I'm feeling so SAD!!! All of my plants are dormant. (sniff) The yard looks desolate. The only thing of interest I've got now is the bald flowering crabapple with its pretty red berries still hanging on. I haven't felt this way in the past - my gardens have been an afterthought at best. But actually being out in the yard every week working & tweaking, I'm really missing all that color & fun now. I've got skylights in both bathrooms, and in my kitchen. There's a ledge in my master bath (not an overly humid room; we removed the door) that would be large enough to hold two or three 6" pots, and in the kitchen there's room for me to place a smallish plant-stand or even one largish pot on casters that wouldn't be in the way. Both skylights offer a fairly steady 4-5 hour sunlight-spot, and I'm wondering if anyone knows of anything I could grow there? A low-care flower or herbs would be nice, maybe succulents... anything but pokey-prickly cactuses... I'm a bit shy of plants that "bite" after sitting on a prickly-pear! love, mom
Its not so much the amount of light as it is the duration of it. Plants regulate growth by hormones just as we do. The length of their day is what determines what hormone will be produced. This time of year, few plants are going to do anything but sleep unless they have supplimental lighting. Something like sugar snap peas do well in low light, but then again, this time of year... Ferns maybe? x
I think your crabapple is beautiful. Enjoy this time of year. Use it pour over seed catalogs, gardening books and plan for next spring. For your kitchen get yourself a rosemary plant and topiary it. Use the trimmings to cook with and plant some creeping thyme at the base. It won't put on a lot of growth this time of year, but it will be something green for you to work with. For the rest of the house, you can't beat pothos, you can put it in a hanging basket, or train it over windows or mirrors. It slows down some in the winter also, but they are very hard to kill.
If you are a reader, see if your local library has any Beverly Nichol's books, they make for fun winter reading, but can be hard to come by.
Oooh, thank you!!! I'll definitely check those out while I'm at the library tonight! Not sure about Rosemary - it's not an herb I use all that often, but I'm definitely gonna have to find a pothos. It looks like the plant my MIL has sprawling down the side of her bookcase, so maybe I can talk her out of a cutting! My mom said I could have a few clippings from a few of indoor plants as well We've got big plans already for next year. Here's what we've figured out so far: This is still on our 12' x 6' deck. The doorway into our dining room is just to the left of the tomato-bin, and the steps down into our yard are opposite that between the nasty-urtiums & the pepper-bin. I'm a bit nervous about those blueberries... it's a 3-5 year time investment before we'll see our first fruits, but hopefully it'll be worth it. If nothing else, they ought to look pretty under the pumpkin arch! love, mom
I use rosemary all the time. It's good for your memory and what is spaghetti sauce without it. A friend gave me one of those upright rotissery things. I do chickens in it all the time. All you do is salt and pepper the bird and stuff the whole cavity with fresh rosemary. You can't find anything like that in a restaurant. Pothos is easy to start from cuttings, a lot of house plants are so it sounds like you have a great source to try some out. What do you use the betony for?
lol... I do use rosemary in my marinaras, we just don't eat a lot of Italian. And nobody in my house eats chicken all that often. (I'm vegetarian & nobody else is all that crazy about poultry) Betony is an old, old herb. I intend to recreate a monastery garden when we own our land, and I'm trying to pick the perennials up one at a time. Betony makes a weak tea that helps my migraines & seems to be gentler on my stomach than the Excedrin I would otherwise turn to. Mom used to use the leaves on my styes as a little girl as well. They have bright purple flowers that attract plenty of butterflies & are pretty to look at too, so it's really an all-purpose "happy plant" to add to our little garden! love, mom
Such good advice. Winter has its own beauty, if you're warm enough! I've been meaning to try using the computer to do some sort of garden plan. Nice work. I started cuttings from lavender and wolfberry, in a sunny southern window (& also some supplemental fluorescent light). Stuck 'em in solid wet perlite. You can really STUDY on getting more plants from cuttings. I think now is the time for semi-hardwood(?) or maybe hardwood. (Cuttings, that is!) Now's the time to take cuttings of grapevines and fig trees and BURY 'em, for instance. Hey, I'm a MEMBER!!! Just noticed! YEE HAW.
