Amaryllis

I have no idea what I was thinking trying to brighten up the winter by planting paperwhites in bowls filled with colorful glass marbles and water all these years. Yes, sure, the flowers are nice enough. But that sickly sweet smell they give off is worse than being trapped with a bunch of over-perfumed grannies in a hot elevator.

That’s why this year, even though red is my least-favorite color, I brought home a couple of big-ass amaryllis bulbs and gave them a try. (There are other colors, just not at my local garden center on the day that I thought I must buy some.) Wow! I’m going with these every year from now on. Not only do they have no smell, these long-blooming flowers—four from each bulb—are huge. And I have to say that even midlife-crisis-sports-car red has definitely lifted my spirits during this cold, gray stretch of the season.

Crocodile Fern

The crocodile fern (Microsorum musifolium ) really couldn’t be more aptly named. Exotic yet easy to grow as a houseplant (if you can find it), this  fern has fronds that look remarkably like crocodile scales. I snapped this at our local conservatory, which was filled to bursting with Minnesotans looking to get out of the cold this weekend.

Of course if you live in a warmer place, you can also grow these outdoors. I’ve got a friend who says they carry crocodile ferns in big-box stores in the South. Luckies.

Gardening Indoors on Cold Winter Days

It’s been a warm winter by Minnesota standards, meaning it took until just this week to dip down into the single digits and, finally, below zero. As it usually does, those Arctic temps sent me straight to a couple of local garden centers where I could walk around indoors and be around plants and smell dirt. You don’t realize how much you miss the smell of dirt until you live in a place where it’s so cold there are no smells for months and months—okay, sure, the dog poo that I have to pick up still smells. And there is a nice smoke smell coming from neighbors’  chimneys sometimes. But that’s about it.

I hadn’t planned on buying anything. I really just wanted to be warm, see some green stuff and talk to the parrot, Baby, at one of my favorite gardening haunts. But two big tables of little, teeny succulents caught my eye at one place where I stopped. So I picked out a few, along with a bright yellow pot and a bag of soil specifically for cacti and succulents, and brought everything home to plant.

I don’t have an indoor planting spot at the moment since the basement’s a big mess, so I just worked on the island in our kitchen, which is probably kind of gross. But we have a dog and three cats living with us. It’s not that clean here anyway.

Once I was done planting, my husband Mike worked the same kind of magic he does in our yard by adding small pieces of driftwood and some rocks. The result looks kind of like a terrarium without a top. Situated on a little table, when the sun hits it just right, our little pot of succulents feels like a tropical oasis offering us relief from the bitter, white cold.

Growing Herbs Indoors

One of the things I love most about summer is having an herb garden right outside my back door. Oregano, basil, dill, tarragon, sage, lavender, parsley and several kinds of thyme are right there ready to snip and toss into soup, salad or whatever we’re making, anytime. Sadly, having fresh herbs at the ready is just a six-month pleasure here in the Arctic, so in recent years I’ve been trying to grow herbs indoors once the weather starts to turn cold. I say “trying” because, honestly, it has been a bit trying, literally. But I’ve worked out some kinks and I’d like to share what I’ve learned with you now.

By far, the biggest challenge when growing herbs indoors is lighting. I’ve read, and people have told me, that it’s possible to grow some herbs fairly well in a sunny window. I say those people don’t live in Minnesota in the winter — or maybe they try to see the good in spindly plants where I’m more in the “off with their spider-mite-infested heads” camp. There is one exception: chives. Chives do last a long time when grown in a sunny spot, and you can snip off what you need for months as long as you leave at least 2 inches of growth on the plant.

Growing Cacti and Other Succulents Indoors

I grew up in Phoenix, so I thought I’d had my fill of cactus. (Picture being a Girl Scout and taking camping trips in a desert filled with inhospitable plants covered with spines and barbs.) But this past year I’ve really gotten into growing cacti and succulents indoors. Maybe that’s partially due to the fact that the mere sight of them makes me think of warmth and vacations. If you’ve always wanted try growing houseplants but needed something incredibly easy to care for, these are the plants for you.

Before I jump into how to care for cacti and succulents, let me first explain what these plants are. Simply put, succulents are plants that are good at storing moisture in their stems, leaves and/or roots so they do well in hot, dry conditions. All cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti. A few succulents you’ll probably recognize right away are jade (Crassula arborescens), aloe (Aloe barbadensis), flowering Kalanchoe (Kalanchoe blossfeldiana) and, of course, the Christmas cactus, which is both a cactus and a succulent. (FYI: Christmas cacti have very different needs than other cacti and succulents, so don’t go by what I say in this article when caring for them.) 



Poinsettia pointers

There are close to 200 varieties of poinsettias on the market today and though they’re only sold during the holidays, they consistently rank as the top-selling flowering, potted plant in the country. That’s kind of an amazing statistic when you consider that poinsettias were in no way related to Thanksgiving or Christmas before the 1920s.

The poinsettia is actually native to southern Mexico and Central America where the warm climate encourages the plant to grow as a shrub, sometimes as tall as 10 feet. It was Joel Roberts Poinsett, an amateur botanist and U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 1825 to 1829, who introduced the poinsettia to America. Taken, no doubt, by the plant’s rich, red blooms (which are not flowers but leaves, known as “bracts”) he had a few of them sent back to his home in South Carolina. There, in his hothouses, he propagated the plant and sent some to friends and to botanical gardens. By 1833, the first “poinsettias” were for sale in local nurseries.



Creating an Indoor Garden

This month’s column idea came from Southwest Journal editor, Sarah McKenzie, who’s been wondering for a while now how to create some kind of indoor garden in a sunny spot in her condo. Being a mostly outdoor gardener, myself, I called botanical artist and all-around passionate plant person, Shauna Moore for help, after seeing an ad announcing a talk she would soon be giving at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum on this very subject.

The beauty of growing houseplants is they aren’t Minnesota specific, says Moore, who earned her horticulture degree from the University of Minnesota, where she currently works as a campus gardener. “Since you don’t have to worry about climate, you can use fabulous tropicals like jasmine, bougainvillea, gardenias and orchids,” she explains.

Starting Seeds Indoors

Summer is still a dream, I know, but I sure am glad to be starting up my column again and, at least, beginning to think about gardening. Last year, about this same time, I devoted half of my column to starting seeds and I got so many questions from readers on how to tackle specific things, I’ve decided to write on the subject again. This time, though, I’ll go into more detail. (Of course, you’re still welcome to e-mail questions if something seems confusing, or you want to know more.)

If you’re looking to save some money on plants, growing at least a few from seed is the way to go. While perennials can sometimes be a little finicky, annuals are usually easy to grow — even if you’ve never started seeds before. One thing I really appreciate about growing my own plants is that it allows me to have some things in my garden that I just can’t find in stores, such as love-lies-bleeding (Amaranthus caudatus), sea holly (Eryngium spp.) and Chinese lanterns (Physalis alkekengi). 



Growing Orchids

By now, you’ve probably noticed that you can buy orchids just about anywhere. Stacked up with all the other impulse-buy items not far from the checkout lane at places like Target and Home Depot — even the grocery store — amazingly beautiful orchids can be had for just a few bucks.

Take one home, though, and you may quickly find it wizened to a shadow of its former self, or maybe even dead. Before you start blaming yourself for your orchid’s fate and vowing never to try growing one again, consider the problem may simply be that you chose one that’s tougher to grow than others. Orchids are fussy about light, water, temperature and many other things. Knowing which orchids to buy and how to care for them will not only save you from that horrible feeling that you’ve got a brown thumb, it also may make orchid growing so much fun that you wind up cultivating a real passion for the exotic beauties.