Why I Oughta...

Earlier this Summer, the small Firesticks succulent (is it a cactus? I think so?) made its annual migration from indoors to outdoors.  First...staying in the shade for a couple of weeks.  Then, moving to a little bit more sun.   This container-grown cactus lived in the basement all Winter and seemed to come out the other side in decent shape.  I barely watered it and it barely grew.  But...When I moved it outside and gave it some water, it started to take-off again. The last time that I captured a photo of this Firesticks succulent was more than a year ago - February 2022 .  It continues to grow and the current state is below: It is easy to see that there is a ton of new, fresh growth.  Those yellow-going-on-red tips are the tell.   It seems happy in this small container and I'm not in a hurry to move it to something bigger since I'm seeing so much growth.  I suppose that's something that I need to start to look at and figure out if it would benefit from a larger home.   It

My Staghorn Fern journey started back in March of 2021 with the purchase of a small, potted Staghorn Fern from the orange Big Box store.  As I learned a little bit (or...'got to know') Staghorns, I decided to just leave this one in the plastic container that it came in, but modified to provide for A TON of drainage/airflow with holes all over it. That first Summer, I put it outside and it seemed to thrive .  I brought it inside as the weather turned and put that Fern - along with other houseplants - under a grow light during the Winter.  Two years ago tomorrow (Jan 24, 2022), I posted some photos showing the first real 'Antler-shaped fronds' that the fern had grown .  This was a real milestone as the fern started to *look* like a real Staghorn Fern.  That small series of successes lead me to take on even more with Staghorns. I bought more, mounted some of them.  And...didn't really get the results I wanted.  But, I also gave away a pair of the mounted Ferns to folk

A few days ago, I shared a mid-Winter update on my Staghorn Ferns and mentioned that I was going to share a separate post on the lone Elkhorn fern that I mounted in October .  First thing though....I'm pretty sure that the name "Elkhorn Fern" is probably misplaced.  This is likely just a variety of Bird's Nest Fern, but that's ok.  And...not the point - right now.   This is a six-week update on the Elkhorn since mounting. And, it hasn't been pretty. Below is a look at the current state.  Lots of brown.  And lots of unhappy fronds.  But, a really nice cedar mount.   Not great.  See below: Not great - at first glance.  But...upon closer inspection, I can see some new, small, thin fronds.  New growth?   One note that I've observed in the past six weeks.  This Fern requires more water, more frequently than the Staghorns.  

Currently, we have three Staghorn Ferns and one Elkhorn Fern (More on the Elkhorn in a separate post) that have been sitting in our basement windows trying to survive the long, dark Winter.  Two of the Staghorns are mounted to boards.  And one continues to be in the container that it arrived in from the big box nursery. First up, the one in the container.  This is the oldest Staghorn and seems to be doing fine .  Not great.  But, fine.  The shield frond is the original one that is now brown and dried out.  We have a few antler-shaped fronds, too.  See below for current state. This can use a repotting and/or mounting this Spring. The next Staghorn Fern is the original fern mounted to a pine board with a large knot hole in it.  I posted about this one in August when I talked about it suffering .  How is it doing today?  Not great.  But...I *think* it is growing.  There are some small, new, non-antler-shaped fronds that have emerged.  Here, below, is an overview of this mounted Staghorn s

Just a week later and this is what our set of Paperwhite bulbs look like in their glass jar:  roots have gone wild and the tips of the stalks have all emerged and are starting to shoot upwards.  This happened REALLY fast (at least in my view) and I've tried to follow the recommendations so far - including keeping them out of a bright room while the roots establish.  Below is photo showing the current state of these Ziva Paperwhite bulbs : I went back and bought a 2nd bag of stones to help bury the bulbs up about half-way to help get them more solid ahead of the potential 'tipping' that happens with Paperwhites.   This am, I also began the poisoning of these bulbs in an attempt to keep them compact.  Below is the bottle of rubbing alcohol (91%) that I added in a small amount to the gravel.  It is about 5:1 water:alcohol added.  This will, hopefully, stunt these enough to keep them from 'flopping over'. I've used a similar alcohol treatment to Amaryllis bulbs in

For the past few Christmas seasons, we've grown Amaryllis flowers from bulbs with (mostly) good results and have learned a little bit about different bulbs and planting situations with those .  This year, I'm trying (for the first time) to reuse some of my Amaryllis bulbs from last year .  I grew them in containers and had them bloom in the dark of Winter.  Then, I put their pots out in the sun all Summer-long.  And, finally brought them in to try to force them by putting them in the basement and trimming all the foliage off.  They've been in my basement (currently) for ten weeks.  I'll get them out in mid-November.   Besides, Amaryllis bulbs, another winter-time gardening project that people take on is growing Paperwhites from bulbs.  I found an eight-pack of Ziva bulbs and decided to try these at home.  Here, below, is the packaging from the bulbs from the orange Big Box store: Interesting that these are 'grown in Israel', no?   First, though...what are Paperw

Number 8 on my 2022 to-do list for the season was to 'do more with houseplants'.  I talked about repotting a cactus, working with my topiary and mounting some Staghorn Ferns.  I recently covered the current state of the Mickey Mouse standing Creeping Fig Vine topiary, so that's in a good place .  I haven't gotten around to the Firesticks cactus repotting, but maybe that's a Winter-time project.  I've also continued to prune the Umbrella plants in our kitchen, so let's call that bonsai-adjacent. The most recent project in this category has to do with Staghorn Ferns. What started with a single, potted Staghorn Fern turned into a houseplant project and set of gifts for people in our life.  I bought five new potted Staghorn Ferns this Spring and ended up mounting (in total) four of them.  Giving two away, that left me with two mounted Staghorn Ferns and two potted ones. The smallest mounted fern that I kept perished and died.   The larger one, well... it wasn&

 I haven't an update on our standing Mickey Mouse Creeping Fig Vine (stuffed) topiary in a while.  Last September, I showed the (then) current state with the vine doing well and overtaking even more of the frame .  Creeping Fig vine is a tropical, so I had a little trouble navigating Winter with it being inside where it is very dry here in Northern Illinois.   With Summer here, I wanted to show the new growth that has occurred since we moved it outside earlier this year.  This year, it is living (for now) on our front porch.  See below for the current state: There are a number of new shoots that need to be pinned down, but I think it is plain to see that - overall - this topiary is progressing in terms of coverage.   I mean...compare the photo above with the one in THIS POST from less than 13 months ago .  Big change.  My plan is to get out there soon and pin down the new shoots and try to cover even more of the frame before we have to bring it in at the end of the season.

Back at the end of February, I started to explore how to mount Staghorn Ferns to boards and even gave a few away as gifts.  I ended up keeping a few for myself and I wanted to put in an entry in the Staghorn Diary on the current state.  Below, you can see a photo of the one, larger Staghorn that is mounted to a flat board: Notably....it is NOT happy.  It is NOT thriving.  But, it is alive.  And has survived a battle with MOLD and moisture.  It has lost fronds.  Most of the tips have browned-up and curled.  But...we might have turned a corner.  We *might* have new growth emerging.  I dreamed of a life of Staghorn Ferns in our screened porch.  And this first year?  It has been rough. The interesting part is that the Staghorn that I gave my Mom?  It is thriving.  She has it laying on its back in a sunny, Western-exposure window.   I had a second, mounted fern (tiny) that has totally died.  I'm now left with two ferns in containers (left as a sort-of hedge) that I think I should try to

Nat has a couple of house plants around the house that she tends to with feeding and watering and general upkeep. One of those is a ZZ plant that lives in our bathroom upstairs. It doesn't get a lot of light, but for the past few years, it seemed to just truck on and put up shoots. Until recently. When it seemed to be in decline. There was a bunch of yellowing and not a lot of new growth. Here, below, is what it looked like when I decided to take action: It looks really crowded, doesn't it?  I figured it just needed to repotted, but I also researched if it could be divided.  Sure enough, there's plenty of posts about dividing a ZZ plant.  So, that was the path I took:  divide and repot to create two plants. First things first, though:  to remove the plant form the current container.  Turns out, it was inside a little nursery pot inside that larger container.  When I dug it out, the roots were curled out from under the nursery container and were wrapping around each ot