The Rural Voice, 2006-11, Page 42Gardening
Time to come in from the cold
Rhea
Hamilton -
Seeger and
her husband
live near
Auburn. She
is a skilled
cook and
gardener.
By Rhea Hamilton -Seeger
I don't know about you but about
the end of February I can hardly wait
to get my house plants outside. They
usually are suffering from too
little/too much water, too little sun,
and usually some infestation of spider
or sticky scale. Not a pretty picture.
So come the first decent day they
all get pitched on the east deck where
it is dappled with shade and the rain
can reach most of them for a much
needed shower to clean off the dust of
winter confinement. The days of
summer work their magic and stunted
growth is reversed, bugs are washed
off, and new growth begins.
Then the season winds down with
shorter days, cooler nights and some
of the plants fear the frost will get
them before I rescue them by hauling
them back indoors.
Which brings us to November.
Most house plants have only been in
the house a matter of a few weeks. It
is quite a job cleaning them up for
their winter stay. The bromeliads have
accumulated a mess of rotting plant
debris in their wet whorl of leaves, the
orange tree has a few leaves caught in
its thick new growth and the ficus has
a pile of debris in its pot from deposits
made by chipmunks. If the little
creatures were not digging in the pots
of cannas they were planting "things"
in other pots. To really protect your
plants against scale, whitefly and wee
spiders you can clean with an
insecticidal soap and then cover the
plant with a plastic cover to raise the
humidity for a few days to discourage
pests from coming indoors.
It takes a few hours of cleaning and
picking off debris and wiping pots of
dirt before everything looks
presentable and ready for the move
indoors. It is a bit of a push around
38 THE RURAL VOICE
our house to get everything in. I
maintain each year that I am leaving a
few outside to die a quick death
with the first hard frost but I hear
them crying and dash out and rescue
them before they become too cold. It
soon pays off with a few glorious
surprises.
The orchid cactus is the first to
show how delighted he is with being
inside. Not the most attractive plant on
the sill. he has awkward ripple -
looking fleshy leaves that dangle any
which way. But today he also sports
three large orange/red blossoms each
measuring about five inches across.
Upon closer inspection I have counted
five more buds. He gets repotted about
every five years in a mix of one part
garden loam and one part sand with a
handful of compost thrown in.
These plants don't require a lot of
watering and I barely know it is there
when set outside in the shade. They
are easy to propagate with cuttings of
six to 10 inches long. Leave them to
dry for a week to ten days to form a
callus. You will have more success at
rooting them if you follow this step.
Always keep them right side up and
insert the bottom end of each cutting
in the rooting medium of peat moss
and sand.
Like the Christmas cactus, they are
long lived. My mother-in-law used to
propagate quite a few and donate them
to the local church sale each year. It
kept her older plant trimmed up and
not many cuttings were wasted. The
one I enjoy now was hers.
The next happy tenant sends out a
heady fragrance in the evening. The
perfume is so strong it will fill a
couple of rooms. I have a lovely dark
green hoya that cascades from a
hanging pot upstairs in an east
window. I also have a shoot that
anchored in the Norfolk pine when the
hoya was on a table next to it a couple
of winters ago. It made me think of
the inquisitive trunk of an elephant
when the plant would grow out and
flop around the top of surrounding
pots looking for a new place to take
root. When I went to move the pot in
the spring, imagine my surprise when
I had to pull on the plant to pick it up.
The problem was a branch had rooted
in the next pot and wanted to take that
pot too.
Hoyas are easy to root and take
very little care. Hoyas, or wax plants,
bloom on spurs so please don't trim
these back after blooming. Some
varieties are variegated and there is a
miniature version from India that is
more dwarf in habit but blooms
generously during the summer
months. Mine is a little silly since it is
supposed to bloom in the spring.
Maybe it is the extra water it gets in
the fall.
Watering house plants during the
summer is not a job high on my list,
so it just does not always get done.
Once the extra plants are moved back
into the house, though, it is harder to
ignore the need to water and so for
some the drought is over in the fall
and they hustle into a blooming
session.
Fertilizer should be kept to a
minimum during the winter months. I
use a basic all purpose 15-30-15 at
half the recommended rate during the
winter months.
The last treasure is, of course, my
African violets. They don't go outside
but seem to enjoy the increase in plant
activity in the house in the fall. There
is always a violet blooming and by fall
they are all in unison. I buy violet soil
mix and try to repot them before they
grow over the side of the pot. The
trick is to plant them lower in the pot
than other plants. Then they have a bit
of a ways to grow before they are over
the top of the pot.
My only splurge with the violets is
to treat them to a fertilizer blended for
African violets. The 8-14-9 water-
soluble solution is complete with
micronutrients too and yes they do
respond to the TLC.
The true joy of all this fussing with
house plants is that it helps keep your
mind off of the cold changes outside.
These few blooms inside will tie you
over until Christmas and the
introduction of poinsettias and
evergreens into the house. And then it
is time for the seed catalogues and of
course a bit of misting to keep the
scale at bay on the house plants.°