Houseplant Haven

Despite not buying any new houseplants whilst at Derwen Garden Centre on Saturday, I still spent some of Sunday tending to them. Most are coming on well.

Propagation

The conservatory has been used as a nursery/rehab area. The ‘propagation station’ there has worked too. I have a whole load of tiny little baby succulents that I’ve propagated simply by placing a slightly dried ‘leaf’ into some suitable soil. The succulents are pretty slow growing at the best of times so it’ll be a while before they are worth doing anything with, but there’s plenty of them and they look quite healthy.

The same is true of the streptocarpus propagation efforts. These too were made from leaf cuttings placed straight into potting compost. Each little section of leaf now has a number of tiny baby streptocarpus plants growing from it.

I also attempted to propagate the Boston Fern in the bathroom. This time I simply put the stringy stolons into the potting compost and kept them damp. It took a while but these now have about 5 little baby Boston ferns growing too. Quite what I’ll do with them all I don’t know yet.

Other propagations that are ongoing are a ZZ plant, which I’ve had in water for a while and now has some roots, a String of Hearts which also has some roots and even a little Peperomia that is now beginning to root as well. The latter was rescued from a pot where it didn’t have any roots and had snapped off the mother plant. Once it’s roots develop a little more I’ll pot it up so that I have a spare.

The conservatory itself looks quite nice though, even if it is an area for ‘plants in progress’.

Elsewhere in the house the plants look a little more display-ready. The Calatheas look lovely, I’m pleased with the progress of the Alocasia and the Boston Fern and Dracaena are growing like mad. The trailing Tradescantias and Pothos are doing well too.

Into Winter

The next test will be how they fare over winter. The short, dark days won’t help, the temperature fluctuations may be a struggle and we don’t yet know how the temperature will be in the conservatory. It’ll be a case of keeping an eye on them and maybe making some adjustments where necessary.

Tags: Houseplants