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It's been quite some time since I've made a Friday Flora post. In that time, a lot has happened, including a catastrophic die-off of many houseplants over the past five or six weeks. It all began when my red ivy succumbed after a long battle with thrips.
As if mourning its loss, over a dozen other houseplants followed. My diffenbachia, friendship plant, and pepperomia all wasted away for no discernible reason. Two rosemaries died. A begonia died. My birthday orchid died. My Japanese holly died. Several monsteras and air plants gave up the ghost.
If that weren't bad enough, the on-its-last-legs lemon verbena I painstakingly nursed through the winter made a full recovery only to have yesterday’s 110-degree heat index nuke it in a matter of hours.
Stay strong, little guy.
But all is not lost: I nursed my oldest jasmine through a massive spidermite infestation. My (I think it's an) iron plant is flourishing after I spent several hours scraping scale off of it with a kitchen knife. And there’s more!
Remember last winter's orphaned ZZ plant stalk?
Well, it has sprouted roots!
Remember this ZZ plant? It was looking a little brown around the edges one day following a long afternoon in the warm windowside sunshine, so I gave it some hydration. It let me know that this was the wrong thing to do by promptly turning completely brown and yeeting all its foliage onto the floor.
But I found its corm as I was dumping its withered remains into the compost tub. Why the hell not? I thought, popped it in a mini orchid pot with some soil and a cocktail toothpick gravestone, stuck it on the plant shelf, and forgot about it for three to four months at a time until it occurred to me to dump some water onto the hellstrip soil. Well.
My optimism paid off, because the corm has generated a brand new baby ZZ plant.
I promise not to overwater you this time.
A few weeks ago, Trader Joe's had abroken keyboard fiddleleaf fig.
So I got a broken keyboard fiddleleaf fig.
...And I am probably going to have to get a new pot for it if it keeps growing new leaves at this pace.
Then I got askeet blanket kneeboard gardenia from Harris Teeter.
All my trusted houseplant sites are adamant that gardenias need to be fertilized weekly, as was the little plastic growing instructions thingy that came with my gardenia. I...have not done this.
But not only is there new growth, I’ve even got two flower buds in there.
I feel like I probably should fertilize it at some point. But look, these are crazy tricky plants to grow outside of their USDA zone and if my guy is doing this well with my current approach, maybe I should just stick to that? It is possible to kill plants through the overapplication of fertilizer. IDEK.
I pinched a few leaves of Malabar spinach from the cute little plant The GC’s Mom grows in a jar on the kitchen counter the last time we visited, thinking I would start my own cute little plant in a pot on the plant shelf. Well.
Apparently Malabar spinach is a) not a cute little plant but a vine, and b) really likes the sun, because once we hit early July, this happened.
Plants are jerks.
That’s a night-blooming cereus it’s glomping on, by the way. The cereus itself started out as two sad little leaves in a plastic tomato tray when I got it, and apparently really likes its spot by the window, judging from all the foliage it’s produced.
I’m debating whether to let the Malabar spinach be or untangle it from the cereus and see if I can convince it to vine up the brick wall on the balcony.
So, yeah. While there have been some tragic losses, hausplernting is going pretty well these days.
これで以上です。
As if mourning its loss, over a dozen other houseplants followed. My diffenbachia, friendship plant, and pepperomia all wasted away for no discernible reason. Two rosemaries died. A begonia died. My birthday orchid died. My Japanese holly died. Several monsteras and air plants gave up the ghost.
If that weren't bad enough, the on-its-last-legs lemon verbena I painstakingly nursed through the winter made a full recovery only to have yesterday’s 110-degree heat index nuke it in a matter of hours.
But all is not lost: I nursed my oldest jasmine through a massive spidermite infestation. My (I think it's an) iron plant is flourishing after I spent several hours scraping scale off of it with a kitchen knife. And there’s more!
Remember last winter's orphaned ZZ plant stalk?
Remember this ZZ plant? It was looking a little brown around the edges one day following a long afternoon in the warm windowside sunshine, so I gave it some hydration. It let me know that this was the wrong thing to do by promptly turning completely brown and yeeting all its foliage onto the floor.
But I found its corm as I was dumping its withered remains into the compost tub. Why the hell not? I thought, popped it in a mini orchid pot with some soil and a cocktail toothpick gravestone, stuck it on the plant shelf, and forgot about it for three to four months at a time until it occurred to me to dump some water onto the hellstrip soil. Well.
My optimism paid off, because the corm has generated a brand new baby ZZ plant.
A few weeks ago, Trader Joe's had a
...And I am probably going to have to get a new pot for it if it keeps growing new leaves at this pace.
Then I got a
All my trusted houseplant sites are adamant that gardenias need to be fertilized weekly, as was the little plastic growing instructions thingy that came with my gardenia. I...have not done this.
I feel like I probably should fertilize it at some point. But look, these are crazy tricky plants to grow outside of their USDA zone and if my guy is doing this well with my current approach, maybe I should just stick to that? It is possible to kill plants through the overapplication of fertilizer. IDEK.
I pinched a few leaves of Malabar spinach from the cute little plant The GC’s Mom grows in a jar on the kitchen counter the last time we visited, thinking I would start my own cute little plant in a pot on the plant shelf. Well.
Apparently Malabar spinach is a) not a cute little plant but a vine, and b) really likes the sun, because once we hit early July, this happened.
That’s a night-blooming cereus it’s glomping on, by the way. The cereus itself started out as two sad little leaves in a plastic tomato tray when I got it, and apparently really likes its spot by the window, judging from all the foliage it’s produced.
I’m debating whether to let the Malabar spinach be or untangle it from the cereus and see if I can convince it to vine up the brick wall on the balcony.
So, yeah. While there have been some tragic losses, hausplernting is going pretty well these days.
これで以上です。
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It's kinda cute that it's glomping on the cereus :3
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I know! And so far the cereus doesn't seem to mind at all.
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Awww! ♡
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My dad, a championship winning gardener, says gardening teaches you to roll with life's extremes and unpredictable nature.
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I love the look of the fig leaf plant! I fall in love with so many plants it makes me wish I had more natural light at my place.
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for new plantsso there is a silver lining! Have you looked into growth lights for your house? I was initially skeptical, but in my previous place (north-facing on the ground floor 😨) I had a few small ones on a shelf and it made a huge difference in the variety of things I could convince to happily grow.