Duh…A Plant, But What Plant?

December is a low point in the gardening year, but a high point in the year for giving gifts. A felicitous way to raise that gardening low point is with a gardening gift. What might be a good gift for a gardener?

Most obvious would be a plant. After four decades of growing and buying plants, I, for one, still get a thrill when opening a box with a new — for me — plant in it.

Staghorn fern

Still, there are ho-hum plants, plants that have their qualities but just aren’t going to elicit any surges of excitement from me. Stay away from the usual poinsettias, philodendrons, and dracaenas for accomplished gardeners. Been there; grown that.

And because the gift plant is for a gardener, also steer clear of throwaway plants, such as paperwhites. Yes, they are perennial, but usually can’t be forced to flower every winter.

The plants that I would be most thrilled to receive this time of year (hint, hint) would be those providing winter fragrance, blossoms, tasty fruit, or all of the above. A good place to start looking for my gift . . . whoops, I mean some gardener’s gift . . . would be plants such as gardenia, jasmine, camellia, and citrus. All fill the bill for anyone with a green thumb and a cool, bright room.

Gardenia in bloom

Kumquat

Where heat, humidity, and sunlight create a more tropical atmosphere, choose from among such beauties as bougainvillea, abutilon, and allamanda.

A recipient’s lack of sunny windows should not present a problem in choosing a plant. Just shift gears and think foliage: ferns such as the dainty maidenhair or the eerie rabbit’s-foot or staghorn, the former with its furry foot attempting escape over the edge of the pot. Rosemary is another good choice, pretty and fragrant whether or not it flowers. (I have four of them.) Or cute baby’s-tears, always lush and green.

Rabbit’s foot fern

 Expendables

Shift gears again, now, and move beyond plants as gifts, on to expendable items. A good pair of gardening gloves — either soft leather, or fabric with grippy-coated palms and fingers — are essential and rarely last more than a few years of use. My current favorite among the latter gloves are COOLJOB Nitrile gloves. (I don’t receive any sort of payment for any specific products I recommend in the post.)

Potting soil is an expendable gift that can be either bought or homemade. I make my own, mixing and then sifting together equal parts peat, perlite, compost, and garden soil through half-inch hardware cloth.

One of the best gardening gifts I ever received was a couple of thousand foot ball of sisal bailer twine. That seems like a lot of string, but I use it for such things as tying up tomato or pea plants, laying out garden rows or beds, and lashing together bamboo stakes. Natural twines, such as sisal, cotton, jute, and hemp, are best for gardening, so that they can be tossed, along with tied plants, into the compost pile at season’s end.

And Gifts that Keep On Giving

Enduring gifts can be as welcome as expendable ones. Tools are an obvious choice here, but choose carefully. Too many gadgets end up gathering dust in the back corner of a garage or shed. Some gadgets that have gotten plenty of use from me include an electronic moisture probe, a compost thermometer, and a rain gauge. (Taylor Capacity Break and Freeze Proof Flexible Silicone Rain Gauge is the only rain gauge I’ve ever used that does actually survive winters intact.)

Electronic moisture probe

I like to know temperatures at various places here on the farmden, perhaps two different locations outdoors to monitor microclimate differences. And one in my greenhouse. And one in my unheated mudroom, where a subtropical kumquat tree spends the winter. Sensorpush sensors at these locations let me know temperature as well as humidity, barometric pressure, dewpoint, vapor pressure deficit, and heat index. All this information is beamed to my phone. And not only current readings, but historical ones also, so that I can know what the temperature dropped to at 3 AM the previous night or any other past time or date since the particular sensor was installed.

SensorPush in greenhouse

If I didn’t already have some capillary self-watering seed flats, I know I’d appreciate one so that I would not have to be so tethered to my home in spring. For a decorative pot for a larger plant, how about one of the many planters that look just like terra cotta except for being weatherproof and made from recycled plastic.

Less obvious choices in enduring gardening gifts are books, the best of which provide both information and inspiration or, if not both, a healthy dose of one or the other. A good book, along with getting your hands in the dirt, helps you compress years of experience in the garden into a few hours of reading. Just as with garden tools, don’t be too quickly enticed by what is splashy, colorful, and most promoted. Or only by what is new. Among my favorite gardening books are those that are decades old. Check out the selection in stores selling used books as well as in those selling new ones.

I’ll be so bold as to suggest that you even consider my books, covering such topics as pruning, landscaping with fruit, growing figs, and more. They are all available from the usual sources as well as, signed, directly from me at www.leereich.com/books.

And finally, look to the banners of the five companies that advertise here on my blog page. These are companies that I know well. I am very familiar with their high quality products — whether plants or tools — that they offer at reasonable prices.