(Schlumbergera flower in the spring?)
This is the first of several updates regarding our spring plants. We apologize for the two month time period that has elapsed since the last post and we hope to update more frequently!

I think my Schlumbergera (Thanksgiving Cactus) plants at work are confused. For the past month or so my work plant has been sending out flowers a few at a time. While schlumbergera plants are not generally considered to be "spring" flowering plants , mine seem to disregard this.

(Schlumbergera photo taken in April.)
It all started when I moved the plant from my office to an area out toward a west-facing window. This area gets cooler than my office does and receives a bit more natural sunlight, rather than the fluorescent lighting my office receives. It is quite nice to take a quick stroll out of my office and admire the beautiful flowers!
(Schlumbergera photo taken today, May 29th.)
The brother of my boss recently decided that he no longer wanted to take care of his Schlumbergera plant so I decided I would. I recently placed it in the same location as the other plant and it is also getting ready to bloom. It will be delightful when I can get this other plant to flower too.


(The Schlumbergera given to me by my boss' brother.)
I guess I don't care when these plants bloom as long as I don't kill them by making them bloom in the springtime.

Another plant that was given to me by a coworker, a Kalanchoe, is flowering again. I had cut off the original flowers after they had died about a month ago . I enjoy this Kalanchoe a lot because it is yellow instead of red like the one I have at home.
(Yellow Kalanchoe Flowers.)
More to come SOON!

This is a quick post from our most recent trip to the local library where we sat by some sort of palm which is growing out of the pot. I wonder if they realize that they need to get a bigger pot before it ends up on the floor or on somebody reading their library book!

Look for a more thorough update about our plants soon.

While Annah and I were watering our plants this weekend, we noticed that a few of them were flowering. This was surprising because it had seemed like most of the plants had slowed down during the cooler and darker winter months here in Minnesota, but apparently a few of the plants found enough energy to start blooming.

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(Annah's flowering Crown of Thorns or Euphorbia milii 'Creme Supreme'.)
Annah's Crown of Thorns or Euphorbia milii 'Creme Supreme', which we have had since January of 2008 (see Annah's post here), has decided to start blooming. This plant has small yet beautiful little flowers. It receives probably around 6-8 hours of sunlight per day and we allow it to dry out a bit before watering.

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(Red Kalanchoe flower.)
Our Kalanchoe, which has not been growing in the most ideal location, is still receiving a 3-6 hours of sunlight per day and seems to be doing well. When I first got this plant it had a difficult time adjusting the the growing conditions at the house and subsequently lost about 60% of it's leaves, but it has held on and is now seems to be healthy. While at the moment it only has one flower and one more on the way, at least this plant is alive and growing.

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(Aeschynanthus radicans or Lipstick Plant flowers.)
Our Lipstick plant or Aeschynanthus radicans receives about 6-8 hours of sunlight per day and gets a good watering every 7-10 days. The plant itself is in a pot with a hook on the top which allows me to hang it from the indoor greenhouse/shelving unit that we have. When we first moved into the house I did not have the plant hanging, but since I moved it higher up it has been receiving a little more sunlight and this has greatly helped the plant. This is the first time the plant has flowered since I purchased it, but I think the little flowers are beautiful and stunning, even though I almost did not notice them since they are such a dark red/purple in color. I would suggest this plant for anyone who is looking for a nice hanging plant.

(More Aeschynanthus radicans or Lipstick Plant flowers.)

(My work fittonia in Novemeber 2008 when it still looked beautiful.)
You may remember my Fittonia Propagation Project (see picture of healthy fittonia above, read the post here) regarding my desire to thin out my Fittonia argyroneura that was growing magnificently in my office. Well, unfortunately this plant threw a fit while I was gone during my long New Year's weekend. I had watered it on December 31st before leaving work and thought everything would be just fine. However, when I returned to work on January 5th the plant was "passed out" and was very unhappy. I promptly watered it and thought it would return to normal.

(My pitiful work fittonia in January 2009.)
The plant did bring itself back up into an upright position, but many of it's leaves shriveled up and needed to be removed. While this Fittonia now looks rather pitiful, as seen above, it is still alive. I am very happy that I decided to take cuttings from the mother plant when I did because I still have two healthy new plants from the two cuttings I took.

Hopefully this will not happen to any of my fittonia plants again.

Annah and I received three beautiful cuttings last Wednesday from one of our good friends. This friend, Valerie, left on Saturday to spend six months in Ecuador to study and explore South America. She decided to give us these cuttings as a gift for our engagement. Each individual cutting was presented to us in small jelly jars with glass pebbles and look very nice.

The first cutting is a Spider Plant (Chlorophytum comosum) and should easily root in the water in which it has been placed. All of my previous spider plant cuttings that I have rooted have been successful, so I anticipate this cutting to survive without a problem. I hope I can keep the variegated white lines on this plant since I have been unable to do that with my own Chlorophytum comosum 'Hawaiian' which has not received sufficient light to maintain it's variegation.

The second cutting is a Jade (Crassula ovata) which should easily root in the water. I have had success with propagating my own Jade plants so this cutting should not be a problem.

The third cutting is from her Aloe vera plant. From my research I have now found that rooting Aloe vera in water will likely lead to rotting. I will likely be moving this cutting into a small pot of soil to see if it will root. Have any of you had success with Aloe vera propagation? Please leave a comment if you have.

Annah and I are optimistic that we can keep these cuttings alive so that we can enjoy our beautiful and healthy additions to our houseplant collection!

Edit: The Aloe vera cutting was moved from the jar to a small pot filled with soil on the evening of 01/13/2009. There did not appear to be any signs of rot following it's removal from the water-filled jar.

Annah gave me "The Complete Houseplant Survival Manual: Essential Gardening Know-How for Keeping (Not Killing) More Than 160 Indoor Plants" by Barbara Pleasant as a gift for Christmas this year. The book contains delightful photos and rather useful information for how to care for more than 160 indoor plants, and from what I have read so far contains information for about 80% of the houseplants I own.

I have not yet had the time to read through the entire book to see if all of the information is useful or 100% correct, not that I would necessarily know anyway. But when I have the chance to read the entire book I might just post a review of the book on here.

In other news, it seems like time has been flying by since I last posted on December 21st, with Christmas celebrations left and right, New Year's parties, being busy with work, and if that wasn't enough, I am finally getting healthy after having a very bad cold which started on New Year's Day! As a result of being healthy once again and being less busy with everything, Annah and I hope to start posting more regularly once again!

I have not been able to post that much recently due to being busy at work, with Christmas shopping, and also due to the fact that Annah and I do not have internet at home, so I thought I would at least try to write up a quick post to keep this site going!

As of today, December 16th, my fittonia propagation project has been working well. I have continued to water the cuttings and mist them every four to five days. Both of the cuttings seem to be doing well and I will have to figure out one of these days how long I will keep them growing inside their humid ziploc bag. Perhaps a few more weeks will suffice, but I will probably have to do more research to determine whether or not it should be longer.


One of the cuttings has produced some aerial roots which are growing down toward the soil. I'm not sure if this is going to be problematic or not, but we shall see. I probably did not cut the cutting short enough or perhaps I did not place it far enough in the soil.

Anyway, that's the update on the fittonia cuttings for now. Look forward to a new post within the next couple of days!

(The first sign of mealybugs on November 14th. The small mealybug pests are bright write, small, and hard to get in focus with my digital camera.)
The China Doll Plant or Radermachia sinica that I had purchased for $1.25 in the middle of September to grow at my office (read about it here as well as in a later post) has unfortunately become the breeding ground for what appears to be mealybugs. This is the first work plant to be killed off by a pest.

I had noticed that the plant had a few mealybugs on it a few weeks ago and decided that the plant was a lost cause so I placed it in a different room to be quarantined so that I could eventually throw it into the trash. However, I got busy with work, then Thanksgiving came along, so yesterday I remembered that I needed to throw the plant away.

(December 5th: The mealybugs are now larger and covered with a hard outer shell. Click on the photo for a larger, more detailed view.)
In the meantime, at our work we have a cleaning lady that comes once a week who also seems to like plants but she does not speak that much English so I cannot really talk about plants with her. Anyway, the other day I noticed her leaving the room where the China Doll plant was left to die, as well another small empty office near that which also has a few of my plants, and what she had an empty bottle in her hand. What could she have been doing with that, I thought to myself. Sure enough, I went and checked on the plants when she left and noticed that she had watered all of them, even though I had just watered most of them the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and then the others on Monday. If I had not noticed that she had watered them again that day, I would have over-watered them since it was not in my normal watering schedule and they were still wet about a quarter-of-an-inch down.

All of my other plants which are not infested with mealybugs or other pests are doing great and do not need to be over-watered. From now on I will try to make sure all of the watering of my plants is done by me!

Regardless, I did not want to take the time to try to nurse the China Doll plant back to full health so it has been discarded. Additionally, the plant which was growing next to it for several weeks, the Chrysalidocarpus lutescens (Areca Palm) was not doing the best either and was thrown away.

While I was at work on November 12th, I decided that it was time to try propagating my pink Fittonia (Fittonia argyroneura) because it was starting to get a little out of control, so I gathered up all of the tools I needed and started with the project.

The tools I used were:

• Bonsai trimming shears
  
• Plastic cups
  
• Houseplant soil
  
• 1 Plastic Ziploc bag

After doing some research, I found that one of the easiest methods for fittonia propagation is by using stem cuttings. I used the bonsai trimming shears to cut the fittonia stems, selecting stems with 4 to 5 leaves. I put some houseplant soil into the two plastic cups I had, placed the cut stems about an inch down into the soil, and then packed the soil around the base of the stem. I then watered the cuttings, placed them into a plastic ziploc bag, and then sprayed them with water. The last step in the process was to blow air into the bag to expand it so that the plants had room to grow. Once the air was blown into the bags they were closed and the bags were placed on the top of a storage cabinet, which is about a foot below the fluorescent lighting fixture.

Every couple of days I spray more water, blow air into the bag, and reseal it. So far this has been working well and the cuttings appear to be growing.

There will be a status update in the future to check on the progress of the cuttings.

If you have been reading this blog since last winter you will be happy to know that the Schlumbergera truncata (or Thanksgiving Cactus/Holiday Cactus) that I rooted and planted in a plastic cup -- (Read about it here and then in a subsequent post) -- is doing well and is currently flowering.


The Beginning of the Project: January 2008

In order to demonstrate how far this plant has progressed since I started this project in January, here are the photos from when I first started this project:

The cuttings were planted in their own plastic cup "pot" in the end of February. They survived the move to the house Annah and I are renting and have been growing in their new location since the middle of August.

The First Flower:

The cooler temperatures in last month or two have done wonders for all of the Schlumbergera truncata's (Thanksgiving Cacti) at our house and this is only the first of many blooms at our house. (The pictures below are close-ups of the flower shown at the top of this post)


This is the second Schlumbergera truncata post in recent weeks and will surely not be the last. Look forward for more to come in the upcoming weeks! Don't worry though, I will be posting about other houseplants/flowers besides Schlumbergera truncata's!

In late spring of this year, while I was transferring my work sansevieria into a new pot, I broke off relatively new leaf and was unsure what to do with it. I had done some research into how to propagate sansevieria's and came to the conclusion that only the larger and more mature leaves would be able to send out rhizomes and eventually a new leaf. Ignoring this bit of research, I decided just to try propagating this young leaf and see what happened.


I watered approximately every 7-10 days for the past five to six months and it had been in my office at work getting fluorescent lighting and temperatures around 70. About a month ago I decided to bring it home and place it on a sunny windowsill. Basically I just let it get some real sunshine for a couple of weeks and I pretty much forgot about it and didn't really closely examine the plant. Well, today at lunch I decided to go water it and low and behold there was some new leaf sprouting out of the ground. Hopefully this will develop into a mature and tall leaf to help make this plant look better.

There will be an update on this plant in the future.

You may remember our post about our first Phalaenopsis Orchid. Well, Annah and I purchased another orchid about a month ago when we traveled up to IKEA to purchase a piece of furniture for our house. The newest orchid is the pink one on the right. Upon closer inspection you can see the amazing perfection and beauty of all of our orchid flowers. Click on any of the photos to see the larger picture of them. The white and pink orchid is the first one we had purchased and is still doing well. (All of these pictures were taken a month ago on September 27th except for the last three pictures at the bottom of the post.)

Scroll down to view the pictures of our orchids and then read more about the newest pictures of these orchids (and our October snow!) which I took yesterday.

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October 26th, 2008


Yesterday I decided to take more pictures to put in this post. The lighting in the room was not the best for taking these pictures, since it was late in the afternoon, but you can still get a general idea of what the orchids currently look like. All of the flowers are currently in bloom and they are both a delight to see in our bedroom. The temperature in the house is a little cooler than it was in the summertime, but the room still usually remains above 65 degrees and the orchids have so far not shown any signs of distress. They actually seem to be doing well and each of them even has new growth. It will be interesting to see if this new growth will bloom for us. In the future we definitely want to purchase more orchids to add to our plant collection!


It seems like it is a few weeks early for us to be getting snow here in Minnesota, but yesterday we had a cold, blustery, and overall awful day outside. The snow only amounted to a dusting of flurries during the day but it was the wind and the wind chill that made it awful outside. The 35-55 mph winds outside did not help the comfort level outside either. Hopefully we will have a few more nice fall days before winter is here for real.

This is the first of two posts regarding my office plants. Enjoy!

(Epipremnum aureum or Pothos)
It has almost been a year since I wrote the first post on this blog entitled "The Tale of a Troubled Pothos", and then a subsequent post about the status of the plant in "Work Pothos Update", where I chronicled having to save a pot-bound pothos. The plant has been growing wonderfully since it was repotted in December 2007. It seems to enjoy and flourish behind my computer monitor which I use extensively for my work. Hopefully it will not completely wrap around my monitor otherwise my boss might not be too happy!

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(Dieffenbachia 'Perfection')
The next plant, which is pictured above, is a Dieffenbachia 'Perfection'. It was purchased from Lowe's last week since they were having a 75% off sale on their tropicals, so I was able to purchase this plant for around $1.25, which seems like a steal for such a nice looking plant. Annah and I have another one of these dieffenbachia's at our house.

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(Zamioculcas Zamiifolia or "ZZ Plant")
The next work plant is my Zamioculcas zamiifolia ("ZZ Plant"), which you can read about in an older post here. Earlier this spring this plant was very busy sending up new growth all over the place and by the time it was all done it had pretty much doubled in size. Since then, however, not much has really happened with this plant and it is probably due to be moved to a new pot one of these days. It is one of my favorite plants at work since it does not require much work except for the occasional watering.

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(From left to right: Pachira aquatica ["Money Tree"], Radermachia sinica ["China Doll"], and Chrysalidocarpus lutescens ["Areca Palm"])
The next group of plants are located at a west-facing doorway, so it receives the afternoon sun. It is also a door that is not frequently used so the temperature and humidity usually stay rather constant. The individual plants will be discussed below.

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(Pachira aquatica or "Money Tree")
The first of these plants is a Pachira aquatica or Money Tree, which I guess is technically not my plant, but is instead belongs to my boss. It was given to him by me and my fellow coworkers for his birthday in September of 2007. I have been taking care of it and watering it since then. The plant has been doing rather well, although it has lost some leaves due to problems of either watering too much or too little. There was also a period of time when the plant was struggling because it was in too small of a pot. Sometime around May I repotted this plant into the green pot you see now. The plant still might need some work to get it to grow better, but at the current time this plant seems to be doing just fine.

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(On the left is the Radermachia sinica or "China Doll"; On the right is the Chrysalidocarpus lutescens or "Areca Palm)
The two other plants growing in this part of the office are the "China Doll" (Radermachia sinica) on the left and the "Areca palm" (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens) on the right. These were two other plants that were purchased from Lowe's during their 75% off sale on tropical plants, and they seemed like a good deal for $1.25 each! I do have some concern with the China Doll plant since Annah's mom tried to grow one of these plants but did not succeed in doing so. It has so far survived one week in the office and has hopefully received an adequate amount of light and water. There will be a future update on this plant to see whether it has survived or not. The Areca palm has also survived the past week and also seems to be getting an adequate amount of sunlight, although it is my first Areca palm so I hope I will be able to grow it!

Check back in a few days for the second post regarding my office plants!