New "Pots" and Fresh Rock

When asked if I would like to become the new owner of a hoarder's collection of old baby food jars, I couldn't have been more ecstatic!  Those jars are great for all sorts of of practical purposes, whether spray painted and bedazzled for storage solutions a la pinterest, or fill with snackage during trips or work, or, most applicably to this blog, for potting new baby plants!

Boxes of baby food jars after this post's pottings:

My first plan with these jars was to provide new homes for all of my succulent propagations which had been in mismatched clay pots and saucers and other random pots.  This involved probably 15-20 jars, not to mention I used up all of the stones I had.

Then I decided to repot my bamboo, which probably wasn't quite thriving in its unsupported "soil."  I took it out of the green pot it came in which had some tiny stones and dirty stone debris along with mostly the water storage gels.  As much as I like the gels, I really like the look of the bamboo growing in just straight polished stone as view through glass.  One day I may return to the gels, when my bamboo is on the verge of obliteration from water neglect, but for now I feel confident I can keep it watered and looking classy.

Not all of my orchids have been thriving lately.  The one and only orchid I've been able to get to re-bloom (albeit for a short while) was the one I had transplanted to a glass vase.  Since my little itty bitty orchid seems to be doing all right and has in fact sprouted a new babe, I decided to move this one into glass jar to hopefully continue its success.

And lastly, because I like to rearrange my plants so often - partly due to the ever-changing climate and lighting conditions, partly due to individual plant growth, and mainly due to my need for a fresh and interesting display - I will include a photo of my plant corner:

Note to future self: take more "before" photos...

Sunday Cleaning

I have been somewhat neglectful of my house plants the past couple of weeks.  This is partly due to an overbooked schedule as well as some extended out of town trips.  For the first time ever, to my knowledge, I let my aluminum plant get so dried out that it was drooping!  Of course this was so startling to me that I didn't even think to snap a photo, I just ran to my watering can as soon as I saw it.  My polka dot plants were drooping and wilting, too, but those don't seem to concern me as much as old aluminum.  Luckily, the resiliency of these plants pulls through and you can see below how the aluminum plant perked right back up after a thorough watering.

A couple days into the week I realized that my double pot technique was not working for this Chinese evergreen.  I had placed this draining pot that it came in into a non-draining plastic pot so that I could drop the pot into a porous rustic looking old terra cotta pot, and not need a saucer.  As it turns out, the plastic non-draining pot was a little too snug, such that it did not allow for any overflow water to escape and thus the overflow of the way from the draining pot filled up in this little reservoir I created and kept the roots way too wet.  The result is the yellowing and drooping leaves.  What you can't garner from these photographs is the stench the stagnant rainwater left in this soil.  It smells so foul, I thought about letting it outside to air out for awhile.  I surmised that just letting the original pot rest on a small saucer was the best move for this plant for right now.  I'll have to keep my eyes open for a larger pot for the evergreen.

In researching this plant (in an effort to affirm what I had already assumed - that the yellow leaves were the result of overwatering), I discovered that it is common practice to remove the flowers.  Since this evergreen's flowers appeared to have stagnated in development (probably due to the aforementioned overwatering), I decided to snip them.  Additionally, they had begun to decay and/or leach onto the leaves a brownish goo reminiscent of withering iris debris.  I also noticed an unusual clear sap-like array of drips on some of the leaves.  I suspect this is also from the decaying flowers.  After reading this info about removing the flowers, I went ahead and snipped them all off at the stems as close to the main trunk as possible.

Lastly today, I decided to migrate my gerber daisy propagations from the sill by my front door up to the east-facing sill where the rest of my bright light plants are.  I repotted the small one shown in the itty bitty terra cotta pot below, and I also repotted the one in the square plastic pot, which was doing famously until this photo where it appears a bit saggy and on the verge of wilting.  The middle-sized gerber seemed to be doing quite well, with a root sticking out the bottom of its inner plastic pot.  It appears that the seed in the larger pot grew the largest, the seed in the smallest pot grew the smallest and the seed in the mid-sized pot grew to be a mid-sized plant, thus far.  In spite of this, I think I will leave the medium sized plant in its current pot, since that pot does a good job of keeping the soil moist every day (its inner sleeve is much smaller than the ceramic pot, so a lot of water stores in the bottom, which that protruding root is able to suck up from.

Caladium Pest (Trying to Take) Control

Almost since I brought this plant home it has had a problem with this gnat-like insect spreading over its stems and in some cases the undersides of the leaves.  I have tried googling this problem, but I am having a hard time identifying the pest and therefore effectively eliminating it.  So far my method has involved drenching the plant with my kitchen hose and knocking off as many of the pests as a can.  Then I give the plant a thorough watering and spritz all the leaves and stems with a half-and-half (more or less) spray of rubbing alcohol and water mixture.  It's a home remedy I found online, which I figured I'd try before going out and buying some expensive (and potentially ineffective) pesticide.

I can't tell if this leaf damage is from the insects, or the alcohol sprays I've been applying, or if it's just a little weary from a hot and dry extended weekend when I wasn't home to water it as needed.  It was the only plant of mine to be particularly droopy when I returned home from Michigan this weekend.

With this most recent drenching and spritzing I ended up spraying out a lot of the soil, too.  I applied a topcoat of an African Violet potting mixture (the only fresh stuff I had), to cover up the roots that became exposed with the drenching.  I'm starting to wonder if reusing potting soil has its disadvantages.  I don't recall if I reused potting soil for this one, but I doubt I really shook it out when I transferred this pot from its store pot.