November 17, 2020 How do feel about your plants?

 Hi gardeners

It’s the kind of day where I just want to curl up and go back to bed. The wind is howling, it’s 32 degrees and gray outside. There’s a light coating of snow on the grass.

I’m sitting in my home office and the bird feeders outside the window are empty.  Birds keep landing and going away disappointed. I should go out there and fill those feeders. Maybe when it gets to 34 degrees.

Sunday we kept having small power outages- a minute or two- and power surges because of the high winds. I spent yesterday trying to get my plant light timers working right and I had to replace two bulbs that were ruined by the alternating power.

I think I have said this before but I can’t remember thirty years ago or so, having this many wind storms with 50-60 mile an hour gusts that go on for hours and hours. We had heavy rain for a while with it Sunday, so I guess we now know what being in a hurricane or tropical storm is like. It must be climate warming.

When I do take a walk outside, I notice that the petunias are still green. They aren’t blooming but they aren’t dead. Some lamium and the yucca are still green. There’s even a mum in a protected place blooming. I could harvest sage if I wanted, it’s still green. Even some of the roses still have green leaves.

I found a handful of bulbs I forgot to plant. I’ll be planting them tomorrow. There is still time to plant bulbs if the ground isn’t frozen. It’s better to plant them then to try and save the bulbs for next year. That just doesn’t work well. If you have bulbs left and the ground is frozen put them in the refrigerator for 6 weeks, then take them out and pot them in containers.

It’s a good time to prune oak trees if they need it as the insects that carry oak wilt are gone and the sap isn’t flowing in the trees. It’s also a good time to gather any seeds you might want to save- providing they are still on the plants.

Inside my house plants have fewer blooms now. I still have streptocarpus, fuchsia, hibiscus, geraniums, diascia and Thanksgiving cactus blooming. I am already ready for spring. A new year, a new start. I am beginning to plant shop for spring.

 Sowing flower seeds in the fall

You may think the planting season is over but there are some common garden flowers that drop their seeds in the fall. Those seeds need a period of cold to germinate and may need the freezing and thawing cycle to crack a hard seed coat and allow moisture in for germination. You may have some of the garden plants that require these conditions in your garden and they will self- seed for you if left alone. If you don’t have the plants and want them in your garden now may be the time, before the ground freezes solid, to sow some of those seeds.

Seeds that can be sown in the fall include: Bachelor's Button, Coreopsis, Cosmos, Echinacea, Flax, Larkspur, Moss Rose, Marigolds, Morning glory, Nasturtium, Pansy, Poppy, Strawflower, Sweet pea, Verbena and Zinnia.  Buy the seeds or collect dry seeds from friend’s plants. Some of these may also be planted in early spring.  Some wildflower and grass seed may also be suggested for fall planting. Check the label, plant description or a reference.  Chances are if nature drops the seed in late fall it likes fall planting.

Clear a spot in the garden of vegetation and loosen the soil. Sprinkle the seeds over the area. You may want to sprinkle them thickly as some will not germinate. You can thin in the spring. Very small seeds like poppy seed should not be covered but press them against the soil. Larger seeds like morning glory seed should have a loose layer of soil about a half inch thick placed over them. Don’t water the seeds. Nature should take care of that for you. 

You can apply a very thin layer of mulch such as pine needles or chopped straw but don’t use leaves or anything that mats over the seeds and don’t make the mulch deeper than a half inch. Make sure to mark the spots where you sow the seeds. Some may wait until warmer weather to emerge so don’t be in a big hurry in the spring to plant over them, thinking they didn’t sprout. If you have trouble with birds pecking at your seeds cover the area with netting.

It’s not too late to plant the seeds until the ground freezes solid.  After all nature will still be dropping them, even after the snow falls in some cases. 

 

Plant facts and trivia

Amaryllis- did you know that amaryllis bulbs need to be planted with one third of the bulb above ground? It takes 6-8 weeks for the bulb to produce a bloom stalk.

Bulbs for spring blooming flowers can be planted until the ground freezes. They do not store well until next year so get them planted.

Calendula flowers were once used to make butter a deeper yellow and they are fed to chickens to make their egg yolks a deeper yellow.

Daffodils are not eaten by deer. You can have flowers in early spring if you plant daffodils and narcissus.

Eggplants come in a number of colors besides purple including white, yellow, orange and pink. They all taste the same.

Flame violets are Episcia cupreata, a houseplant that is similar to an African violet with pretty leaves that have silvery veins. They have small tubular flame red flowers over a long period in the winter.

Gerbera daisies will bloom on and off all winter inside and make good houseplants. They do need a southern window or grow light.

Herbaceous plants are any plants that do not have a woody stem. If plants die back to the ground in winter, they are herbaceous.

Ice cubes should not be used to water orchids. Instead water them with about 2 tablespoons of warm water every few days.

Heel is the term for a bit of the main stem of a woody plant that is removed with a side shoot. Many woody plant cuttings start better if they have a heel attached.

Iresine are sometimes called Chicken Gizzards and are another plant with colorful foliage that you can grow inside. They come in various shades of red, purple and lime green with contrasting veins and are not hard to grow.

Jacobs Ladder or Polemonium caeruleum, are excellent perennial plants for the shady garden. There are now varieties with variegated foliage for color after the flowers fade. Flowers are generally shades of blue or white.

Kalanchoe is a family of plants with many interesting species, most of which are succulents. Some are hardy garden plants, but most are kept as houseplants in colder climates, where their shape and growing habits vary widely. Many of the species contain a cardiac poison, bufadienolide, so they should be kept where children and pets won’t eat them.

Kalanchoe 'Snowbunny"

Kalanchoe calandiva

Kalanchoe blossfeldiana

Lettuce comes in various leaf forms, romaine, head, bibb, tongue and loose leaf. Loose leaf and romaine lettuce can be grown indoors under a grow light in a box or large bowl for winter salads.

Mint can be grown in the garden without it aggressively taking over by planting it in containers that either sit above ground or that are buried in the ground, leaving a 3-inch collar above ground.

Nodes are the areas along a plant stem where new growth can occur. They can look like swollen areas or joints. Leaves, stems, or roots can grow from a node. It’s necessary for most cuttings to have 2 nodes for propagation, one to form roots and the other shoots.

Osmanthus or false holly has leaves that look just like the holly you see at Christmas, but it’s grown as a houseplant in colder areas. There’s a variety with white variegated leaves and one with almost black ones.

Pepper plants do not produce male or female pepper fruits and the lobes on a bell pepper do not signify it’s a male or female or its sweetness level. Pepper flowers have both male and female parts. Fruits do not have sexes; they are simply protecting seeds. The number of lobes has to do with growing conditions and the variety of pepper.

Queen’s Tears is a species of Billbergia, a bromeliad that is easy to grow indoors. It has straplike leaves and drooping clusters of red and purple flowers. It is hardy outside to 35 degrees F.

Queens Tears - Billbergia nutans

Radishes can be sliced thinly and fried like potatoes for an interesting side dish. They do not have many carbs or calories. Frying them with some bacon is particularly yummy.

Tendrils can be either modified leaves or stems. Their purpose is to curl around something and help a plant grow upward toward the light.

Umbrella plants or Schefflera arboricola are popular tree sized houseplants. The leaves consist of 5 leaflets joined together near the base (shaped like fingers and a palm). They are said to be poisonous to cats and dogs.

Violas have flowers that look like small pansies. There are hundreds of species of violas in the violet family, some are native plants. Many are hardy in the garden and reseed freely as well as living for many years.  Johnny Jump Up is a common name for a purple and yellow flowered viola. Violas are edible, add some flowers to a salad.

Winter Aconite or Eranthus hyemalis is another early spring blooming flower that deer won’t eat. It has bright yellow flowers.

Xylem is the tissue in plants that is part of a plant vein and it is the tissue that transports water through the plant.

Yucca plants are either hated by people or loved. There are outdoor species and species that can be grown indoors in colder climates. Most yucca have tough fibrous leaves that are sword shaped, and many can cut you like a sword if handled incorrectly. Some yuccas have beautiful spikes of flowers.

Zebra plants are a common houseplant, but they can be tricky to grow. They have green leaves with silver veins and if you are lucky, yellow spikes of flowers. Zebra plants need consistent soil moisture without being too wet and good humidity. They should be fertilized regularly. They like a warm, brightly lit room.

 

So how do you feel about your plants?

I love plants. I like growing a variety of plants just to see how they grow. I have favorite plants, plants that have sentimental value and I am slow to toss a plant if I think it could be saved. But I would like to think that I also treat my plants in a practical manner and don’t anthropomorphize them. Anthropomorphism means giving something inanimate or a plant or animal human traits or feelings/thoughts.

It worries me somewhat that many people now seem to be treating their plants as if they were pets or the equivalent of a family member. If a plant gets a spot on it’s leaves or worse a leaf turns yellow and falls off, they are nearly overcome with anxiety. They worry obsessively about whether their plant is growing correctly, posting pictures online to get people’s opinions on the growth habits of their plant.

When a garden store dumps dying plants in a dumpster you would think they just dumped some kittens in there from some of the comments online. People obsess about rescuing them and angrily berate the stores employees for their heartlessness. They risk arrest to climb into dumpsters to rescue sickly petunias and nearly dead philodendron plants.

People now name their plants, particularly houseplants. They refer to them as she or he. They talk about their plants “feelings” as in “my Shelly feels so sad because I had to move her from the window she likes the best.”

Now I have joked that vegans better watch out because that carrot they are munching feels pain and is alive and silently screaming. But even though we know that wounding a plant releases chemicals that warn other plants nearby that a predator is near, plants do not feel pain in the way an animal might. (But they are still alive when you eat them unless you cook them first.)

It always makes me chuckle when people talk about “abusing” plants or causing plants pain and then they turn around and tell someone to “divide” a plant by cutting it apart or cutting off pieces to propagate. You can save that poor plant, they state, if you cut it in pieces and drop the pieces in water. Maybe they think plants rationalize the “pain” like a human thinks about the pain of childbirth-it’s a necessary part of reproduction.

When I say, “if a plant is happy where it is it will bloom”, it’s a figure of speech, happy meaning that the plants needs are being met.  I don’t actually mean the plant feels happy. Without a brain plants cannot be happy or sad or have any emotions or feelings.

Plants can’t like or love you either. No plant is happy to see you come home from work. And plants do not grow because you talk sweetly to them, despite the myth that they do. Science has tested this and found it false in a controlled setting. What happens when a person talks to their plant is that they pay more attention to it and tend to care for it better. And speech causes vibrations in the air, which do seem to help plants. It’s not your words though that have the effect. Try cussing out one plant and sweet talking another, it won’t make a difference.

What about plants responding to music? Once again, it’s vibrations in the air that have effects on plant growth. In nature insects landing on a leaf or vibrating their wings near a flower, the wind blowing and animals passing by all produce vibrations in the air and these vibrations are somehow sensed by the plant. Different plants have different responses to those vibrations. The response is usually chemical- the plant produces chemicals triggered by the vibration.

We “hear” because the vibrations affect the eardrum in our ears and the brain transforms the vibrations into a “sound”. Plants do not have ear drums or brains. Certain types of music produce different vibrations, and therefore have different effects on plants. This explains why some music types seem to make plants grow better.  Science is still learning how we could manipulate plants with sound waves to produce certain growth characteristics we desire.

When I walk in my garden or the woods, I don’t worry that plants are gossiping about me or yelling at me to leave. Plants do have some ways to communicate, but it’s on a chemical level and only involves their own protection and needs.

Now I recognize plants are living things. In fact, they are the most important living thing on the planet, without them animals can’t exist. I try to avoid harming plants.  I nurture and protect many of them. I give them space in my home and pay for the water and electricity (lights) that helps them grow. (Yes, this is for my benefit. I’m the one that wants them to grow in the house.)

I may absent mindedly talk to my plants-but I don’t expect them to understand - or answer back. I may set some straggly plants in a “hospital space” before I decide to toss them, or I may just toss them.

But I wouldn’t risk climbing in a dumpster to rescue a bunch of straggly tomatoes. I wouldn’t run into a burning house to rescue a plant, even one that belonged to my grandmother. I would always choose a pet over a plant. There is some hesitation about whether I would choose having plants in my house or a husband- but luckily, I don’t have to choose.

None of my plants have names, other than scientific ones or common names for the whole species. I have a Christmas cactus, not Miss Suzy. When plants look really bad or I just don’t want them growing where they are, I may rip them out and toss them on the compost pile. I don’t try to find edible or medicinal uses for every plant in the landscape to justify keeping them. (Dear plant, I am going to let you stay there because someday I may want to eat you.) It’s simple, if I don’t want the plant there, it’s gone. I don’t care if you can choke it down and not get sick.

If I spent a lot of money on a plant, it may get more scrutiny if it has a yellow leaf or spots on a leaf. If it’s a crop plant I want to get a good crop from I may watch it carefully for disease and insect problems. Otherwise I am pretty blasé about leaf spots and yellow leaves. People get pimples and lose their hair, but they are still healthy.

Now I have more experience than many people about what is normal and what is not when it comes to plants. So, if you are a new plant owner and do have a plant that seems sickly it is ok to ask for an opinion and help. But don’t freak out over a yellow leaf tip or a falling leaf. (If it’s a potted plant, check your watering habits, that’s what causes at least 75% of plant problems.)

Your plant will be all right- or it will die. Plants do die- sometimes without us knowing why. They sometimes die because their life span is over. They sometimes die because you did something wrong. Throw it in the compost pile. Don’t feel sad or mad because you failed. Learn from the experience. And for goodness sake don’t worry about whether a plant is sad or unhappy, just worry about fulfilling its needs.

Taking the contrarian view point you could say that how society treats other living things evolves over time. 100 years ago, having a dog tied up outside to a doghouse was considered perfectly normal. Now it can get you in a lot of trouble in some places and it is considered by most of society to be inhumane.

Maybe in another 100 years we will have learned many more things about plants and society will condemn you for cutting flowers for a vase. I just don’t know what we will eat….

Quick and easy cream biscuits

On a cold fall day nothing tastes better for breakfast than biscuits and gravy.  I found this cream biscuit recipe and I love it.  It’s a small batch recipe and makes 6-9 biscuits depending on how you cut them.  This recipe has only 3 ingredients, although you can embellish it. 

The recipe uses self-rising flour, not all purpose flour.  You can find self-rising flour next to regular flour in the store.  You could also sub a baking mix like Bisquick but the taste is slightly different.  Use whipping cream, not milk, the fat content is important to the biscuits texture.

You’ll need

2 cups self-rising flour

1-1/3 cup heavy whipping cream (not milk)

1-3 teaspoons of sugar depending on your taste

Mix together the flour and sugar and then add the cream a little at a time mixing well until you have a stiff dough.

Pat the dough evenly into a greased 6x6 inch pan.

Bake at 450 degrees for about 12 minutes or until lightly browned.

 

Variations: brush the tops with melted butter and sprinkle on finely chopped rosemary or add 1 cup of finely shredded cheddar cheese and about a ½ teaspoon garlic powder (or to taste) to dough. Or make the biscuits sweet ones by brushing on melted butter then sprinkling them with cinnamon sugar or adding orange zest and a teaspoon of orange juice to the dough, then brushing the tops with orange marmalade

  

“But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods…for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them.”

-L.M. Montgomery

 

 

Kim Willis

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