How long are you willing to wait for a plant to reach peak performance in your garden?We’ve all heard the saying about perennials. The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and finally the third year they leap.This isn’t always true, but generally, the point is there are no instant gardens. Gardens can take years, decades, to mature and become the plant paradises that we all dream of.In my garden, I planted the white-flowering shrub clematis (Clematis integrifolia ‘Alba’) ten years … [Read more...] about A Lot Of Gardening Involves Waiting
houseplants
Cuttings in a Bag: Am I The Last To Know?
Some ideas are so simple. I am wondering if this simple idea is one that everyone knew about except me?It's such an easy thing to do, and saves a lot of space.It's a "cutting in a bag".I had never seen this before until this Saturday when I went to the African violet show.The grower had several cuttings in plastic bags for sale. He said he roots new plants like this all the time.You put some potting soil in a Ziploc-type baggie, wet it down, add the cutting, seal it up and hang it up some place … [Read more...] about Cuttings in a Bag: Am I The Last To Know?
Garden Fairies Guest Post: African Violets
Hi! It’s us garden fairies again. Carol isn’t too happy about the snow and she has started working on her taxes, so we thought this might be a good time for us to do a guest post.Hopefully she’ll appreciate our thoughtfulness and not be upset that once again we’ve taken over her blog.Remember how she said that African violet’s were your grandmother’s houseplants and she made up that rule that no one should have more than one African Violet for every ten years of their age? And she was all smug … [Read more...] about Garden Fairies Guest Post: African Violets
Indoor Raking and Other Gardening Related Exercise
If you can’t go out and garden, bring the gardening indoors to you!Some of my houseplants are a bit on the untidy side. This Swedish Ivy, Plectranthus australis, seems to drop quite a few leaves.Swedish Ivy is an extremely easy houseplant to grow. This one grows in a north window and gets some water every couple of weeks. I started it from a three inch cutting that I "pinched" from one of my sisters who had it in a hanging basket on her deck one summer.That plant probably ended up in the compost … [Read more...] about Indoor Raking and Other Gardening Related Exercise
Rainy Day Activities at May Dreams Gardens
I may have violated a basic tenet of gardening yesterday. The one about "pay attention to the weather forecast". Or maybe it was the one about "make hay while the sun shines, strike while the iron is hot, plant bulbs when there is a nice, sunny, dry day in November and it happens to fall on a Saturday".Yes, that's the one, the tenet about getting your bulbs planted on a sunny Saturday in November.I planted half of my bulbs yesterday, mostly the tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths that I needed to … [Read more...] about Rainy Day Activities at May Dreams Gardens
