In the fall, my Tillandsia caput-medusae air plant flowered and now it has a pup growing from its base! It will be exciting to watch this tiny air plant grow.
Here’s a look at the foliage of my other Ledebouria sp. It has a similar pattern to the Silver Squill, but in different colors and the leaves are much wider. I like these plants because they look like tiny tropical trees.
Here’s an up close look at one of my favorite succulents, Senecio rowleyanus, String of Pearls. It is definitely one of the weirdest looking plants in my collection.
Is your Monstera not looking so hot lately? Although a yellow leaf here and there is nothing to panic about, if the issue persists, it’s important to figure out what’s going on.
Just got another email this week from a poor traumatized houseplant lover who wanted to know what those brown things were coming out of their Monstera! If you’ve never seen an aerial root, they can be a bit alarming.
On our way back into New York, we stopped at a bomb diggity plant store in New Jersey and I bought a bunch of nice pots to finally get my living room plants out of their nursery pots
I repotted some of my succulents. Hopefully they’re happier in their new homes, especially the bottom two which have incredible reach and the stems were looking a little brittle.
Bricks, floral foam and volcanic rock all made excellent growing media for plants that thrive without soil
Recently, while flicking through an almost 20-year-old copy of the Royal Horticultural Society’s The Garden magazine, I was struck by an idea that seemed to open up all sorts of exciting possibilities. The cover was graced not by the typical glossy image of a stately home garden, but by a grainy photo sent in from a member. Having carefully observed how a range of begonias grow in the wild on rocks and cliffs, Mr Durlabh Singh Puri, the owner of a radio repair-cum-photography shop in India who just happened to be a passionate plantsman, had been ingeniously experimenting with growing these popular houseplants on bricks. Yes, regular house bricks, and to striking effect. Thankfully he was kind enough to share his brilliant idea.
The potential superiority of porous surfaces to potted growing media is exciting. This could be a game-changer for lithophytic species (plants adapted to grow on rocks), such as African violets, sinningias, slipper orchids and many ficus, whose twin demands of constant moisture and airflow at the roots make them a real challenge in traditional pot culture. After a year of experimentation, inspired by Mr Singh Puri’s early work with bricks, I have found three other materials that will also do the job well.
My first experiment came when I saw a local florist throwing away some used floral foam. The porous properties of this synthetic sponge mean it absorbs many times its weight in water, yet the surface is still exposed to the air. I wrapped a 9cm ball of this foam in some tropical java moss (sold in sheets by aquarium supply shops) and tied it in place with thread. I then strapped the bare roots of a slipper orchid to the surface to keep them in contact with the moist moss below, but with their upper surface exposed. Months later the orchids are growing strongly and are on their third flowering.
Floral foam is a non-biodegradable plastic, so I wouldn’t buy it, but reusing it as a growing media works well and will keep it out of landfill for a little longer. Florists tend to be more than happy to give it away for free, too. If you can’t get your hands on it secondhand, rock wool makes a good substitute (available online from hydroponic suppliers).
Neither floral foam nor rock wool looks great unless covered in moss, so my third step was to try volcanic rock (available from garden centres). This is also porous and can wick water up as high as 20-30cm. I pressed a little java moss into the crags of its surface, leaving some areas exposed for aesthetic effect, then I washed all the potting mix from a Ficus Ginseng and placed it on the surface. To my surprise the lava was porous enough, above a dish of water, to work as a growing media for this small, woody plant.
Months later, I found to my annoyance that this technique was already being marketed commercially by a Dutch grower as Life on Lava, with a broad selection of ferns, ficus and schefflera all looking amazing given this treatment. Great minds think alike, I guess! Creating a home-spun version yourself is well worth a weekend experiment if you don’t fancy braving the cold to get your horticultural fix at this time of year.
You don’t need a rainforest, or even a terrarium, to grow fascinating nepenthes indoors.
When I was a kid growing up in southeast Asia, I was fascinated by the bizarre native nepenthes pitcher plants I’d see on rainforest walks, not to mention the dramatic time-lapse sequences of David Attenborough documentaries. Yet even in those ideal, year-round tropical conditions, I could never get the damn things to grow. A frustration that was made even worse by a visit to Kew Gardens on holiday, where I saw the most magnificent specimens tumbling out of hanging baskets and trained over trellises. As they say, desire plus frustration equals obsession, so – 30 years later – I think I have finally cracked it. To share the love, here are my secrets (many of which are the opposite of what the textbooks say) to growing these spectacular plants indoors .
Almost anyone who has bought a nepenthes, laden with pitchers, and brought it home will know the story. It looks great for a couple of weeks, but soon after, the tips of the pitchers start to turn crisp and brown, eventually it works its way down to where the trap joins the rest of the leaf. This was my experience for years, creating plants that, despite being sort-of alive, didn’t have any traps or make any new ones.
Trap formation and retention on pitcher plants is directly related to humidity. As UK homes lack these sky-high moisture levels, this can be difficult to recreate outside of a terrarium. Yet, even in the sweltering conditions of southeast Asia, the same thing can be a problem. So what can you do?
When I started ignoring the advice about never feeding them, their growth rate almost doubled
The secret is simple: water. A lot of water. I keep my plants in pots without drainage, in growing media that is permanently saturated. Once a week, I fill the pot right to the top, so the water reaches the brim, about 1cm above the level of the compost – and never let it stop being as wet as a bog. Thanks to this I now have four nepenthes growing away happily, all of them outside the sealed confines of a terrarium. Despite living in an area with very hard tap water, I ignore the advice of only using bottled water and have had zero problems.
When I started ignoring the advice about never feeding them, as doing so resulted in them exhibiting yellowing leaves (a tell-tale sign of nutrient deficiency), their growth rate almost doubled. I don’t feed them heavily, just a half-strength liquid houseplant feed once a month, but the effect is dramatic and to me essential to success. And no, I don’t run around trapping insects to feed them. They don’t need it.
Finally, these plants are light hungry, so only grow them on a spot within 1m of a window, ideally a south-facing one as these are exposed to more sunlight. Don’t have a spot like that? No problem, just set up a grow light. There are now energy-efficient LED bulbs, which are very affordable and will fit into any desk lamp. But you do have to have one or the other to give them the light they need. After decades of trial and error, I have found if you do these three things, the plants are easy to keep and surprisingly fast growing. If only I’d known this back in 1989!
