Happy Birthday Ficus

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Another Year, Another Pruning and Re-potting

I’d like to say it was the birthday of my baby ficus except I don’t know when it was actually born. And since it was propagated by a cutting, not by me, and not from a seed, I’m not sure what “born” would actually mean. No matter, I’m having its biannual celebration marking its age and its growth.

Just for reference, baby ficus is a weeping fig tree (Ficus benjamina), a tree that with age and tropical growing conditions rapidly soars to similar majestic proportions as our sugar maples. That is, if unrestrained in its development.

Baby ficus (FIGH-kus) began life here as one of three small plants rooted together in a 3 inch pot and purchased from a discount store. (Weeping figs are common houseplants because of their beauty and ability to tolerate dry air and low light indoors.) Eight years later, it’s about 4 inches tall with a wizened trunk and side branches that belie its youth. Bonsai, Ficus, at 8 yearsMoss carpeting the soil beneath it and creeping up the trunk complete the picture. I’ve made and am making baby ficus into a bonsai.

The biannual celebration begins with my clipping all the leaves from the plant. Baby ficus’ diminutive proportions keep this job from being tedious.Lear pruning Clipping the leaves accomplishes two goals. First, plants lose water through their leaves so removing leaves reduces water loss (important in consideration of the next celebratory step).

And second, clipping the leaves reduces the size of leaves in the next flush of growth, keeping the in proportion to the size of the plant. Leaves on an unrestrained weeping fig grow anywhere from 2 to 5 inches long, which would look top heavy on a plant 4 inches tall.

The next step is to tip the plant out of its pot so I can get to work on its roots. The pot is only an inch deep and 4 inches long by 3 inches wide, so obviously can’t hold much soil. Bonsai root pruningBaby ficus gets all water and its nourishment from this amount of soil. Within 6 months or so, roots thoroughly fill the pot of soil and have extracted much of the nourishment contained within.

So the roots need new soil to explore, and space has to be made for that new soil. That space is made by cutting back the roots. (Less roots means less water up into the plant, which is why I began by reducing water loss by clipping off all the leaves). I tease old soil out from between the roots and with a scissors shear some of them back.

Next, I put new potting mix into the bottom of the pot, just enough so the plant can sit at the same height as it did previously. Any space near the edges of the pot gets soil packed in place with a blunt stick. Throughout this repotting, I manage to preserve more or less intact the moss growing at the base of the plant.

Now the plant needs its stems pruned. After all, I don’t want the plant growing larger each year, just more decorative as the trunk and stems thicken and age. Pruning involves some melding of art and science. As far as art, I’m aiming for the look of a mature, picturesque tree. Bonsai stem pruningAs far as science, I shorten stems where I want branching, usually just below the cut. Where I don’t want branching but want to decongest stems, I remove a stem or stems right to their base. I also remove any broken, dead, or crossing branches unless, of course, leaving them would be picturesque.

Finally, a thorough watering settles the plant into its refurbished home. Until new leaves unfold and new roots begin to explore new ground, water needs for baby ficus are minimal.

Oh, one more step. I stand back and take an admiringly look at baby ficus in its eighth year.Bonsai ready for another year

Orchid Intimidation

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Fear Not

I used to find orchids intimidating to grow. Their dust-sized seeds are fairly unique in not having any food reserves so — in the wild, at least — need the help of a fungus partner to get growing. And some orchids (epiphytes) spend their lives nestled in trees so need a special potting mix when grown in a pot. Orchids have above-ground structures called pseudobulbs. And many, especially those that call humid, tropical forests their homes, demand exacting environmental conditions that are very different from that found in most homes. Whew!

So I steered clear of growing any orchid for many years — until a local orchid enthusiast gave me a plant. After a couple of years, that plant, around this time of year, sent up a slender stalk which was soon punctuated with eight waxy, white flowers, each an inch across. For two months, those flowers greeted me each morning with their beauty and their delicious fragrance. Every year since, that plant has greeted me for weeks in midwinter.

Odontogl . . . a Mouthful

My orchid has no common name so needs to be referred to by its botanical mouthful, Odontoglossum pulchellum. (Even orchid names are intimidating, especially so because different genera have often been hybridized, and the resulting hybrid combines the generic names of the parents. So a hybrid with Brassavola, Laelia, and Cattleya in its parentage would have the name Brassolaeliocattleya. Now that’s a mouthful!)

Name notwithstanding, my Odontoglossum pulchellum has been easy to grow and get to flower. Odontoglossum pulchellum orchidThe plant spends summers outdoors in semi-shade near the north wall of my house, and winters indoors on a sunny windowsill. I water it perhaps twice a week, unless I forget.

Sounds like your run-of-the-mill houseplant, doesn’t it? So much for orchids being difficult.

The only special treatment my plant gets is a special potting mix. Odontoglossum pulchellum is an epiphytic orchard. Commercial potting mixes are available for epiphytic orchards but I make my own by mixing equal parts of my standard (home made) potting mix with equal parts wood chips. Nothing special about the chips; I just scoop them up from the pile that I use mostly for mulch that an arborist kindly dumps next to my woodshed every year.

Every spring I divide my orchid plant into 2 or 3 new plants, potting each new plant into its own pot with fresh potting mix.

More Orchids?

Odontoglossum pulchellum is an orchid that tolerates being treated like your average houseplant. And this is one of the most important points in growing orchids in a house: choose a sort that thrives in such an environment. Other orchids that will grow in the average home include phalaenopsis, paphiopedilums, and mini-catts, which are dwarf hybrids involving Cattleya (the corsage orchid).

Ideally, for flowering at least, certain conditions must be met. Most orchids enjoy bright light, which means setting the plant at an east, west, or south windowsill. From spring through autumn, light from a south window is too intense and may scorch foliage, so plants need to be protected with a thin gauze curtain, or moved to other windows or semi-shade outdoors.

Most orchids — again, for flowering — enjoy a ten to fifteen degree temperature difference from day to night, which is no problem in winter if you heat with a wood stove or already turn the thermostat down at night to conserve fuel. In the summer, the plant needs to be outdoors or else in a room that is not air-conditioned.

Even those orchids adapted to a home environment benefit from increased humidity. I raise the humidity around my plants by perching the flowerpot above a water-filled tray. Clustering plants together is another way to raise the humidity near plants, and also creates a visual lushness.

Once correctly sited, many orchids do not require inordinate amounts of care. Water requirements vary, but species with thickened pseudobulbs (bulbous stems), such as my Odontoglossum, get by with the least frequent watering. Orchid roots are susceptible to fertilizer burn, so the rule in feeding is to do it frequently and lightly. As with other houseplants, some orchid species take an annual rest, and at such times watering and feeding should commensurately diminish.

Since “mastering” the growing of one orchid, I have acquired another kind.Pink rock orchid This orchid is Dendrobium kingianum, which does go under the more user-friendly common name of pink rock orchid. I have also gotten this one to flower — but not every year.

The Best Winter Herbs

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Mini-Trees for Flavor

Second best to fresh-picked vegetables in winter, which are not within most gardener’s grasp with temperatures in the single digits, are fresh-picked herbs. Fresh-picked herbs — indoors — in winter are within the grasp of most gardeners, even non-gardeners.

Flowering and fruiting demand lots of light energy, but it is the leaves of most herbs that provide us with flavoring, so most herbs do fine in any reasonably bright window. The same goes for normal household temperatures and humidity.

So make space near your windows for herb plants!

Let’s look below ground now. Any potting mix suitable for houseplants will also be to the liking of herb plants. The mix should hold some moisture between waterings while at the same time drain well so that roots, which need to breathe, don’t suffocate. My own mix, made  from equal parts compost, perlite, peat moss, and soil, provides air and moisture as well as nutrients and beneficial microorganisms that keep plants healthy. Soil dug from the garden and used straight up is never suitable; in the confines of a flowerpot, it holds too much moisture.

Now for the plants. Many people, perhaps most, choose basil as their number one herb to grow. Nix on that, indoors. Think of a Mediterranean summer with bright sunlight beaming down on warm soil. That’s what basil needs and what you can’t provide in winter except with supplemental light and, depending on your thermostat setting, supplemental heat. Not in my house.

I’d also suggest against parsley or chives. The problem is that neither grows fast enough to keep up with periodic clipping of the amounts normally harvested.

The best herbs for indoor growing are perennial, woody, subtropical plants. Before you bemoan my nixing of basil, chives, and parsley, consider these perennials: bay, rosemary, sage, and thyme. 

Small, indoor rosemary "tree"

Small, indoor rosemary “tree”

Bay, rosemary, sage, and thyme are also good choices for indoor growing because they do double duty: They’re pretty as well as flavorful, can stand repeated harvest, and live for years and years. My bay tree started life here as a small plant carried back in my backpack from California over 25 years ago. Fresh bay tastes quite different from the dried leaf, and much, much better. My rosemary plants are each a few years old and show no signs of decline.

Both bay and rosemary are happy to be trained as bushes, as topiaries, or as miniature trees. Mine are miniature trees, each plant with a short length of trunk capped by a mop head of leaves (and flowers, now, in the case of rosemary). Their training began early, when I selected a single vigorous shoot for each plant, staked it upright, and removed all other shoots. Once shoots achieved head-height (the height of THEIR proposed head, an artistic rather than horticultural decision), I pinched out their growing tips to induce side shoots to grow. I pinched the tips of side shoots to induce them, in turn, also to branch. All this pinching induced a dense mop head of stems and leaves atop each trunk. Small, lollipop trees.

Maintenance of the bay and rosemary is easy. Both are as large as I’d like them to be so every year or two, they get tipped out of their pots and and inch or two shaved off the outside of their root balls. After returning to their pots, potting soil gets packed into the space beyond the periphery of the root balls, giving new roots access to fresh soil and nutrients.

Their heads also get trimmed periodically to maintain their neat shape. The annual trimming provides a bumper harvest, but a few leaves or stems can be clipped for seasoning any time of year.

Bay laurel tree

Bay laurel

I’m not enough of a fan of sage or thyme to grow them through winter indoors. But sage could be grown as a small, decorative shrub, especially varieties such as Tricolor, with white-edged leaves, Purpurascens, with purplish leaves, or Aurea, with some gold in its leaves. Thyme, which comes in various colors and flavors (lemon or caraway, for example), is a subshrub, or ground cover. How about a thyme ground cover carpeting the ground at the feet of a potted miniature bay tree?

Ongoing care for any of these herbs is watering, which can spell the difference between success or failure. Neither rosemary, bay, sage, nor thyme readily show their thirst with wilting leaves. Years ago, as I brushed past the little rosemary tree I was growing at the time, all the leaves dropped off. The plant was dead.

The potting soil for any of these plants needs to be kept just moist. Scheduled watering won’t do because watering needs changes through the season with growing conditions. A $10 “moisture meter” is an easy way to tell whether a plant is thirsty, as is, with practice, lifting a pot to feel how heavy it is.

Carrying the Sky on Their Backs

I saw two bluebirds a few days ago, but am not ascribing any significance to the sighting. They’re just pretty.

An Early Spring

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It could be spring. Now. Indoors, with the sweet fragrance from a flowerpot of pastel colored hyacinths and other spring-flowering bulbs. All it takes is a little bit of trickery. The bulbs don’t have to wait till spring.Forced tulip bulbs

Knowing what a bulb is helps understand the trickery. But first: All that we commonly call a “bulb” is not, in fact, a bulb botanically speaking. To conjure up an image of a true bulb, picture a stem that’s been telescoped down from a couple of feet or more long to a fraction of an inch. All the leaves on that bulb also move down and closer together. The leaves, except the innermost ones, are thick and juicy, the better to store both moisture and food reserves. Near the center of the bulb is a sleeping flower bud.

Hyacinths, daffodils, and tulips are true bulbs.

Though often called a bulb, crocus is an example of a “corm.” A corm is also a short stem, in this case a short fat stem which provides storage for food reserves for winter and to fuel early spring growth.

Forcing a bulb, real or not, to flower early, indoors is, in many ways, just like forcing a cut branch of dogwood or plum to flower early, indoors. Daffodil, hyacinth, tulip, crocus, dogwood, and plum stems all enter winter with flower buds sleeping within.

All these stems of cold-climate plants are savvy enough not to start growing in the dead of winter, even after a freak warm spell. They do this by marking time, counting hours and days when temperatures are between about 30 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit, that is, cool but not frigid. Once sufficient hours have accumulated, their chilling “bank” has been filled, warmth can awaken a stem, whether its a dogwood branch or a daffodil bulb.

The first step in forcing a bulb is to get it to grow roots by planting it in a pot of soil or stones, or to suspend the bulb above water with only its base in the drink. A bulb’s roots, like the roots of other plants, grow whenever soil temperatures are above 40°F., so they can be in place and ready to support leaves and flowers when spring comes. 

In time, typically 6 to 8 weeks, which varies with the type and variety of bulb, roots will grow and the the winter chilling requirement will be satisfied. Once the chilling “bank” has been filled, growth can begin. A well-grown, spring-flowering bulb comes packed with a flowerbud-in-waiting  . . . waiting, that is, for a chilling period to break its dormancy and then sufficient warmth to allow growth. The larger the bulb, the more flowers-in-waiting.

Keeping a potted bulb cool at this point is useful for staggering flowering for multiple pots of bulbs or delaying flowering for a specific date, such as someone’s birthday. 

When ready to enjoy the flowers, don’t just bring the pot into a hot room. They would blast open and collapse. The plants, at this point, need gradually increasing warmth, and enough light to draw out a sturdy flower stalk. Forcing bulbs to blossom out of season demands a certain amount of artistry in addition to science. 

If you want flowers and want them now, and haven’t prepared bulbs ahead of time, you still have some options. Purchasing pre-chilled bulbs is one option.

The other option is to bypass the whole chilling rigamarole and force Paperwhite narcissi. These bulbs hail from perennially warm climes and will bloom without any prior chilling. All that’s needed is to pot them up and wait as long as it takes for the fragrant, white blossoms to unfold. To stagger their blooms, pot them up sequentially; lack of water keeps them dormant.

When the flower on a forced bulb has wilted and the show is over, the usual next home for the bulb is the compost pile. If the plant has been planted in soil, and if the emerging leaves can be kept growing in very bright light for many weeks, sufficient energy can be garnered keep the bulb alive through the following dormant season. Then plant the bulb outdoors this autumn and it should flower again — in a few springs hence, once it garners enough energy to also make flower buds.

Red and Green for Winter

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A Mexican Native Adapts to Pot

A recent snowfall draped the landscape in magic. The white blanket settled softly on every horizontal surface to create a harmony in white.

Still, I miss green. Even better than seeing some green plants would be to liven up that green with, from the opposite side of the color wheel, red. And even better still would be to have this red-and-greenery close at hand — indoors.

Three plants fill this bill well, and are easy-care houseplants.

The most obvious and common member of this clan is poinsettia. Poinsettia plantBreeding, manipulation of their greenhouse environment, and plant growth regulators have transformed this sporadically blooming native of Mexico into a compact plant bursting into large blossoms for Christmas in foil wrapped pots.

(Actually, the “blossoms” are not blossoms, but colored bracts, which are modified leaves. Peer into the whorl of bracts and you’ll see small, round, yellow cups, called cyanthiums in which inconspicuously reside the true blossoms.)

Poinsettia need not be a throwaway plant when the holiday season ends. The plant is easy to grow and, with just slightly more trouble, can be brought into bloom again this time next year. The plant is photoperiodic, meaning it blossoms after a period of exposure to short days. For poinsettia, that’s about a month of 12 hour, or less, days. That photoperiod begins about mid-September around here, so the plants could be left outdoors for the period as long as they’re not exposed to freezing temperatures. Or a plant could be moved in and out of a closet.

Although the photoperiod is spoken of in terms of length of day, length of darkness is what really matters. So each day’s dark period must be uninterrupted; no car headlights, table lamps, or even a flashlight.

If all this seems like too much trouble, just treat a poinsettia like any other houseplant. Photoperiod doesn’t stand alone in prompting flowers. Given good growing conditions, a poinsettia will still blossom — just not at Christmas.

Worth Having Even If It Does Come Late, or Early

Christmas cactus also offers red-and-greenery in winter, and is also photoperiodic. But not always. In a cool room, below 60°F., the plant will flower no matter how long each day’s light stretches. Even if it’s exposed, artificially of course, to continuous light!

Christmas cactusAbove 60°F, temperature steps in to play a role. At room temperatures, or thereabouts, a Christmas cactus needs about the same day length as does poinsettia, except that it might not need the weeks and weeks of short days before it decides to bloom. Then again, it might wait a few weeks, to throw in another wrinkle, depending on the variety of Christmas cactus.

My tack has been to give my plant reasonably good growing conditions, with bright light in winter and a little shade in summer and a well-drained potting mix rich in peat or other organic material,  and let it blossom according to its whim. In which case “holiday cactus” might be a better name for these plants than “Christmas cactus” because blossoms might unfold during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, or anytime in between.

“Butterflies” in Winter

The last plant of this triad is my favorite: cyclamen. In bloom, it looks like delicate, red (or pink or white) butterflies fluttering above the mottled green, heart-shaped leaves.

Cyclamen’s native habitat — the Mediterranean, with its cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers — offers hints of the plant’s ongoing care and flowering needs. Potted cyclamen plantThis time of year, late fall going into winter, is when the plant is flowering and wants to be kept cool (preferably no higher than about 65°F.), moist (but not waterlogged), and in indirect light (which casts no more than a fuzzy shadow). Under these conditions, those butterflies can hover over the plant for weeks and weeks.

As spring comes — that is, “spring” indoors — leaves start to yellow and flowers fade. The plant is going dormant. At this point, the plant needs less water, the amount commensurate with the vibrancy of its leaves. Come fall, leafstalks start to appear again atop the bulb (botanically a corm, which is a short, swollen underground plant stem that is a storage organ), and the cycle begins again.

My favorite cyclamen species is Cyclamen hederifolium (ivy-leaved cyclamen).Hardy cyclamen in pot

Cyclamen flower in a crannied wall

Cyclamen flower in a crannied wall

It’s a very much scaled down version of the potted cyclamen you see for sale this time of year. It’s cute. Besides that, it’s also cold-hardy outdoors here. Some self-seeded “volunteers” even have established themselves to brighten up cracks between the flagstones of my terrace, blossoming each year in early fall.

HOUSEPLANTS THRIVE DURING MY CUBAN GETAWAY

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Water In Air, In Soil, In Reserve

My houseplants enjoyed my absence more that I expected. I thought it might be harder on them. After all, with spring in the air (indoors) for a few weeks now, they were all pushing out new shoots from the ends and along stems that had lain dormant all winter. Citrus, avocado, and amaryllis were even flowering, and rosemary was getting ready to flower.

Lack of water was going to be the threat, 5 days of it, while I was far away wandering up and down streets and in and out of alleys of Havana, Cuba.Havana street scene

Through winter, I had eased my houseplant watering chores by using “water siphons” (aka “hydrospikes” or “self-watering probes”). These porous ceramic probes, filled with water and pushed into the potting soil, have the thin, flexible tubes coming out of their caps plunked into mason jars filled with water. I knew well just how thirsty the plants were, watching the water in the reservoirs into which the tubes that connect to the ceramic cones drop daily, in some cases a cup or more per day.Automatic watering spikes

Plants cool off by letting water evaporate through little holes in their leaves, called stomates. So leaving the house thermostat set to cooler temperature was going to help slow water loss.

Evaporation is faster, whether through stomates or from the potting soil, the drier the air. Heat from radiators is less drying than that from the wood stove, our usual source of heat — also helping plants that might be pining away in my absence.

I poured water into the saucers in which each pot sits. As this water evaporates it creates a microclimate around nearby plants, a microclimate slightly more humid than that of the rest of the house, cutting down water loss from the potting soil and through the leaves. The humid microclimate was made more so by cozying plants in a cluster right up next to each other. Pebbles in the saucers bumped up this benefit by increasing the evaporative surface area.

To further help plants through their period of neglect, I filled the saucers with more water than usual, with the water level a smidgen above the bottom of the pots. As the potting mix dried, it could suck this water into the pot by capillary action. I don’t usually let water sit in the saucers above the level of the bottom of any resident pot because then the bottom of the pot becomes waterlogged, eventually leading to dead roots. I figured a few days would do no harm, and surely less harm than would drying out of the whole plant.

My final ministration was to cut open a clear dry cleaner bag and drape it loosely over the clusters of plants to maintain even higher humidity.Houseplants covered to maintain high humidity

The upshot: The plants did not miss me even a little. They looked healthy and happy upon my return, perhaps even more so than with five days of constant attention!

Visitando El Jardín Botánico Nacional

One day in Cuba I ventured beyond Havana for a tour of the Jardín Botánico Nacional, or National Botanical Garden, which is adjacent to Parque Lenin (Vladimir, not John) Park. We bounced along on a tractor-pulled wagon through a landscape devoted to plants native to Cuba, then on into a savannah of plants of African origin, to groupings of plants indigenous to Latin America, and on through other tropical climates and ecosystems.

A few greenhouses there create special environments. One was a tropical rainforest greenhouse, with humidity kept high with frequent, automatic watering. A houseplant such as maranta formed an expansive groundcover there, and other familiar houseplants, such as peperomia, philodendron, begonia,, and spathiphyllum, either spread all over the ground or reached heights you would never see in a house.

A dry greenhouse, the covering, this time, to shed rainfall, was home to succulents and cactii. One cactus that caught my attention, especially so with Cuba’s connection to the Soviet Union, was the “Russian soldier cactus.” The upper portion of this upright cactus was furry and brown, just like a Russian soldier’s hat. (As far as cool, common names the Cubans have for plants, another one was “tourist tree,” so-named for its red, peeling bark, just like the skin of pale tourists that get too much tropical sun.)Russian soldier cactus

Another Orchid!?

I’m very happy with my two orchid plants — Dendrobium kingianum, the pink rock orchid, and Odontoglossum pulchellum, lily-of-the-valley orchid. Both bloom reliably once a year, in winter, for over a month. 

But one of the orchids at the Jardín Botánico Nacional caught my attention for more than its beauty. Spathoglotis plicata, sometimes called Phillipine ground orchid, blossoms all year ‘round. It’s a terrestrial orchid that’s also easy to grow, not needing an excess of light. I’m going to get one to add to my collection.Spathoglottis orchid

Orchids can become an obsession; I hope I’m not about to fall down a rabbit hole.

IT’S SPRING! INDOORS, AT LEAST

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A Big, Fat, Red Flower; Perfect For Now

One spring day many years ago, my friend Bill looked out upon the daffodils blooming and other stirrings, and summed up the scene with the statement that “It’s spring and everything is wigglin’.” We haven’t yet come that far along, but things are wigglin’ — indoors. (Little did I know that 2 days after writing this, all would be buried under two feet of snow!)

Most dramatic among the wigglins is the big, fat flower bud pushing up from the big, fat amaryllis bulb. True, the goal of most people is to have the flamboyant, red blossoms open for Christmas, which requires beginning a bulb’s dormant period in the middle of August. It’s cool temperatures, around 55°F., and dry soil that puts an amaryllis bulb to sleep. Then, in early November, warm temperatures and just a little water wakens the bulb out of its slumber, with increasing watering, commensurate with its growth, bringing the bulb fully awake and ready to burst forth in bloom 6 weeks later.Amaryllis late last winter

In mid-August, I’m more focussed on harvesting tomatoes and peppers, readying endive for October harvests, making compost, and other garden goings-on than on the amaryllis bulb that I tipped out of its pot and planted in the ground in late spring. And anyway, a few red flowers, even flamboyant ones, do little to counteract December’s grayness.

So I let my amaryllis flower in its time, which should be within a couple of weeks or so, and add to the indoor late winter wrigglin.

Citruses Come Awake

Much more exciting are the less dramatic signs of growth on some of my potted subtropical trees.

As subtropical plants, citrus trees push out multiple flushes of growth through the year. The first flush is about to begin on Meyer lemon, Golden Nugget mandarin, and Meiwa kumquat.

One or more of those citrus flushes also bears flowers, which lead to fruits. The kumquat typically flowers late. My Golden Nugget mandarin hasn’t yet ever flowered for me, so I’m not sure when to expect those blossoms. Wait! Do I see the tiny beginnings of a flower bud on that nascent stem?

Golden Nugget awakening

Golden Nugget awakening

Meyer lemon is notorious for its free flowering. Looking closely, I see that some of the new growth includes flower buds. At the same time, I see that the lemon fruits that had their beginnings last year are now swelling more rapidly. I’m predicting to have new lemons forming even as I am harvesting ripe ones.Meyer lemon flower buds

Fresh-picked Avocados, in New York?

Most exciting are the fat buds expanding on my potted avocado tree, grown from a seed I planted a couple of years ago. I grafted this seedling with a stem of the Marcus Pumpkin variety of avocado that I got about this time last year from a friend in Florida.

An avocado tree grown from seed would take many years — if ever, as a houseplant this far north — to reach maturity, that is, to be old enough to be able to flower and fruit. A stem taken from a fruiting plant is already mature, though, and remains so even if grafted on a young seedling. The grafted stem of Marcus Pumpkin on my avocado tree is, in fact, about to burst into bloom.

Avocado flower buds

Avocado flower buds

 

Much can happen ‘twixt the bloom and the mouth; I’m guardedly hopeful to be guacamole-ing freshly plucked avocados in a few months. The problem is synchronous dichogamy, which may end up being more of a mouthful than my avocado fruit. The upshot of this mouthful is that each of an avocado plant’s gazillion flowers stays open for 2 days. When the flower first opens it is in the female phase, receptive to pollen; this phase lasts 2 to 4 hours. Day 2 has the flower in its male phase, shedding pollen. The male and female flower parts being out of synch is good for avocado evolution but bad for me as far as home-grown gucamole.

Depending on the variety, avocado flowers might be Type A or Type B. Type A flowers are not ambitious, competitive, or impatient like Type A humans. Or maybe they are, because the female parts are open and receptive only in the morning of the first day; these same flowers open as males in the afternoon of the second day. Type B flowers aren’t ready for action until the afternoon of their first day; then they open a males the next morning.

The upshot of all this is that it’s best to have two different avocado varieties, a Type A and a Type B. The morning phase of Type B, as males, can pollinate the morning phase of Type A, which are females. And vice versa.

Marcus Pumpkin is a Type B avocado. When I grafted it, I also grafted Lula, a Type A avocado, on another seedling. Although Lula failed to take, all may not be lost. My plan is to dab the Marcus Pumpkin flowers in the afternoon with an artist’s brush, tap the pollen into a petri dish, cover it, and the next morning dab the brush from the collected pollen to the Marcus Pumpkin flowers in their female phase.

Perhaps I’ll be harvesting fresh avocados in a few months. Perhaps I’ll be just buying fresh avocados in a few months. At any rate, as a northern gardener, it’s very exciting to have my avocado tree about to flower.

And Even Hints Of Spring Outdoors

All is not so quiescent outside. After a couple of warm days, I see that winter aconites have spread their cheery, yellow petals. (But not for long.)Winter aconite

OF FLOWERS AND TEMPERATURES

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Flower, You Hoya

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but some plants suffer much neglect in my hands. My aloe, for example, has occasionally gone a whole year without a drop of water.

Hoya, also known as wax plant or Hindu rope plant, is another of my neglected plants. This plant is about 25 years old and has sat in the same pot in the same location for the past 15 years. The pot is only 3 inches square, dwarfed by the 3-foot-long “Hindu rope,” a single stem along which grow thick, green, involuted leaves. The hoya sits on a west-facing windowsill of a tower window in my house, and the lanky stem can drip down another 2 to 3 feet before it’s got to be shortened to keep from being bumped by anybody beneath it. One reason the plant gets watered so infrequently is because watering involves pulling out and climbing a ladder stairway to get to and gingerly water the relatively small pot.Hoya stems

Another reason for the neglect is because hoya is a succulent whose thick fleshy leaves store water. The plant is more likely to die from too much water than too little.

Although I occasionally glance admiringly at the stem tracing down the wall, there are time periods when hoya grabs my attention. That’s when it flowers. The flowers arise in sprays of about a dozen, pinkish, tubular blossoms, each looking as if has been sculpted from wax. Not only are these flowers pretty, but they also emit the most delicious aroma of chocolate.

I’m not sure when or why my hoya flowers. Failure to bloom can be attributed to, according to reliable sources, “over-watering, over fertilization, insufficient sunlight, or plant immaturity. “ Ha! My guess is that a period of consistent, but not excessive, watering following the dry spells would coax the plant to flower. Now might be the time to start watering because, perhaps in celebration of lengthening days, the plant has, after all these years, sprouted a new shoot.

I’ll go and water the hoya right this minute.

And The Temperature Is . . . ?

“You never miss the water till the well runs dry,” goes the line from the old blues tune. In the same vein, you — or I, at least — never miss the thermometer till it breaks. I never realized how tied I was to the temperature until the number boxes on my digital thermometer started reading “- – – – -.”Digital thermometer, malfunctioning

Thermometers have come a long way since the liquid-in-glass ones that served so well for so many years mounted outside so many kitchen windows or on porch posts. You had to get close to read them, and they picked up some heat from proximity to the house.

After that came indoor-outdoor ones, using the same principal but with two glass columns. The “outdoor” column is fed by a thin tube threaded through a small hole in a window frame and ending with a sensing bulb. These thermometers let you essentially get your eyes further from the sensing portion.

Then came digital versions of both types of liquid-in-glass thermometers. Digital thermometers are just the ticket for those of us who like to know if the temperature is 31.4° F. or 32.2° F. Not that the sensors of these thermometers were necessarily accurate to 0.1° F (as stated, sometimes, in the fine print), but they did give a feeling of exactitude.

Still, all these thermometers measure temperatures in or near the house, unless you mounted one on a post out in the garden and kept running out to check the temperature. Or, you had a liquid-in-glass thermometer that registered the minimum and maximum temperatures since the last reading. As you might guess, I have one, have had it for over 30 years, in fact. Two sliding, iron indicators are pushed by the expanding fluid, with one indicator staying where it is pushed to its high point, the other to its low point. High and low temperatures are indicated for the period since the sliders were last reset by being slid back with a magnet against the fluid. Very elegant and very accurate, but you still have to run out to the garden to read the present temperature.Minimum-maximum thermometer

Enter wireless, digital, minimum-maximum thermometers, the ultimate in temperature readiness. With this thermometer (which, as you might have again guessed, I own), I can read present and extreme temperatures from the warmth of my bedroom. Except when they stop working. Then you really miss knowing the temperature to within a tenth of a degree.

Epilogue

Epilogue: Yes, I checked and changed the batteries. Customer support, last time I got through to them, tells me I have to use fresh batteries, not the rechargeable ones. And I have to take all the batteries out for 15 minutes. Then, while the outdoor and indoor sensors are 3 to 5 ft. apart, I have to first put in the outdoor sensor’s batteries, followed by the indoor sensor’s batteries, and let the sensors “communicate” for 20 minutes. Etc., etc. The thermometer still doesn’t work. Perhaps I should click my heals together three times. I bought a new, and, I hope, better one.

IN WITH THE NEW, STILL WITH THE OLD

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Scale Attack Beginning!

As if to ring in the new year, scale insects are starting to make their presence known. These insects crawl around as babies, find nourishing spots on leaves or stems, insert their feeding tubes, and then spend their days sucking plant juice. Carbohydrates and sugars are what result when sunlight and chlorophyll get together, so longer days may already be making plant sap sweeter and more plentiful, much to the liking of these suckers.

Armored scale on staghorn fern

Armored scale on staghorn fern

I encounter two kinds of scales on my houseplants. Each armored scale looks like a small, raised, brown tab. Cottony cushion scale looks like a small tuft of white cotton. As either kind feeds, it exudes a sweet honeydew that drips on leaves, furniture, and floor, and eventually becomes colonized with a fungus that airbrushes those sticky drippings an unappealing smokey haze.

(Scale insects are often problems on trees and shrubs outdoors. I’ve never had any problems outdoors probably because natural predators, of which scale insects have many, can do their job. Once indoors in autumn, houseplants lose the benefits of these natural, outdoor predators. )

Repeated sprays last autumn of “horticultural” oil smothered the creeping, crawling baby scales as they were looking for homes on houseplants. I do all this spraying outdoors, where it is most convenient, before the plants come indoors for winter. None have turned up yet on the kumquat or the staghorn fern, both of which have been scale magnets in the past. I don’t see any on the bay laurel, another magnet, but I do see and feel the tell-tale sticky honeydew.

And . . . Counterattack

Cute, little white tufts of cottony cushion scale are starting to dot the undersides of strawberry guava’s leaves. It’s not surprising: I received this plant last autumn, already with scale, and it was too late then to start spraying with oil. As autumn progressed, the undersides of its leaves became increasingly covered with those white tufts.

Cottony cushion scale

Cottony cushion scale

Repeatedly, over the last few months, I have fought back the buggers mano a mano by dipping cotton swabs in alcohol and methodically cleaning them off each leaf. (The plant is young and its leaves are large and few.) The last cleaning was especially thorough but some eggs evidently survived. Time to get out the alcohol and swabs again.

Mmmm, Tomatoes, In Planning Stage

Like the scale insects, I feel the distant tug of spring and spring seed orders are complete. With most vegetables and flowers, I’m pretty picky about variety so have to rely on mail order sources for my seeds.

And especially so with tomatoes: I refuse to waste time and space growing anything but the best tomatoes (to me), which makes me very wary of trying new varieties. My own tried and true varieties — flavor is what I’m after — include Belgian Giant, Sungold, Anna Russian, San Marzano, Amish Paste, Rose de Berne, Nepal, Valencia, Cherokee Purple, and Blue Beech.Heirloom tomatoes

Every once in a while I’ll also grow a few others, but only if they come highly recommended from a reliable source and especially if they are an “oxheart” or “black” fruited variety. Not even worthy of consideration is any “determinate” variety because their leaf to fruit ratio is too low for good-tasting fruit. The seed catalog or seed packet itself should say whether a variety is determinate or indeterminate. This year’s tomato newbies include Rosella Purple and Dwarf Sweet Sue, both recommended by a reader of this column.

I highly recommend growing tomatoes from seed. It’s easy, especially if the seeds are sown in a timely manner, which is about 6 weeks before the average date of the last killing frost of spring — about April 1st here in USDA Hardiness Zone 5.

 

Onions, Last Year And This Year

It’s really not all that early to be ordering seeds. My date for sowing onion and leek seeds is February 1st. New York Early, Copra, Sweet Spanish, and Ailsa Craig are three onion varieties that did well for me last season, and will be returning for an encore. Last summer’s onions still hang in braids from the basement rafters, ready to be pulled off as needed to chop into a pan for roasting with sweet potatoes, into the soup pot with chickpeas and kale, and other savory dishes for weeks to come. Onion braids in basement

 

EVERYTHING’S EASY, FOR NOW

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An Easy Orchid

Orchids are one group of plants I’ve regularly sidestepped. It seemed to me that if you grew orchids, you became crazed over orchids, to the exclusion of other plants. You then fill your home with as many of the over 20,000 species as you can cram onto your windowsills. I feared being led down that path.

My sidestepping took a turn into orchid-land 25 years ago when a local orchid enthusiast gave me a plant of Odontoglossum pulchellum, which I today learned has also been called lily-of-the-valley orchid. But more importantly today, the plant is in bloom. Blossoms from this plant are no rare occurrence; it’s bloomed every year for about the past 20 years, some years around now and other years waiting until February to unfold.Odontoglossum pulchellum orchid

Odontoglossum pulchellum doesn’t sport knock-your-socks-off, traffic-stopping blossoms; instead, they have a soft, subtle beauty. Right now, delicate, arching flower stems rise up from clusters of torpedo-shaped, green pseudobulbs that are perched up out of the “soil.” Eight to 10 dainty, waxy, white blossoms line up along each flowering stem and waft a sweet fragrance, more like paper-whites than lily-of-the-valley to me, that transports me to spring.

I get all this for very little effort and without becoming orchid-crazy. For years, I didn’t know the name of my plants so couldn’t even look up how to grow them. Rather than pot them up in any special orchid soil, I merely mix an equal volume of wood chips from my outdoor pile into my regular, homemade potting soil, along with a bit of soybean meal for extra nitrogen. I keep the plants in a sunny window in winter and sometimes move them outdoors in summer, dividing and repotting the pseudobulbs to make new plants.

For this bit of effort, I get fragrant, white blossoms every winter, and they last for at least a month. Odontoglossum pulchellum is easy to multiply yet I’ve happily managed to restrain myself to keeping only 3 or 4 plants after I’ve divided and repotted them each spring.

Easy Celery

Growing good celery demands a gardener’s greatest skill, and this year, in the greenhouse, I have the finest celery I’ve ever tasted or grown. The stalks are large, thick, juicy, even a little sweet. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can take credit for this horticultural achievement.

Every summer I sow celery seed to transplant into my minimally heated greenhouse to provide stalks for salads and soups throughout winter. I do take credit for selecting a good variety: Ventura. I also take credit for providing good soil conditions; each year I slather an inch or so of ripe compost on all the beds in the greenhouse. And I’ll take credit for providing timely watering, with drip irrigation until a couple of weeks ago and by hand through winter.Self-sown Ventura celery

Ventura is an open-pollinated, rather than a hybrid, variety, which means that I can save my own seed for replanting each year. Beginning a few years ago, I’d allow one or two of the greenhouse Ventura plants that began to form flower umbels to do their thing and make seed, which they did prodigiously. I’d collect seed for planting the following season’s outdoor and indoor celery.

Some of those seeds would drop to the ground and germinate right in the greenhouse. These “volunteers” sometimes grew into seedlings as good or better than the plants I would later transplant back into the greenhouse.

So a couple of years ago I decided to let the celery self-sow freely in the greenhouse. Later in winter, I’ll transplant some of those seedlings into pots for eventual planting out in the garden.

In the greenhouse, I thin out excess seedlings, keeping the largest ones, which are already large enough for harvest. The stalks, especially welcome in winter, are, as I wrote above, “large, thick, juicy, even a little sweet.” I like to think I had a hand in horticultural achievement.

And Nothing To Do (For Now)

Nothing like a little snowfall to clean everything up in the garden. December 11th was the date of the first snow, followed by a second one on the 17th. The white blankets covered the pile of crocosmia leaves lying on the ground and waiting to be carted over to the compost bin, some weeds that sprouted in the mulched area beneath the dwarf apples, some of the smaller plants I haven’t yet cleared from vegetable beds, and numerous other messy distractions. The whole view was knit together in the sea of whiteness.Winter garden scene

Spells of warmer weather and bright sunshine have eroded away some of the snow, mostly taking the fluffy, white lines and dots that rested atop fences and their fenceposts. The ground, as I write, is still pretty much covered in a white blanket. While I’m enjoying the wintry scene, I can forget about about the few odd jobs still left to do that are patiently waiting beneath the the snow.