Watering
You should now have your plant in the right light and the- right temperature the next urgent need as far as the plant is concerned may well be a drink. All plants consist largely of water, perhaps as much as 90 0, which is being lost steadily bv day and night in the form of water vapour from most of the above-ground parts of the plant. It is replaced mainly via the roots, into which water penetrates from the soil or compost. If the growing medium is drv, obviously the plant will become dry. It...
Cacti
Colours, sometimes fragrantly, cither for weeks on end or twice a vear. Even if thev do not flower, they have beautiful leaves in varying colours. But one of the main attractions is the often comic shape of the plant itself, with lowers apparently just stuck on to the stems at random. The opuntias in particular shoot out 'ears' at the strangest places the hairy cacti are extraordinarily You may already be a cactus convert if so, there is no need to read the propaganda that follows. If you are...
Increasing Plants
Growing new plants of your own ts ridiculously easy, sometimes embarrassingly easy, because certain plants need no encouragement to reproduce, and grow miniatures of themsel ves with great enthusiasm. All you have to do is to cut the new growths off the parent and pot them they will already be growing roots and in very little time they will be proper plants. For instance, mother of thousands, Sax fraga stolomfera, spins out long dangling thread-like stalks, on the ends of which are miniature...
Plant health
Many plants grown in containers are tough and long-sutfering, others are delicate and easily upset, but all will show signs of distress sooner or later if they aTe not looked after as the need to be. Most of these signs appear as a result of a 'physiological disorder'. n other words an upset in the plant's system because it hasn't hat enough water, or has had too much, or the light is too harsh, or something similar. So you must alter your care of an ailing plant to correct its deficiencies....
Bulbs
Nothing in nature could be better packaged than a bulb or an egg. Both arc rounded for ease of handling, both are clean, both have a protective covering, and both have an internal supply of food ready for when growth begins. gt f course, both will die in due course if warmth and moisture are not forthcoming when required. Bulbs are, however, very much tougher they do not break when they are dropped. Bulbs store a good deal of food in the form of carbohydrates which are manufactured after...
Palms S Ferns
The diversity of foliage shown bv plants is probably not fully recognized by most people, even experienced gartie ners. Professional botanists are the most likelv to appreciate the range of leaf that nature bis produced, but even their knowledge tends to be restricted to a particular family or group of plants. The leaves of plants mentioned in the foliage chapter are mostly conventional in shape and function, Describe an object as being leaf-like in shape and colour, and one's mental picture is...
Bromeliads
Below Nidulanum futgens Opposite Aechmea fascists A bromeliad i- a member of the plant family Bromeli-aceae, and there is a genus in this family called Brome ia, after Olaf BromeL, a Swedish botanist of the seventeenth century. Many species were discovered and introduced in the i iocs, but they were not much grown in homes before the 1910s. bromeliad consists almost completely of a rosette of stiff, leathery, si rap shaped leaves, spraying out from a central crown at soil level. These leaves...
Decorating with plants
There is no need to limit yourself to putting a - ingle plant pot on a convenient shelf. Think how you can use the wide variety of indoor plants now available .is part of your decoration scheme. You can even change your scheme every few months it you like. For instance, hanging and climbing plants, such as ivies, rhoicissus and tradescanna, can be used as room dividers or put on bookshelves, or placed in troughs on the ioor and trained to climb up canes to the ceiling. You can train cissus and...
Flowering plants
Everyone wants ro have flowers in the home, bur unless you have a garden, cut flowers need to be bought fresh ever ' week. A flowering plant, on the other hand, will bloom for several weeks at the very least, and often for several months. Some will flower all the year round, if allowed to. Don't forget you can have pot plants in flower in winter, too, a time when the garden may be bereft, or when flowers from a florist are at a premium. There is something peculiarly satisfying about having .1...
