I am a plant lover with a dirty little secret\u2014my houseplants are dying of neglect.<\/p>\n
At the moment my foyer and dining room look like a horticultural ICU, with patients that include a collection of geraniums, cacti, African violets, orchids and amaryllis.\u00a0 Most spent last summer outside, happy and healthy.\u00a0 The majority of the geraniums belong to my daughter, a pelargonium fanatic, who goes to graduate school in another state.\u00a0 I am their caretaker and if plant care were state regulated, Social Services would have taken them away by now.<\/p>\n
The plants\u2019 ailments are legion\u2014dead branches, leggy growth, and overcrowded conditions.\u00a0 Most have fertilizer spikes in their pots because even a lazy gardener can manage that kind of minimal effort.\u00a0 However, the spikes work better if the plants are watered regularly and lately the watering in this establishment has been catch-as-catch-can.\u00a0 If I listen carefully, I can hear the pink, middle-aged diva geranium in the living room wailing \u201cnot good enough.\u201d\u00a0 She is echoed by the other plants, joining their voices in a feeble chorus.\u00a0 All are excoriating me with their dying breaths.<\/p>\n
The situation is not entirely my fault.\u00a0 The October hurricane left us without power for eleven days when the indoor temperature varied from chilly to nearly unbearable.\u00a0 The plants held up, though a few probably entered dormancy.\u00a0 By the time the lights and heat came back on, I was ready to enter dormancy as well.\u00a0 The storm was followed by an array of domestic and occupational emergencies of varying sizes.\u00a0 I tuned out the plants\u2019 collective gnashing of teeth, watering every once in awhile and vowing to do better when life resumed its normal routines and parameters.<\/p>\n
Now things are as normal as they are going to get and it is time to come to grips with the plant situation.\u00a0 If I were extremely practical, I would get the big plastic garden tub from the garage and start hauling the plants out to the composter.\u00a0 This would take many trips and a fair amount of time.\u00a0 After this massive purge, I would have to spend even more time sweeping up the trail of dead leaves and other plant detritus.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to plants\u2014even leggy geraniums in extremis\u2014I am not practical.\u00a0 I am, in fact, sentimental.\u00a0 Very early on Christmas morning, while the family slept, I got out my clippers and a big bowl and began going from plant to plant, chopping off dead parts, tying up floppy stems, watering deeply and sweeping up after myself.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get it all done, but now, whenever I have five or ten minutes, I continue the process.\u00a0 The pots that have already been treated look a little sparse now that all the dead stems are gone.\u00a0 In the days to come I may even consolidate and repot some of the geraniums to make the display look fuller.<\/p>\n
I also hooked up the plant lights, something which should have been done back in October.\u00a0 The extra light should stimulate some new growth in the rejuvenated specimens.\u00a0 It makes me feel better too.<\/p>\n
One of the best things about gardening is resilience.\u00a0 My plants have suffered grievous neglect, but they have soldiered on.\u00a0 The Christmas cactus has offered up several double, pink and white blooms.\u00a0 Last year\u2019s amaryllis has a green leaf emerging from the still-robust bulb.\u00a0 The \u2018Frosty Cherry\u2019 African violet on the kitchen windowsill has produced several big red-purple and white splashed blooms that cheer me up when I do the dishes.\u00a0 Various geraniums have sprouted bright blossoms, proving yet again that they really don\u2019t need all that much water.\u00a0 All in all, the plants are healthier than they have any right to be and that makes me feel just a little less guilty.<\/p>\n
Sometimes life interrupts gardening.\u00a0 The good news is that plants can often take such interruptions in stride.\u00a0 We gardeners should do so as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am a plant lover with a dirty little secret\u2014my houseplants are dying of neglect. At the moment my foyer and dining room look like a horticultural ICU, with patients that include a collection of geraniums, cacti, African violets, orchids and amaryllis.\u00a0 Most spent last summer outside, happy and healthy.\u00a0 The majority of the geraniums … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[497,496,64,495,492,494,493],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-winter","tag-amaryllis","tag-cacti","tag-geraniums","tag-houseplant-care","tag-houseplants","tag-plant-care","tag-plant-neglect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}