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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've been slowly accumulating plants over the past year or so. It started innocently enough but now I've pretty much run out of room on my window, I'm going to need some more space. Here's my current horde: Clockwise from top left: Some type of Aloe (?) Mother of Thousands (Kalanchoe daigremontiana), Pineapple sage (this is going to get potted outside soon, I just bought it today), more mother of thousands, Creeping Fig (going to be repotted soon), Variegated Basil (It lost its variegation), Christmas Cactus, and some succulent my mother gave me. In addition I've got 2 plants in my office and a wandering jew that's creeping on my floor. That mother of thousands is my favorite plant so far. It's literally unkillable and has survived for forever and keeps on putting out new leaflets which I can grow into new plants. I saw one in florida and thought it was cool since there were like a billion of them. I took some home with me to plant and they've grown ever since. That was like 6-8 years ago or something. If you're looking for a house plant I'd recommend one, since it can tolerate sporadic watering, less than optimal light conditions, and seems to just keep on going forever. Edit: But don't plant these outside if you live somewhere that doesn't reliably frost every year because it'll take over your garden. I've got a question with my plants: Does anyone have experience with Christmas Cactus? I took a couple leaves from one of my mother's plants which was flowering around christmas time. I took a healthy looking 3 segment piece and planted the thickest segment under some soil. It's not really done much at all, do they take a while to get established? I was hoping for some new growth by now. At least it's not dead yet. Here's a closeup of the christmas cactus: 
Eeyo fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Apr 14, 2013 |
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Apr 14, 2013 04:41
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 15:48 |
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Oh so that's probably why my herbs outside have yellow bottom leaves. It's been raining like every day all day so they're probably getting too much water in their pot. I guess I'll keep it under the overhang if it rains again. Do plants usually bounce back alright from that? It's putting out new leaves and it's even got a flower I think.
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May 8, 2013 02:23
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Mizufusion posted:One of the things I've been planning for a while is landscaping with native grasses, which tend to be drought resistant. Our water bill has been ridiculous lately because we have lawns in the front and back yards, and it does not rain during summer here. There are some really pretty grasses at Larner Seeds, but I'm not sure if everyone else will think they're as pretty as I do. I'd hate to plant a bunch of grasses only to have everyone think they're weeds.. In fact I'm pretty sure several of these things are considered weeds by gardeners. Maybe fescue would look less weedy than some of those. Right now I have a bit of blue fescue growing in a pot and I really like it, but it just sprouted a couple weeks ago so I have no idea how it'll look once it fills in the pot. Personally I like the look of wilder lawns, but then again I'm not a homeowner so it might just be my enviro-hippy mindset showing. I think it's reason enough to plant a more diverse and local variety of plants so you can be more water conscious. Where I live there are a couple of houses that don't have traditional lawns, they just let non-grass plants grow wild on their property (although they probably planted and took care of them). I bet their neighbors hate it and it might have implications to your property value or something like that. For context, I live in a fairly liberal area so it might not be advisable to do anything drastic in an area where they are more attached to lawns. And there might be some laws against it or your homeowner's association may not allow it. Unfortunately I can't help you with grass choice I just want to wish you luck!
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Aug 6, 2013 05:08
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Ok I've got 2 questions: I have a little aloe in a tiny pot, but it looks like it's putting out a pup. Should I replant the pup? How big of a pot does an aloe need? Here's a picture:  The pup is the thing on the left side, the one on the bottom is a really tiny aloe that didn't really start. Question 2: How should I prune a creeping fig? Is it just doomed to look weird in the center like most aging creeper plants? It's pretty bald in the middle. Pic: 
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Nov 18, 2013 02:24
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Hello plants thread, What do you think this plant is? It has some pretty distinctive flowers. Also the leaves look a bit like fat pot leaves.  There's a little patch between my sidewalk and the road that's "gone feral" as it were, and this thing popped up. I take a lot of pictures of flowers and send them to my girlfriend, but I thought this one was pretty neat.
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Jun 24, 2017 02:48
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Tremors posted:I believe this is a cleome. Thanks, that seems to be it! I guess the 4 petals and 6 stamen arrangement should have tipped me off they're related to Brassicaceae (They're a separate family but apparently most closely related to them). The seed pods look similar too!
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Jun 25, 2017 17:15
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Has anyone tried growing wild lupine from seed? I bought a few native wildflower seeds, and that was one of them. They'd go into partially shady sandy soil near a lake in southwestern Michigan. Specifically I want to know if it's better to plant them in fall and let the winter prepare the seed, or to try cold stratification and scarification in the very early spring. I also got some shooting star (Meadia) seeds, some downy sunflower seeds, and some compass plant seeds plus they threw in some bee balm. Those will go into my mother's garden in central Indiana with some clay soil.
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Aug 15, 2017 05:55
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dupersaurus posted:Monsato makes strains of some crops that are resistant to roundup so that fields can be sprayed indiscriminately without killing the crops. So unless your garden is full of those... There's a few weeds starting to pick up glyphosate resistance, so if you live by a field that sprays lots of glyphosate there's a chance you could pick up some. Of course if you find that you should absolutely raze them as a courtesy so they don't spread.
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Oct 3, 2017 05:51
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I'm starting some flower seeds for my balcony (one pot of chinese forget-me-nots/Cynoglossum and one of snow-on-the-mountain/Euphorbia marginata). I'm just starting them directly in pots until the weather gets better and I'll put them outside. The soil was ~80% last year's and a I put in some more from my bag to fill it up. I've been keeping it moist for sprouting. However, the snow-on-the-mountain appears to have fuzz on top of the soil. Could it have accidentally picked up some fungus? If so, I'm guessing that pot is toast since the seeds would be consumed by the hyphae as well.
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Apr 13, 2019 18:41
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Any recommendation for some flowers that would grow well on an East facing balcony? Something that won't mind only ~4-6 hours of direct sun a day.
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Apr 27, 2019 21:22
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I. M. Gei posted:Azaleas, maybe? Thanks! Smell would be nice. cheese posted:Is it more 4 hours or more 6 hours? I haven't timed it. Probably more like 6 in the summer with longer days. The balcony would get sun a bit after dawn since it's blocked by the other apartment building across the parking lot, so probably -1 hour. Then it gets blocked at mid-day by the balcony above, so maybe -1 hours again. After noon, the sun is above or on the other side of the apartment. So it's uninterrupted, full sun for ~half the day, but weighted entirely towards the morning. For reference, I was able to grow chinese forget-me-nots (cynoglossum amabile) perfectly well, other than having trouble giving enough water.
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Apr 27, 2019 23:16
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That’s interesting, but my problem would be getting a container big enough that I could keep out during the winter. I’ve already got a few pots, but they’re just terra cotta and I’d think they’d break once things start to freeze.
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May 3, 2019 00:54
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Solkanar512 posted:Take your USDA zone and go two colder, tell us what that is and I can find you a few cultivars to look for. Then you’ll just need a frost resistant pot (heck, I think you could get an inexpensive plastic one if need be) and you’d be good to go. I'm near chicago, so it'd be ~5-2 = 3. It's 3rd floor balcony so it would definitely get some cold winds in the winter. I may not need another plant now anyway. I had cold stratified some partridge peas in April, and I put them in my container a few weeks ago, but I had given up since nothing popped up. It looks like I got something coming up now, so hopefully it's them and they just needed to be ignored a little! I also impulse purchased some moonflower seeds, which may not work very well in a container, but I'll at least try.
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May 4, 2019 00:05
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There's also leafcutter bees (Megachilidae) that take cuts out of leaves to build nesting cells for the next year's bees. In principle leafcutter bees may be ok if they're not significantly eating at the tree's leaves (although young trees may be more susceptible I'm no expert). Leafcutter bees are native pollinators so if you have fruit trees having some leafutter bees nearby would be good. They're actually more effective on a per-bee basis than honeybees. That is, a single adult leafcutter bee will pollinate more plants than a single honeybee. They are solitary however so there aren't big hives. They nest in dead logs, canes, or apparently rose stems (not so good on that one). A picture of the damage may be helpful; I'm not an insect expert, but the leaf damage might be characteristic and easily identifiable as from one of the insects mentioned.
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May 19, 2019 19:03
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Ultimate Shrek Fan posted:Oh man, I didnt notice there was a vegetable garden thread, so thanks for mixing them up! Another good option is peony. They can be quite fragrant, come in a lot of pastel colors, and have large, fluffy blooms (the double-flowered varieties are at least fluffy). Perennial bush, zone 3-8 (need sufficiently cold winters). Blooms in late spring-ish, depending on variety. Lily of the valley is one of my favorite scents (edged out by lilac I think). It has a graceful form and cute bell-shaped flowers on arcing stalks. Perennial herbaceous plant, zone 2-8. Prefers at least some shade. Tends to form colonies. Blooms in spring. Phlox is a native (North America) choice. Dense clusters of flowers on the end of tall spikes. Pinkish or pastel colors. Maybe a little more subtle fragrance, at least the variety my mother grows. Perennial, zone 4-8 (other species of phlox can go in cooler zones I think). Blooms in summer (may be different for other species of phlox). Sweet peas are well-known for their fragrance. A perennial and I think a little fickle to grow. I know nothing about it other than its reputation. Moonflower have large scented bell flowers that bloom in the evening or night. Not really a cutting flower since it's a vining plant. Will crawl on the ground, or up trellises. Perennial in warm subtropical areas (like hawaii), blooms later in the season. Sweet alyssum is less of a cut flower plant (it's quite short), but has a good fragrance. Clusters of white or purple flowers. It's annual, best to grab some from a nursery. The first four are good cut flowers. Peonies can be cut before fully opened and make an impressive vase. Bonus picture of one of my mother's peonies, this was a one-off mutant flower. 
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May 25, 2019 15:16
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Ultimate Shrek Fan posted:Awesome, thanks a lot for this! When I said along the same lines of lilac and lavender, I meant the scent. Couldnt really be arsed about the colour. I fuckin love the smell of lilac. Oh I misread that, whoops! I kind of associate lily of the valley being similar to lilac, so that one may be a good choice. Probably nothing smells exactly like lilac, but lily of the valley has a strong, sweet scent. Another good aromatic flower I forgot to mention (although less reminiscent of lilac) are some select varieties of hostas. Specifically Hosta plantaginae. They have large (like 4” long or more) pure white flowers. They come on long scapes and bloom in late summer (August-ish). I want to say they have a strong, sweet floral scent with a hint of fruitiness. Very pleasant and a good cut flower. The common type has shiny, lime-green foliage in the typical hosta habit. 
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May 26, 2019 15:26
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I planted a moonflower a while back, it's got quite a few leaves now. I constructed a rudimentary trellis of 2 6' bamboo poles on either side of its pot, with a handful of garden twine rungs spaced ~6" apart. It's kind of sprawling towards the side of the pot instead of towards the trellis. Should I just gently place the end of the vine on the trellis (the pole? or string?) to encourage it to grow upwards? I rotated it so that the trellis is between the plant and the sun, but it's not really growing in that direction, which hopefully means it's getting enough sun. The cotyledons on it were huge when it sprouted (one out of 2 came up). They were actually stuck together at the start, I had to do some minor plant surgery by brushing a little water on it to reduce the stickiness and gently coax it apart. Misting would have worked way better but I didn't have a bottle. It seems to have not minded at all!
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May 31, 2019 02:39
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My moonflower is happily twisted around my trellis now, so I'll call that a success. I noticed that there are quite a few clover mites (the bright red things) on my balcony. Do they cause damage to plants? If they're not too much of a threat I can just try to sweep away some of the excess. They climbed up 3 stories to get to my balcony, so I'm hoping it won't be too many of them.
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Jun 1, 2019 22:29
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Hirayuki posted:I saw a shrub while I was out driving around today with dark foliage and the most beautiful big white star-shaped flowers. It look like it smelled great. How big of flowers? And like star-shaped with separate petals, or more trumpet-shaped? I was thinking Datura, which has dark foliage, and is kind of bush-like. Big, white flowers that look like trumpets, and can be pointy in some varieties. Highly poisonous so don't eat it!
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Jun 20, 2019 02:35
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I'm not sure what it is, but I bet I could look it up.
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One of my cynoglossum (chinese forget-me-not) started to bloom. I think my moonflower is starting to bud as well, which is a bit earlier than I expected (it's been about 2 months since it emerged). Now that it's budding, is it best practice to not give it fertilizer? It's starting to drop its first leaves, but it's hard to tell if that's nutrient stress, water stress (it got less than normal over the long weekend which it spent inside) or general aging.  This thing has got legs though, it climbed all the way up my 6' bamboo pole, then halfway up the other side, and I think I'm diverting it back on the other side again. It's got a bunch of side-vines which are awkwardly sprawling around as well. Eeyo fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jul 9, 2019 |
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Jul 9, 2019 01:17
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I did a few tests and set up a wick irrigation system over the July 4th weekend. They definitely do something, but they are limited. My initial test was to use a short rope from a glass of water to deliver water to a paper towel. I weighed the paper towel dry and then after absorbing for a bit. That gives an upper limit to the water rate; the paper towel is good at absorbing water, the wick was short, and the glass was full. Under those conditions, a piece of garden twine could deliver something on the order of 1/3 gallon per day. I set up my biggest, somewhat wide cooking pot with water and ran 5 strings from it between my 3 plants (after saturating them with water the night before so they didn't make a mess on my floor). I'd estimate it delivered maybe a 2 quarts over the weekend. A combination of water level loss, and lower wicking capacity between the twine and the soil probably caused the lower delivery rate. I also tested making a very tiny hole with a tiny needle in a large plastic container (my big 2 gallon watering can I don't use anymore), but that delivered more like 1 gallon per day. That was way too much, and since it's dripping it's possible that excess water could spill out and around. The best answer is to get a neighbor/friend that you can trust to water it right (and not steal your poo poo I guess). I'm pretty socially awkward so I didn't go that route, but in the future I'll consider it.
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Jul 11, 2019 05:33
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There are some varieties of milkweed which have a long taproot, they may do less well in a container. A lot of them propagate by rhizomes so you may need to cut back the rhizome to prevent it from going too crazy. You may already know this, but the big benefit of milkweed to Monarchs is that they are the exclusive host plant for the larva. The adult Monarchs will lay eggs on the leaves and then the caterpillars eat the leaves until they become big enough to undergo metamorphosis. It's best to plant a native milkweed in your area so the butterfly population can eat the right stuff. This website talks a little bit about it, and links to these maps which show the native range of different milkweed species. The Xerces site also has a list of seed vendors so you can try and track down native species. If you're just interested in giving different butterflies and bees some nectar plants, then you can grow pretty much anything you want (preferably native), there's nothing particularly special about milkweed as a nectar source as far as I can tell.
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Jul 30, 2019 00:55
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vonnegutt posted:I put in some A. tuberosa and A. syriaca this year and so far only a few blooms but different butterflies have already been visiting. Was it you who explained cold stratification to me? It worked out great, I started four indoors and they're all thriving since being moved outside. It probably wasn't me, I failed pretty miserably with cold stratifying some partridge peas I was going to grow on my balcony so I'm no expert!
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Jul 30, 2019 06:10
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My moonflower has been blooming about every other day, it's great! It's not really fragrant, but it at least looks nice. I think since it only gets morning to afternoon sun and full shade in the late afternoon/evening it's started flowering earlier than it otherwise would have. My Zinnias are also flowering. What's the best time to cut them for a vase? Should I wait until they're fully opened, or will they finish if they're part way? 
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Aug 3, 2019 18:37
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Are houseplants you'd get at a national hardware store meant to be re-potted after purchase? I wanted to get a fiddle-leaf fig for my apartment.
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Sep 2, 2019 02:45
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Nosre posted:Neat, thanks. I fell behind on fertilzing these things cause I've been procrastinating figuring out how to use granular fert in pots, but I found this recipe to turn it into a drench: It does sound like a lot. The liquid fertilizer that I've been using is on the order of a tablespoon-ish per gallon (can't remember exactly what). But it may be that the granules have a lot less fertilizer per volume, since they need binders and stabilizers and like slow-release stuff or whatever.
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Sep 2, 2019 23:10
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WrenP-Complete posted:The ones I have bought at Home Depot have been ready to replant, both in the US and Canada Ok thanks! I figured as much, the small ones come in pretty tiny super-thin plastic pots. Now I just need to get a good pot and soil mix.
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Sep 2, 2019 23:12
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Sorry, I just didn’t read the latter half of the directions you posted  I believe it’s asking you to make a concentrate of 1 cup granules in 1 gallon of water. Then use like 1 cup of that per gallon to actually water your plants. So the original 1 cup has 16 tablespoons of granules. The gallon you dilute that concentrate to has 16 cups, so 1-2 tablespoons of granulated fertilizer per gallon (once diluted).Sorry for confusing things.
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Sep 3, 2019 19:40
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That site is neat. I like this thoughquote:I know from experience with other plants that I seem to be unusually sensitive to some kinds of undigestible sugars. They must really like root vegetables then. I feel like every time I read about an obscure edible root vegetable it either has inulin (one of those undigestible sugars) or a lot of oxalic acid, so I hope they're not in too much pain.
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May 15, 2020 15:06
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The real weird one is Parasitaxus ustus, which is a holoparasitic conifer. I don't think I've ever personally seen a real parasitic plant, but when I was in New Mexico I saw a lot of Indian paintbrush which is apparently hemiparasitic.  Edit: I also recently came across this blog post which was pretty neat. Some researchers looked at radioisotope concentration in parasitic orchids to try and figure out if they had a mycoheterotrophic relationship with wood-decaying fungi or fungi decomposing more recently dead things (leaves/roots/whatever). Since Carbon-14 in the atmosphere had a very large peak around the time we were testing nuclear weapons, you could guess that higher concentrations would be correlated with wood-eating fungi. There was a fairly large difference, so they think they could tell which species used which strategy for parasitism. http://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2020/1/27/how-radioactive-carbon-from-nuclear-bomb-tests-can-tell-us-what-parasitic-orchids-are-eating https://www.kobe-u.ac.jp/research_at_kobe_en/NEWS/news/2020_01_24_02.html Eeyo fucked around with this message at 03:51 on May 16, 2020 |
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May 16, 2020 03:40
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There's also Prairie Moon Nursery if you can't find local things. They have individual seeds, seed mixes, and bare root plants/bulbs. I never had much luck with the seeds, but I probably just didn't stratify them properly. (If you don't know, many temperate wildflowers need a period of cold, moist conditions in soil in order to break dormancy and germinate.) I gifted my mother a few shooting star bare root plants and they did well for her. I think they're more focused on the midwest, they have a lot of midwest natives but not a lot of the Western things. Their website lists the ranges of different plants on a per-county basis (probably aggregated from some federal list or something) which can be helpful in determining what would be good. You'll want to think about the sun it'll get (full sun, part shade, full shade), the water (moist, mesic, or dry), soil type (sandy, loamy, or clay), and temperature range if you're going perennial. You'll have to be a little careful too, some natives can be quite aggressive; a lot of perennial sunflowers have that reputation, as does the purple passionflower. Properly managed they might be ok, but they can form large monoculture clumps and take over flower beds.
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May 31, 2020 21:04
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Solkanar512 posted:Perennial sunflowers? Holy cow. Are there any varieties that come in multiple colors like annual varieties like Autumn Beauty or Evening Sun? Not that I'm aware of, but I haven't gone looking for them. At some point there was some research in crossing annual sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) with perennial ones (Helianthus tuberosus aka the Jerusalem artichoke) to make an improved oilseed variety, so it's probably not impossible. But whether somebody has made a non-yellow perennial sunflower I'm not sure. The flower heads are not as large as an annual sunflower, they're closer to 2-4", see for example Helianthus mollis. I think the wild varieties of annual sunflower are probably close to that as well, but they've had the benefit of many years of breeding at this point, starting from their domestication by the Native Indians in North America.
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Jun 1, 2020 00:03
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 15:48 |
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I saw some kind of bee-like insect making a tunnel in the soil in one of my pots this afternoon. Can something like that hurt the plant? It's a small pot, maybe 9" ish and it has a morning glory vine in it right now. Here's some bee pics   I guess the other problem is if it lays eggs it won't be a super good place for it, I'd have to keep it on my 3rd floor balcony over the winter and it might get cold (chicago-land). That and I might give it a good drenching when I water it!
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Jun 18, 2020 00:04
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