The Plant Thread

[BlackCurtains]

I think the fertilizer is working! So many new leaves on most of the plants.

Areca palm, peacock, hurricane fern and African violet.

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African Violet, I think this is the rose bush, but I won't know until it flowers. The other one died.

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New leaf on the snake plant. I think it's time to put it in a bigger pot.

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Ben isn't doing so well.

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Since I've been watering the ponytail palm more, it has new leaves shooting out everywhere.

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[Ponyfan]

Your plants except  Ben look great BC.

I moved most of the plants outdoors today. I'm going to wait a little longer on moving the lemon thyme and dill outside.


The dill seems to grow more every time I look at it.

Ponyfan

[BlackCurtains]

Thanks Yeah, I think old Ben is getting close to the end. I cut off the dead branches.

Your mom's aloe looks great. I'd like to get one.

[Ponyfan]

It's a Starry Night aloe. 


I put the dill outside and when I went back about an hour later, it looked awful.  It was limp and it looked like part of the new growth had already broken off. I quickly rushed it and the lemon thyme back inside.  I'm thinking now I might have to repot it before putting it outside as I think the stem might be too tall to support it outside.


Ponyfan

[Taffeta]

Some of my summer plants arrived while I was down south and Dad has taken very good care of them all. Everyone is doing fine. The glory lily seedling on my windowsill has put out a second leaf. I am learning from the datura and not putting it in the greenhouse until it is a lot bigger. There are also a bunch of small lewisia plants in the dining room at the moment, which are the ones that arrived while I was away.

My gooseberry plant is covered in flowers and bees. I hope we'll get a crop this year. Bluetits have continued their war against my purple/blue themed plants by beheading the flower stems on my new purple heuchera. The plant is fine, though. No idea what their problem is; they've left the others alone.

We're going to put all last year's begonia tubers into a tub and see what comes up. There should be a mix of colours, it'll be fun to see what we get.

Sorry that Ben is reaching his age, BC. He's had a great innings with you taking care of him.

Ponyfan, that aloe is very pretty. My sister and my parents have aloes (I used to but I have no idea what happened to it). They flower beautifully in the summer.

[Lady Frostbite]

My pink Anthurium that was a Mother's Day sale victim has 'stabilised' I would say. I repotted it in orchid bark in a nice big pot and cut off the dead/diseased leaves and flowers. There's one flower that should be cut off as it's rotted in the middle, but overall I think the plant is doing okay. She needs a lot of care but she's soaking up the light in the kitchen.

I miss not growing chillies ... I have so many seeds and I have a couple of tomato and carrot seeds as well, plus little daisy seeds. I NEED A GARDEN AND GREENHOUSE!

[Ponyfan]

I had plant pics all ready to load in Flickr, but it's looking really strange on my browser.  I tried another one and the site looked fine so I'm not sure what's going on when it looks okay in one browser, but not another.  I checked my Zoom and changing it didn't make a difference.

Edit: It was my Zoom.  It was set so high that it was making the page look weird.

Here's the pics:


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Strawberries


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The aloe looks terrible now. 


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Dill


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Lavender

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Lemon Thyme.  I just put it back outside today.


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Mint 1


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Mint 2


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I forgot to get a pic of the Ficus and poinsettia. 

My dad put some old chairs up on the deck. It makes it a little difficult to  reach the plants.  I managed, but I wish he would have been thinking about what he was doing when he moved the chairs.


Ponyfan

[Ponyfan]

I put a BBQ skewer in the dill pot and used a little piece of twisty tie wire to loosely secure the dill to the skewer.  I'm hoping the skewer will help support the dill better when I put it outside.


Ponyfan

[BlackCurtains]

Oh I wonder what happened to the aloe?

I have gnats! I think they're in the spider plant mainly but I can't tell. Luckily, I have some sticky spikes to put in the dirt.

Everything is growing like crazy.

[Ponyfan]

I put the dill outside and the hailstorm got it.   I was hoping it would survive, but when I checked on it earlier, it was almost uprooted because the broken stems were so heavy, they were trying to pull the dill out.  I cut the broken stems off and I'm hoping that it will be okay.  It looks brown instead of green though.

I think there are too many aloes in the pot.  You can't see them in the pics but there are lots of babies under the big ones.


Ponyfan

[BlackCurtains]

So my gnat problem has blown up I read online that I can put hydrogen peroxide in the soil to kill the larvae and it won't harm the plants. I'm still worried though.

[Taffeta]

You could try dish soap, but also as I said on the trivial complaints thread, they lay eggs in the moist topsoil, so watering plants from the bottom for a few weeks should break the cycle. We had this with one of our plants over the winter and that sorted the issue out (along with nasty sticky cards).

Today was hot, and the decorator has finally finished, so I took my poinsettia outside and repotted her. I took off some of her more rangy and unstable branches and her new pot is a bit taller so she is now well above the rest of the unit (it will be a while before she can reach my fire tablet again, mwahaha, she won't be changing my audio books any time soon). I am always nervous when I repot her because poinsettias hate their roots being messed with, and she's an oldish plant, but I think it went quite well. Fingers crossed.

Yesterday, I went out to water the greenhouse and found dad's tomato plants had blown over. One of them was hanging UPSIDE-DOWN off the edge of the staging. No idea why it didn't fall headlong, except luck. They're all fine, thankfully.

With the weather warming up, hopefully I'll get tubs and the basket planted up soon. It's been a stressful few weeks with one thing and another...getting out in the garden will be a nice break (watch it rain now for the next fortnight, LOL).

[BlackCurtains]

What's the best way to do that. water from the bottom? I have shallow saucers.

[Taffeta]

What's the best way to do that. water from the bottom? I have shallow saucers.

Depending how shallow the saucers are, then I would put water into that directly rather than onto the top of the pot. If it's very shallow, you may need to do it in small bits and let it absorb it up. The plant shouldn't need to stand in water, so it should absorb into the soil relatively quick and if it doesn't, then it probably doesn't need water.

That depends as well on how good the drainage in the bottom of the pots is, though.

[BlackCurtains]

Okay, got it! I thought I'd have to put them all in the sink or something