Saturday, June 18, 2016

Plummeting Palm

My palm was one of the first plants I bought when I moved into my apartment.  It was so teeny tiny and I was excited for it to grow up to be a big floor plant one day.  Well, it was well on its way until one day I decided to move it upstairs to the bedroom where it got less direct sunlight and fewer waterings.
The palm in February 2015

March 2015

September 2015 - the beginning of the downward spiral.
January 2016 - just two living leaves left, coming out of the last living stalk!  One new leaf on the way, though.

May 2015 - another new leaf - on the road to recovery (I hope!)
I can't believe I neglected this thing for so long and so obliviously that 90% of it died off!  My only hope is that this last stalk will continue to recover and eventually fill out the pot once again.

Summer 2016 Container Garden

This year I decided to go with a red/pink and white theme for my half-barrel container garden.  The flower bed theme was all about purple plants!

Flowers for the flower bed.

Day 1 - semi aerial view.


New Babe! Pothos

Another flea market find was this lovely trailing pothos babe.  With the most recent round of potting and/or repotting, I've decided to incorporate landscape fabric to help keep the soil separate from the stones or whatever drainage plane medium I am using.  Previously, any time I would go to repot a plant, I'd have a bunch of stones, for example, irretrievably mixed in with soil.  Obviously you can sift them out with a screen and possibly some water, but that would take time and tools which I do not yet have.  So let's take a look at this attempted strategy for potting...
Laying s clean stone base in the ceramic pot.

My sweet new baby pothos.

I decided to switch out the stone to these chunks of mosaic tile.

The pothos in its new plastic sleeve sitting in the ceramic pot.

A closer look reveals the landscape fabric lining of the plastic sleeve.
I didn't take any photos during the cutting of the fabric, but here's the bulleted list of the process:

  1. Cut square of landscape fabric, large enough to line the entire draining pot (sometimes referred to as sleeve or plastic pot).
  2. Place fabric in draining pot, set in plant and soil to fill.
  3. Place stones or tiles or some other inorganic medium in the bottom of your non-draining decorative or ceramic pot.
  4. Place the draining pot into the decorative pot.
It's a pretty simply configuration, but over the years I've slowly been refining this process.  We'll check back in later in the year or next year to see just how effective this landscape fabric was!

New Babe! English Ivy

I'm not really sure what type of ivy this is, but as with several of my littler new babes lately, I acquired this one for about 25 cents at a flea market.  I haven't had too much luck with ivy in the past, but I'm hoping I do better with this one!

As you can see from the photo, I'm yet to even find it a suitably sized permanent home!