Space Ship Orchid - Holy Crap It Bloomed!

The Zoo has a plant fest on the first Saturday in March every year. I love working it because I basically spend the middle of the day roaming around, talking to all the plant societies and getting my mom to buy more plants.

Last year (2007), I wandered over to the Orchid Society. From my experience orchid people are a little crazy. For plants that supposedly bloom when neglected, those people baby them. So, I wasn't really excited about buying one, even though my mom is a big orchid freak. (Well, she loves them, but I get my lazy plant person genes from her).

But of course, there was a really cool one that bloomed green with a small purple/red center. They looked like space ships to me. I asked what it would need and they said "It's just like an African violet". Well hell, since I did so well with my African violet, I broke down and bought it. The tag says Epi. Green Hornet, lancifolium x cochleatum. Whatever.

It bloomed for a few weeks after brought it home and nestled it next to my violet. Then it sort of turned boring. Just keeped watering it and letting it live with the violet. I have to fill a bucket to water my porch plants, so it gets soaked from the bottom up once a week or so, with some extra water splashed on it's little finger-like air roots.

Then one day in March a little spike appeared and I knew it wasn't a new leaf. Just looked different. About a month later the first little bloom popped out! It was awesome. I was feeling super, uber green-thumby!

July has come and it's still blooming. There have been about 10 blooms that have come and gone, with about 4 left to open from what I can tell. I am going to glue it to the violet. Those crazy orchid people pinned me for what I was, a little helpless, and gave me some great advice.

Snake Plant Flowers

By Guest Blogger - TheJenny

Sansevieria. Snake Plant. Mother In Law's Tongue. When I first read about this common houseplant over a decade ago, the description said "Thrives on neglect." That, my friends, was the plant for me! And apart from not have any rigid watering requirements, it has a lovely sculptural form that works well with modern decor, a nice compact vertical habit which allows it to fit into even the most cramped quarters, and does fairly well in rooms with very little light. Snake plant is my favorite houseplant. I currently have four at home and several at work, many of which I have given as gifts to co-workers that claim they have "the black thumb." I'm convinced that it must be a prehistoric plant in nature because, like cockroaches, you'd be hard pressed to kill one.

But who knew they flowered!? I mean yeah, you see the fancy botanical illustration on Wikipedia with the lovely flower stalk...but I've had a few of my plants for 10+ years, and I had never seen it flower. Then it happened. This summer. This particular plant has an envy-inducing location in the front window and gets really nice filtered morning and afternoon sunlight. It's been in it's current pot for about 7 years, which is another reason I love sansevieria, they like to be cramped. So imagine my astonishment when I see a funny little flower spike coming out of the plant on the side nearest the window. The flower stalk was about 16 inches long and had slender stick-like white flower buds all over it.

The flowers only opened at night and closed back up during the day. They had a delicate fragrance that smelled a bit like lilies and the actual flowers were quite adorable. When open the thin flower petals curved all the way back to the stem. So cool! And the entire blooming process took almost a month, which made it even better. When I asked others if they had ever had a snake plant flower, the response I got from everyone is "really, they flower?" Exactly.

In the end, I'm not sure what I did "right" to get that plant to bloom, so I don't know if it will happen again. And I'm not sure I can precisely duplicate the neglectful pattern of events leading up to the bloom. If it never happens again, at least I took pictures.

African Violet - From the Trash

I have a lovely little run-of-the-mill African violet on my kitchen windowsill that is about 8 years old. It has been blooming constantly for about 2 1/2 years now, and seems to be very happy.

But that is the boring part.

I work at a Zoo, and long ago when we had a hippo, our neighborhood Raley's supermarket was kind enough to save a bunch of produce for us to give to the hippo. It was all the outer leaves of lettuce, broken carrots, that sort of thing - all put into a huge bin. Once a day our ungulate keeper would drive over and dig out the best bits to bring back.

One day, I get a radio call from her, trying to figure out where I am. She comes over with something behind her back and tells me how she found something, and it's really not a very good gift, but if anyone can make it work, she thinks it's me. Then see pulls out this pitiful, half dead violet, in a small, ugly, scalloped-edged white pot. It had about 6 leaves on one side.

I smiled and said, "Great, a half-dead plant!".

I took it home and put it on the widowsill of our small little Davis apartment. Watered it ever now and then, and it grew a nice all-sided set of leaves. Two moves later, and I started to think I needed to repot it. But I was afraid. Violets are always talked about as fussy, so I didn't know if it would survive.

One day, I was ready. I had a terra cotta pot that was double the size of the original plastic one. I carefully transplanted it and it looked good. Until, I pressed down on the soil to make sure it was nice and packed - and something snapped!

Most of the root broke off, the only part left was what was sticking out of the soil. Crap, crap, crap!

I layered more soil around it, gently watered it, stuck it in the window and waited for it to die.

A couple of weeks later, it sprouted a nice little bunch of cute purple flowers and for years now - it just hasn't stopped blooming. It's so damned happy, and I tried to kill it. Goes to show you what I know.

My Zoo friend who gave it to me still can't believe I actually did it. Apparently, she only has some faith in me.

My Pale Green Thumb

I really like plants. I think at last count I have 50 in my 1200 sq. ft. condo with mini porch. I didn't think I was a crazy plant person until I started talking about them with pronouns, and reminiscing about how "I've had that one for 8 years...I rescued that one from a coworker...", etc.

It was actually my boyfriend that gave me the idea to start a blog about it. Honestly, I think he wants me to have a different outlet for talking about it, so he doesn't have to come an look at new blooms, or happy plants, or new plants...Can't say I blame him!

But here's the truth: I'm not really a plant person. I don't know what I am doing, I only have a short attention span for gardening magazine, and I think I am pretty damn lazy. I probably invest more time into my plants than the average person, but sure as hell don't spend that much time on them. And almost no money. I think I go to Home Depot about four times a year to buy the absolute basic needs - and that's it!

I kill less plants than I save, so I figure I can at least claim to have a pale green thumb. Not totally green, but not black. I don't really want to do everything you are supposed to do with plants, because I just don't have the time. I do the things that have the biggest impact and call it good. I don't have to know what kind of plant it is - if I do, that's just a bonus.

Most of my friends fit into this category. We work a lot. We go out a lot. And we love plants.

So, this will be my attempt to give the lazy, naturally-talented plant person their due, without the scorn of the uber-green thumb people out there. Yes, we know we could do more. Yes, we know we could go out and buy species specific fertilizer to fix the problem, but we're going to use Miracle Grow on everything, cause that's what we have!

We'll see where we go from there!

This is a photo of my mini-porch. It was shamelessly taken in the height of spring at it's very best! Never will it look like this again...