get rid of fungus gnats: It took a couple months (normal winter watering, so maybe 4-6 waterings?), but I've finally stopped seeing any. I think an important thing was to use the blunt handle of a spoon to break up the hard/dry soil beforehand so it actually penetrated well throughout. I bet a lot of the first times there were dry voids where larvae were able to remain. I used 3 spoonfuls in 1.5L of water each time and watered like normal
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Mar 13, 2018 18:03
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Jmcrofts posted:I think I accidentally overwatered one of my houseplants (small orange tree), and some of its new leaves have started to droop. Should I leave it in the sun or move it to the shade? Should I mess with it or just leave it alone? I've read conflicting advice online. I'm not an expert but I've had a bunch of similarly sized lemons for the last year and that looks pretty healthy. Maybe it's a small stress, but I've seen leaves like that occasionally and they've always gone away quickly. Sun-wise, only issue I've ever had is burn from putting them straight from a shady spot to outdoors without enough acclimation. If it's already acclimated to that spot, I'd say leave it alone. Pruning, though!
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Mar 17, 2018 21:34
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I've got a soft spot for small lemon trees because we grew them from seeds when I was a kid  So last year I started a bunch. I know you really need dwarf varieties for pots, but whatever, it's fun and I can experiment with different pruning methods and whatnot. The granular stuff on the soil is the fungus gnat treatment The two biggest ones (keep in mind every plant here was started at the same time)  That vertical shoot did that in, like, 7-10 days. I love how much they grow even in winter  Most of the rest, with a Dahlia hiding there in the middle left  I've pruned these low shoots (can they be called suckers if it's not a graft?) a number of times, but for some reason this scrawny one loves doing them. I think I'll just leave it like this and see how it develops  Thinking to leave most of them indoors this summer. As the growth shows, they don't seem to mind, and they did take a fair amount of insect damage last fall 
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Mar 18, 2018 22:13
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If you're talking about my little potted one there, it's been weird. We got it late last summer, it stayed outside through fall, then came inside and has stayed inside since. In the process, though, all the leaves have dropped and regrown three separate times, like it has particularly sensitivity to being inside and/or environment changes.
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Mar 19, 2018 12:36
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I've had good luck with a Baking Soda spray solution for mildew: https://www.thespruce.com/baking-soda-for-controlling-powdery-mildew-1402520 That's deeper and might be tougher, though, plus it's best as a preventative. More direct would be a stronger baking soda application (or even vinegar or rubbing alcohol, though I haven't tried those myself) with a q-tip, if you can get in there. That low leaf that's the moldiest looks pretty dead regardless, can you pull it and the husk below off to air things out more?
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Mar 22, 2018 11:20
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Well, if it's dead, pulling it off and getting more air circulation can only help the mold situation. I don't know how doable that is with the structure of that particular type of philodendron, though, or if there's any risk of damaging the plant 
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Mar 22, 2018 17:01
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Hirayuki posted: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. This is my jam, I've been planning/working on the garden, but have been wanting to establish some sturdy potted perennial flowers. https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/search-results?form-mode=false&query=alstroemeria There's a ton of them--are the Princess series the exception, with most others being tall/gangly?
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Mar 23, 2018 22:07
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that thing is serious ^^ my girlfriend's increasing love affair with succulents continues with our first Sempervivum (hen and chicks) layout 
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Mar 24, 2018 16:21
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:hens and chicks are awesome and super easy to grow. if you like those and haven't explored the sedum family you should, there are some really fun flowering stonecrops that work really well in layouts Nice, will keep an eye out. As with a lot of english-internet trends, Europe is a few years behind the US/Instagram so it's a bit harder to find places with good selection of succulents. It's expanding, though
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Mar 24, 2018 17:53
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wish I had more bugs like that in my garden
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Apr 22, 2018 12:25
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Can I get a 102 course on amending/creating potting mix? So my new place has soil on the clay side; it seems decent, crumbly enough outside, but quickly turns into a brick when it dries out in pots. So far I've just thrown ~30% perlite into it when using it for something that likes "well drained" soil. I can probably do better, though So, what's more ideal? Something like 25% peat, 25% perlite, 50% natural? Sand? Compost?
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Apr 24, 2018 23:11
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it's hard to tell exactly what I need because this yard has had a lot of work before. There been some nice surprises coming up (we moved in last October, so now's the first spring), plus the wonderful big rose bush and other obvious shrubs. So, anyway, I can plant in one spot and it's pretty good but I also found a big chunk of serious clay pretty close to the surface in another area I'll see about some pictures tomorrow if it doesn't rain
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Apr 26, 2018 01:35
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    Done a couple nights with the flashlight (that's fun, anyway) and now it's gonna be clear for a week so I'm gonna try a beer bowl
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May 2, 2018 15:20
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Hirayuki posted:Wow, goddamn, that is a lot of slugs! I might see one tiny thing in a whole season, and rarely ravaging a plant. Yea, and there's even more snails--perfect conditions I guess. I haven't seen them on anything I can about yet, though, so they get to live for the moment.
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May 2, 2018 16:44
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learnincurve posted:Fun fact. We didn’t know Camellias would survive in the U.K. for 200 years. We had lots of them in green houses and orangeries but not one person thought to see what would happen if they were planted outside. That's hilarious Speaking of illegally importing, I was down in Italy for a few days and they have this succlenty-looking thing everywhere. I took a few sprigs from one in my fiance's aunt's garden, and would love some advice on propagating (or an ID). I know of 3 possible ways: immediately sitting them in water, like basil; taking individual leaves and letting them dry/callous then mist/spray a bit (leaf cuttings); or doing the same thing to the whole sprig.  For ID purposes: it was fairly compact in decent sun, but got super leggy and draped way over the sides of the pot when in shade/weak light to one side. Sent up sprigs of little yellow flowers (one of those is the middle shoot of my right cutting)
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May 14, 2018 17:22
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WrenP-Complete posted:I was posting a few vegetable/herb pictures to the other thread, and found some ornamentals I had photographed recently. I'm better at my edible identification, and this house was bought from a big gardener, so we have lots of great surprises. Please enjoy! Just move in someplace? That was us last October, so this spring has been wonderful for discovering things coming up in the yard as well
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May 17, 2018 11:32
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learnincurve posted:On the other hand if anyone knows about roses then good news! I don't, but I'm curious what makes that special!
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May 18, 2018 11:28
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On a related note, we went away for 8 days with no roses in bloom, and were delighted to come back to this. It's the big old bush I've posted about before. We also learned that it went in when the house was built in the mid 1960s, so, if that's correct, it's about 50 years old!  Clusters typically of 4 buds, though the clusters can double or triple up quite impressively. Still looking for opinions on what variety or family it is  With growth comes problems, too. Bugs are easy enough, I've had good luck with homemade mild soap/oil sprays and just squishing them  This is a much bigger problem, though:  I assume that's powdery mildew? It doesn't look quite the same as google images; mine is almost exclusively on the buds/bud stems and not on leaves. It also looks heavier/thicker than the powdery mildew I see in pictures  At the moment I'm removing the bad ones. From reading it up sounds like homemade remedies (i had good luck with a baking soda solution when I had mildew on mint last year) aren't very effective, so I've gotta pick up a commercial spray I guess
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May 18, 2018 12:17
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:11 |
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it's so hard to find consistent information. Here's a discussion and it ranges from "yes great" to "not at all" to "you guys are misunderstanding, it's not a fungicide but can be effective anyway" https://www.houzz.com/discussions/1459534/does-neem-oil-cure-powdery-mildew need to make a big bottle of Neem/Milk/Baking powder and just blast all of them at once
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May 18, 2018 13:05
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