WINTER CLEANOUT
It’s time to do something about my houseplants. The holidays are over, the New Year is well underway and spring, or at least the beginning of the growing season, is still waiting in the wings. My houseplant collection is in chaos, and I need to make some tough decisions and introduce some organization.
The millions of paperwhites and amaryllis that I cultivated for holiday bloom have finished with their festive chores, except for one amaryllis, whose red and white trumpets still light up my living room. The amaryllis that have finished blooming, have sprouted large numbers of long leaves, making my windowsills and the holding area on top of my microwave look like jungles. I need a machete to hack through the greenery before I can get to the oven to warm up leftovers.
Given a modicum of appropriate care, the many amaryllis will bloom again reliably next year. I think that I’ll consolidate all of the bulbs into one giant pot. This will free up numerous individual pots and save valuable sunny space. The end product–one huge pot sporting a massive tangle of three-foot long leaves–will not be particularly attractive to look at, but it will take less time to water. It will also make the microwave accessible once more.
The paperwhite situation is a little more complicated, but mostly because of my own psychological issues. Last fall I bought the largest, highest quality paperwhite bulbs that I could find, and they were augmented by some additional high quality paperwhites given to me by a friend. All bloomed spectacularly, and all have sprouted lots of long, healthy leaves. Paperwhites are not cold tolerant, so they can never be planted outside in this climate. Most people just throw them away after the flowers die, but doing such a thing to so many big fat healthy bulbs goes against my softhearted nature. Besides, they’re so muscular that they would probably leap right out of the compost tumbler and chase me back to the house like onion-shaped aliens in a low budget horror movie.
I’ve decided to treat those Schwarzenegger-like bulbs the same way I’m treating the amaryllis and consolidate them in a single pot. I will try to duplicate their Mediterranean home turf by keeping them dry and putting them in the sunniest possible spot, then take the pot outside to bake in the spring and summer sun. We’ll see if any of them sprout next year. A few years ago, using the same technique that worked brilliantly for Christmas cactus, I neglected a paperwhite so successfully that it bloomed again the following winter. Based on that short record of success, I am willing to give it a try with my Inbal and Zhiva bulbs. If it doesn’t work, I can throw them away with much less guilt. The process is certainly cheaper than therapy or appropriate medication.
That brings me to less agonizing acts of euthanasia. I have two plants–a penta and a Godwin’s Gray lavender–that are clinging to life by an extremely thin thread. The penta, which is two years old, looked wonderful at the garden center and began its exquisitely slow decline the minute I got it home. The tender Godwin’s Gray started out healthy, but was left outside just a bit too long last fall and caught the plant equivalent of a bad cold. That has now turned into the plant equivalent of pneumonia with pathetic complications. There is only one branch that seems to be alive. Both plants have resisted revival efforts, so I have made the decision to consign them to the composter, where they can morph into something that will help their successors to grow.
After all of those wrenching decisions and dramatic acts of reorganization, I’ll repot the walking iris, Neomarica gracilis, in the hopes that it will bloom sometime before my teenaged daughter is ready to collect Social Security. I’ll also cut back the gangly scented geraniums and the lanky hibiscus to improve their growth habits.
All of this is urgent, as I have already ordered two Parma violets, which should be here any day now and will need sunny space. A couple of seductive Martha Washington-type geraniums are singing a siren song from a nearby catalog at a time when my resistance to such serenades is exceptionally low. And of course, there is my pending seed order. Once again this year, I am going to start pansies from seed. For me this effort is like second marriage was to Dr. Samuel Johnson–“the triumph of hope over experience.” Still, hope and seed starting are best cultivated in sunny situations and the sunniest situation in my house is on top of the microwave oven. The pansies will grow less exuberantly there than the amaryllis, and I’ll never need a machete to deal with them.