Not too long ago these venus flytraps were suffering from root mealy bugs, but once they were treated they recovered quite nicely. I’ve been too lazy to feed them so the traps are not as colorful as they can be. #SavageGarden#HousePlants#CarnivorousPlants
@Jeremiah In the summer is the weather good enough and do you have a place to put them outside? I have done this when I went to Portland for a month in July. I just put them all next to each other and used a small sprinkler on a battery-powered timer. It watered them every day for like 8 minutes. There was wasted water, no doubt. But they were HUGE when I got back.
@relistan I like your idea. Sadly, I don’t have outdoor space of my own. But my friend nearby does. She’ll be away too so she might not mind me taking over her balcony to do this. 🤔
And today, I received 100 "orius majusculus" and they will hopefully eat all the thrips that have been ruining my #houseplants for years.
Thrips are little pesky insects that eat leaves from the inside and kill house plants unnoticed. They're hard to get rid of with conventional house-hold methods.
The orius are very speedy and I've now distributed ~half of them to the plants. Gonna see if some neighbors also need help getting rid of thrips...
@reynir I think aiming for a balance makes sense in a garden.
I'm a bit confused about what to do with pests in houseplants. It does feel a bit consumer-dumb to buy 100 predator bugs (that's the smallest amount), then just let them have a big party and die.
But it sure was easier than to wash the plants numerous times without results.
At my office, I found 3 thrips on a plant that was never in contact with my house plants. So I guess the thrips come from plant shops....
I may actually have witnessed this “explosive pollination mechanism”: I attempted to insert a thin inter-dental toothpick (because it was the only thing I had that seemed to be of the correct size) into the “tube” of the flower, and something did curl up towards the toothpick. My eyes are not so reliable at a short distance and I couldn't see clearly what was going on, so I assumed I had been too violent.
I've seen something similar in the flowers of a Mahonia shrub (possibly M. aquifolium) in the garden, although their flowers have a completely different anatomy.
For the Sunday #Houseplants crowd, here's my home grown #tamarind tree. I'm just about to trim it back, which requires much mustering of bravery.
Feels brutal, but I want to bound its growth bonsai style. Its new leaves have been more compact recently, so it is making a transition, realizing that it's not going to get to be a 20m to tree.
I chronicled its early growth, which was very exciting, but that was back on the birdsite. I should do a little retrospective thread here at some point.
Buy yourself some tamarind paste that ISN'T marked seedless sometime. It's great fun to grow. Perhaps the most fun in my series of exotic-from-grocery-store-seed #houseplants.
@ottaross huh! I never considered that the paste would have viable seeds. Speaking of, I've been looking for the sour paste with no luck lately. It's always the sweet variety around here!
My Hoya linearis, that is hanging in the garden all summer, usually blooms when I take it inside in the autumn when the night temperature reaches about 5°C.
This year it has decided that now is the time. It actually suits me well because the flowers are too heavily perfumed for my bedroom.
Now I'm keen to see if there are any Danish night insects that take interest in the flowers, so that I may have some seeds. It would be great to start a new pot from seeds, wouldn't it.
I have a confession: Months ago I tried to persuade y'all that no Danish nocturnal insects takes interest in the flowers of Hoya linearis.
I lied.
The plant has been hanging from the ceiling in my bedroom all winter. Today I took it down to offer it some water, and now there are downy seeds all over my bedroom (I guess I should be grateful that I'm single).
To conclude:
Some of the flowers must have been pollinated while the plant was hanging in the garden last summer.
The seedpods must have looked somewhat like the leaves of the plant, and in retrospect I have been a little worried since some of the “leaves” looked yellowish, but since it was just here and there and didn't seem to affect the whole plant, I wasn't too worried.
Turns out the yellow “leaves” were actually seedpods that have now burts open and revealed lots and lots of seeds — each attached to something that looks like eiderdown. They fly at even the faintest breeze. This is gonna be fun…
People who know me also know that now I have to try and sow those seeds to see if I can grow new plants from seeds.
Did my mom and dad fsck in a greenhouse, that early summerday back then? 🤔
It took a while with a few false starts and there were times I almost threw it away thinking it was dead but I'm glad I stuck with it and here's what it looks like now. This time they grew a lot of air roots which looks a bit weird but it seems stable.
@chillicampari@plants Well, they do that when nobody's home. And all they leave is some camouflage rotten parts. So the owners think they died and feel bad. But the truth is something else. Wait for it. ...
@pixouls it's like a dog with its face pressed to the window, waiting for its best friend to get home from work. And by 'friend' I mean the sun, and by 'home from work' I mean 'finally rise after the Swedish winter' ☺️
My neighbor is throwing a bunch of #houseplants at me to care for during her absence this summer.
Among them is this wonderful mystery plant is. She did not remember what it is. Apparently it does fine in the shade, not even next to a window.
@Natalie@dartily
Bingo! Turns out that was exactly it!
The funniest part, besides the fact that neither me nor the neighbor had a clue what it was… is that I had in my todo list to "Try to find cuttings of a ZZ plant, I heard these things are indestructible like sansevieras" 😆 So, side-quest accidentally completed!
What is this plant again, and how do I properly care for it? Should I divide it into separate “onions” or just leave it as it is? It started as a single “onion” a couple of years ago, and now it is completely overflowing its pot… It sits outside during the summer and inside in a windowsill during the winter. It gets tiny light purple flowers (a few is seen on the photo). I haven't seen any seeds yet.
My hoya plants have turned into rampant triffids with giant waving probing tendrils in all directions. I replaced their stake just a couple of weeks ago and they've outgrown them already 😅 #houseplants#gardening
