Today’s
Topic of the Month post is from Guest blogger Patricia Mayo:
I still intimately remember the first plant I ever purchased for myself, even though It was 3 years ago when I brought home my baby pine. It was barely one whole foot tall, but the label said it could grow to 15 feet in as little as a couple years.
“Preston the Pine” got a slightly shady home just off to the side of my window, and I went about watering and feeding it just as prescribed. Then, it seemed, nothing could quench its thirst.
I think it survived about 3 months before all the green started getting brittle and brown. It probably wasn’t even that long, but one thing was for sure – I was completely heartbroken. I did everything “right” – how could it die?
I just recently moved to a new, massive apartment – perhaps it was the move. Maybe I didn’t give it enough sunlight, or maybe I should have fed it. It was all just speculation though. I still don’t know everything about gardening to this day, and so I still haven’t entirely unraveled the mystery of purchased plants – but I do know if you plant it, they will sprout.
Grow From the Ground Up
Give me a bulb or seed and I can make a hardy plant of it every single time. Even the “tough” ones to grow sprouted every single time.
Take for instance my “Seven Dwarves” – 7 caladiums I grew from 7 bulbs. Most people have difficulty getting caladiums to sprout – so much so I figured maybe one would come up – but all of mine grew with almost zero additional effort, and one of them was even albino. I made the mistake of naming them when they sprouted though. Four feet of growth later, my Seven Dwarves weren’t so dwarfish anymore.
Every plant has their preference, and growing from the ground up means you have plenty of time to figure out what your little sproutling needs and loves. Even if it does eventually die, you know exactly what happened in that chain of events and what you should do better next time.
Lesson learned – grow from the ground up and you’re more likely to have a lasting and lush garden.
Orphaned Plants
You don’t have the opportunity and advantage of growing from the seed with a purchased plant though. Despite everything I know about growing and cultivating plants, Preston was only the first in a long line of purchased plants to fail simply because I didn’t fully know what to expect.
There were Palmela and Frond, two palm trees that used to greet visitors to my sun room but soon suffered a slow root-rotted death. Fern the fern didn’t make it 3 months. Heihachi the bonsai lasted about a year, and Moses, my Wandering Jew, lasted the longest of all my purchased plants but it too would eventually suffer a brittle end once I moved again.
Of course there were also several dozen more which I never got the chance to name because they died so quickly. Most of them Mother’s Day gifts – but I kept trying, and I’ve finally had success keeping a purchased plant alive. Here’s what I’ve learned:
The nursery doesn’t matter. Whether it was bought at the grocery store or Jacque’s Fancy Ferns, the originating growers are often the same and these retailers will try to get away with selling near-dead plants that are not ideal for your intended situation. Farm stands are much better as the plant was often grown by the person selling it to you, but it’s still no guarantee.
The context doesn’t matter. Even though you’re standing indoors when you picked the plant off the shelf, that doesn’t mean it’s an indoor plant.
A sunny room is actually “partially shaded”. Plants that need full sun will not survive indoors. The glass in your windows block some of the critical UV rays these plants need, and so even the sunniest room is still partially shaded to the leaves of a plant. You can solve this, of course, by opening the window – and while that’s not a good solution in the winter, plants do hibernate so a little less sun for one season won’t harm an otherwise healthy plant.
Do your own research. That little tag in the pot is most likely wrong, plus you have all sorts of catching up to do. You’ve already missed this plant’s entire childhood. It will test your boundaries, it will rebel, and it will declare in angst that you are not its parent – so you need to be ahead of the knowledge game to figure out what every tiniest change does to your little orphan.
Always have re-potting supplies on-hand. Next to that, always re-pot your orphans as soon as humanly possible. Generally speaking, if it’s up for sale, it’s already too big for its britches and needs a new home. Don’t be afraid to tear off a good chunk of those old roots too, and unless there’s root rot it’s a good idea to mix in some of the old soil.
There is no spoon. Schedules are no good. The tag is a liar. All those instructions you read online are not the end-all be-all. In all honesty, it’s your connection with the plant that will make it thrive or die. If you take the time to know it intimately, it will grow. If you just follow the rules, it will die.
That said – know anything about violas or Savannah reds? I just got a pot of ‘em for Mother’s Day…