Gerber Re-Bloom!

I was about to can this gerber from last year, as 80% of the leaves had fallen off or gone yellowish/droopy.  I grabbed the pot from the window sill to start extracting the leaves when I noticed the tiniest little furry bud in the center of the leafy dried mass.  I figured, what would it hurt to leave it another month and see what happens?  Well, lo and behold!  A bloom emerges!!

March 23, 2015
Finally some new growth!

March 23, 2015
A big ol' bloom!

March 1, 2015
Hardly any new growth in months.

March 1, 2015
The tiniest bud in the center!

The little ones have not shown signs of blooming quite yet, they are still relatively small.  This larger one I had purchased last year in mid-April, I believe.  I will be very pleased if I can get another spring and summer of blooms from this plant!

Palm, Repotted

My palm has been doing really well over the past two years.  It continues to sprout up new leaves taller and longer than those preceding.  I did notice, however, a couple weeks ago a number of leaves turning brown in one particular shoot.  This weekend I finally had a chance to repot the palm, something I was planning to do in a month or two, but this new dying shoot pushed it up on the priority list.

The leaves I am tugging on here are all attached to the same shoot.
They all dried out and turned brown.

The leaves pointing to the bottom of the photo are all dead.

I didn't have any seemingly appropriately sized pots to step up into, so I went to Home Depot and bought this monster pot.

Decidedly way too big.

When I was at Home Depot, I noticed all the huge palms in the store were in tiny little plastic pots, which really only had a few inches between the shoots and the edge of the pot.  Granted, they are grown like this in the most ideal conditions, but still, it festered in my mind.  I bought the huge pot and went home to prep it for the palm.

For the first time I actually measured the
depth of the stone layer I put at the bottom!

I laid in some soil on top of the stones and got ready
to set the palm and its root ball into the new pot.

Pausing for a moment, I decide that the palm is not really all that root bound, given how tall and full it is.  I was expecting way more root visibility than this, particularly when you compare it to my polka dot plants, which are way smaller and less dense.  I ultimately decided that this pot was way too big, and I ended up planting it in a kitchen utensil storage container.  I do not have the photo, but will post it another time when I'm doing my annual check up on this plant.  Below are the rest of the photos I took during this exercise.

A Word on Water

In an ideal world I would have a limitless supply of readily accessible rainwater to use for my indoor houseplants.  However, I can't always rely on a steady supply of this (though I have coerced my father into gathering the rainwater that collects from a little plastic-roofed shed I built at my parents' house).  There can be droughts, lack of collection, and other things that could impact my flow.

When I start running low on my bottled rainwater, I ration it off to the plants that are most requiring of it.  The orchids and the African violets are the plants I try to always feed with rainwater.  The other plants will be all right with the tap water.

If I am watering with tap water, I try to incorporate the smallest ration of fertilizer specified on the container.  I like to use Jack's Classic Water Soluble Plant Food, in the generic proportion of 15-30-15.  For my orchids, I use the orchid proportion, which is 30-10-10.  African violets are the only plants for which I currently do not use any fertilizer.

We received a steady amount of snow this winter, and I am kicking myself for not acting on this earlier.  In the last blasting of snow, I decided to scoop up a big tub of it and let it melt into sweet precious plant water.

My two tubs from the last snow fall.  This yielded over 6 gallons!

If I had done this every day, I could have melted weeks and weeks of rainwater stock!  Part of the problem was trying to find containers to scoop the snow into (I have a lot of things in storage right now!), and trying to find galloon jugs in which to store the water long term.

The few gallons I was able to get (more like half dozen or so), I decided to sprinkle in some of my fertilizer, just to make it a super deluxe natural and enhanced feeding for my plants, as they enter the growing season.

The jug on the left is with 1/8 teaspoon of the fertilizer.
It looks distinctly blue, which is rather unusual,
perhaps I actually added more than 1/8?

New Babe! Dragon Tree (Dracaena Marginata)

I have been eyeing up this plant for quite some time now and for whatever reason, today I decided I would take one home with me.  I had intended to put it in a small white pot as shown in the first photo, but as I so often do, I misgauged how much depth the original root system/soil mass has and it simply would not fit.  You can see the larger silver pot I ended up using in the final photograph.

Gathering materials for nestling in this new plant!

This plant was less than $4 at Home Depot.  I feel like that's not a terrible investment for what I hope will eventually be a large floor plant/tree.  Ultimately I'd love to have a bunch of tall plants, but I'm a little cheap to just go out and drop a couple hundo's on some mature house plants/trees.  Besides, it's kind of fun to chart the growth of some of these babes!

Dragon in its store original plastic sleeve.

The soil was very loose and wet, so it must have just been watered.  The mix looked mostly peat moss, so I didn't bother stirring up a new soil combo.  I mostly filled in around it with peat and then sprinkled some of a leftover mix which had some perlite and possibly vermiculite in it.

Oh yes, definitely ready for a new pot!  But not that white one, too tiny!

Stepping it up to a larger ceramic pot with a metallic glaze.

Per usual, there's a nice stone base and I left about an inch between the top of the soil and the top edge of the pot.  I imagine this soil will compact after a month or two of waterings, so I will probably layer in some more soil on top.

New Babe! Money Tree (Pachira Aquatica)

This particular plant has an interesting background, but we'll save the details for another day.  Essentially, another rescue situation wherein the plant was received as a gift and neglected, I took it in with Open Arms (Mariah Carey song)!

The plant in its original typical plastic 4" pot, with the materials I used to give it a more permanent home in the larger clear plastic sleeve & decorative white ceramic pot combo.

I used some potting soil left over from a previous mix to fill in the space of the upgraded pot.  Of course, I laid in a layer of stones.  This time it was probably about 1" deep, and I'm actually using river stones as I ran out of my river rock, which is a little more jagged, finer pieces and less aesthetic.  I don't end up using these more "glamorous" rocks like I thought I might, so I figured I might as well put them to some use!  

The money tree in its final resting place - for a year or so, that is!

I believe this rascal will do well in low light or indirect lighting conditions.  I imagine its watering requirements are akin to my palm - it likes to be moist, but not drenched, and probably dries out pretty easily - I mean look at all those stems!  This will be the first plant I have ever had to actually maintain a braid with, so that will be an interesting challenge, but I'm hoping to get this sucker to grow several feet tall so it becomes a floor plant.  We'll see how long that takes!

Stringy, Leggy Succulents

Something I have been struggling with lately is getting my succulents to grow as thick and full as were when I first got them.  My echeveria originally started out growing larger leaves (maybe this was during summer?), but since then I haven't been able to get any of the propagates to grow leaves much larger than an inch or two.

Check out the echeveria curving up the left side - it's more stem than leaf!

I have to think this has something to do with the lighting conditions I have.  Maybe it's time to start thinking about artificial lighting as a supplement.

Checking in on my Moses in the cradle, I was at first pleased to see how much it had grown.  Upon closer inspection, I realized that the growth was again mostly vertical and not much foliage.

Look at the height this bad boy has achieved!

...and yet when you look closer, the spacing between leaves is over an inch...

...as compared to the original growth, which was quite dense leaf shoots.

I'm not sure what to do about this Moses.  I read online that outdoors you can cut them back, basically in half, to encourage denser growth in the spring.  I might try cutting it back and then setting it outside in a somewhat shady spot to see what kind of growth I can get.