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Houseplants

Time to Repot Houseplants? Beware the Potting Soil!

March 31, 2020

If you are sheltering in place, maybe you’ve had a chance to take a good look at your houseplants! If your plants are looking happy, you’re probably providing the right amount of light, humidity, and fertilizer—if they’re not, consider doing a bit of research on the plants you’re growing to see if you have optimum growing conditions, using the sources in the “Choosing and caring for indoor plants” in the “For more information” section. If your plants are growing well, you may need to repot them to keep them thriving.

Rootbound plant

Are your plants rootbound? This is a good time to repot rootbound plants. Carefully tip your plants out of their pots—if roots are filling the pot and circling the bottom, it may be time to repot.

Does your plant need dividing or restarting?
You can—or even should—divide some plants rather than simply repot. African violets, for example, may develop multiple crowns and dividing will restore their symmetrical beauty! You may want to divide other houseplants just to share!

Dividing African violet crowns

If your plant has become not only too big for its pot, but too big for your home, consider propagating a new, smaller version to keep, and give the parent plant away. You can also do this to start over if your plant is simply unattractive because it hasn’t had the best of care. See propagation resources in the “For more information” section.

Container size?
This is also the time to make sure your plants are in the right size containers—plants bursting out of their pots may need a larger home, but if there are already more than a couple of inches of bare soil between the plant growth and the pot edge, you may have “overpotted” your plant and need to downsize! Again, the type of plant will determine if you need a new container. When choosing a new pot for a plant, also consider the depth of the pot. Some plants will appreciate deeper pots, while others will do fine in a shallow pot.

Potting soil
Not all potting soils are alike! Jim Downer of the University of California Cooperative Extension notes in a recent article http://gardenprofessors.com/potting-soil-poison/ that many planting medium ingredients may actually be hurting your plants! He explains how carefully reading the ingredient list can help you decide on a mix and when or if you will need to fertilize your plants.

Read the ingredients before buying potting soil

If you have potting soil on hand, check the ingredients. If you need to buy a new mix, do your homework ahead of time, especially if you’ll be pre-ordering and driving by to pick it up rather than having a chance to look at the bag before buying.

Repotting
Once you have a container and a medium:
• If you are using a clay pot, soak it first so the pot will not draw moisture from the potting soil.
• Analyze your plant’s roots—use your fingers to loosen densely matted or circling roots and remove any dead or damaged areas.
• If you wish, cover any hole (or holes) in the bottom of the pot with a piece of broken pottery or a piece of a coffee filter to prevent soil from leaking out. DO NOT put any “drainage” material, such as gravel, in the bottom of the pot—gravel can actually impede soil drainage!
• Place enough potting soil in the bottom of the pot so that your plant roots will have new room to grow.
• Set the plant in the pot and fill in around the sides and surface with new planting medium, tamping lightly and making sure you DO NOT build up new soil around the plant stems.
• Thoroughly water the newly potted plants.
• Do not leave plants in standing water.
• If your potting mix doesn’t contain fertilizer, plan to use a houseplant fertilizer and fertilize at the strength and frequency recommended on the label—too much fertilizer can impede growth, cause dried/burned leaf margins, loss of leaves, brown roots, or even kill your plant!

                                 Article by Buncombe County Extension Master Gardener Volunteers

For more information:
Choosing and caring for indoor plants:
https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=B1318&title=Growing%20Indoor%20Plants%20with%20Success

https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/Portals/0/Gardening/Gardening%20Help/Factsheets/Indoor%20Plants21.pdf

https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/selecting-houseplants

Propagating new plants:
https://extension2.missouri.edu/g6560

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/extension-gardener-handbook/13-propagation

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Categories Houseplants Tags houseplants, potting soil, propagation, repotting houseplants

Succulents: What’s Old is New, Again

April 12, 2019

Could your perennial garden use a little variety? Want to add some texture, color and shape to your container gardens? Are you tired of killing your houseplants? Succulents may be the answer!

These plants evolved more than 5 million years ago as the earth cooled and dried and plants’ adaptation to retain water in their leaves, stems—and even roots—became important for their survival. Succulents are excellent choices for dry garden spots, rocky outcroppings, stone paths, rock gardens, walls, and containers.

Succulents in the Garden

Most succulents prefer lean, well-drained soil and sun, sun, sun!  Given our recent rainy winters, place succulents in areas well away from soppy soil— they don’t like “wet feet.” To give your plants the best start possible, irrigate lightly for a week after planting, especially during hot summer months, cutting back gradually until you are watering only every two weeks.

Buncombe County includes areas from USDA hardiness zone 5b to 7a, so purchase hardy plants that will do well in these zones. The list of possible garden and container plants includes:

Delosperma nubigenum
  • Delosperma (ice plant). Drought and heat tolerant, these South African natives come in a rainbow of colors and bloom throughout the summer. Both Delosperma cooperi (Zones 6 to 10) and D. nubigenum (Zones 6 to 8) will prosper as groundcovers.
  • Hens and Chicks

    Sempervivum (Hens and Chicks)

Orostachys malacophylla. An interesting hardy succulent with hen-and-chick-like characteristics. This trailing perennial is especially attractive in container plantings. It produces leaf rosettes that are more open, with fewer leaves, than the true “hen-and-chicks.”  Hardy from Zones 5 to 8.

Sempervivum tectorum. The traditional “hens and chicks,” these plants produce multiple offsets that create a textured foliage mat. They thrive in rock gardens, alongside gravel paths, and around stones, and are hardy from Zones 3 to 8.

  • Sedum. Creeping sedums (stonecrops) are well-suited to containers, stone walls, and rock gardens, while upright sedums do well in perennial beds and along borders. North Carolina is home to many native or naturalized sedum species, including the native low-growing Sedum ternatum, which prefers some shade and less acid soil—you may have seen it growing in the limestone soil at Max Patch in Pisgah National Forest.
  • Sedum ternatum_Fritz Flohr Reynolds_CC BY-SA 2.0_Flickr
    Sedum ternatum; a.k.a. woodland stonecrop

Other creeping sedums—sun-loving and hardy in all of Buncombe County—include:

  • Sedum acre (dark green foliage and delicate yellow flowers).
  • Sedums beneath conifers_JDeutsch_EMGV
    Sedums beneath conifers
  • Sedum brevifolium(pinkish white flowers)
  • Sedum sieboldii(red flowers)

Upright sedums suitable for mixed perennial borders include S. spectabile and S. telephium (note that these plants are now known as Hylotelephium spectabile and H. telephium, but usually still sold as sedums). Fabulous pollinator attractors, the best known of these, ‘Autumn Joy’, has pink flowers that turn red, then coppery in fall, while others have persistent pink or white flowers. All are hardy in our area. They pair well with dwarf asters, coneflowers, and goldenrod.

Sedum “Autumn Joy”

Succulents as houseplants

Echeveria

Many popular houseplants are succulents and are just the thing for those who forget to water!  Some Sedum varieties make good houseplants. Aloe, Agave, Echeveria, jade plant (Crassula argentea), snake plant (Sansevieria trifasciata) are other succulents that will thrive indoors.

Succulents may be as old as time, but they couldn’t be more contemporary. With so many sizes, colors and textures available, there’s never been a better time to invite them into your home garden!

Article by Janet S. Moore, Buncombe County Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer.

Learn more at:

Succulents’ origins:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110503133050.htm

Sedums:

https://extensiongardener.ces.ncsu.edu/extgardener-remarkable-and-versatile-sedums/

https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/all/sedum-spp/

Orostachys malacophylla:

https://www.uaex.edu/yard-garden/resource-library/plant-week/hens-chicks-8-7-09.aspx

Houseplants:

https://sustainability.ncsu.edu/blog/changeyourstate/easy-indoor-plants/

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Categories General Gardening, Houseplants Tags Delosperma, Hens and Chicks, Ice Plant, Orostachys, sedums, Sempervivum, succulents

Check for Scale Insect Before Houseplants Come Back Inside

August 29, 2016

Soft Scale Insects on Plant Stem
Soft scale insects on plant stem

Scale is an insect which is common on houseplants. Scale rarely kills a plant, but the honey dew excrement makes a sticky mess which attracts ants and even mold. If you notice sticky spots or ants gathering on surfaces below a plant, chances are the plant has scale. Look on stems and the bottoms of leaves for small, waxy brown bumps which are easily scraped off with a fingernail.

Since scale are part of the natural outdoor environment, houseplants moved outdoors for the summer often become infested. Many gardeners just assume that any plant which was outdoors for the summer is infested and treat for scale before bringing it indoors. A safe, organic way to kill scale and discourage them from returning is to spray the plant with a horticultural oil, neem oil, or insecticidal soap. Spray two applications ten days apart, making sure to follow the directions on the label.

If you know a houseplant has scale, isolate it from your other houseplants until you know it is no longer infected. Since scale insects live in soil, it might help to replace the soil in the pot. Be sure to thoroughly clean the pot before repotting the plant. Scale can be difficult to get rid of, so, unless the plant is very special to you, it is often better to just replace it than to risk infesting your other plants. Ferns, when left outdoors, almost always become infested and are nearly impossible to rid of scale.

For more information about scale on houseplants, go to http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/notes/O&T/flowers/note32/note32.html

Article written by Diane Puckett, Extension Master Gardener Volunteer.

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Categories Houseplants Tags fall garden chores, insects, pesticides, pests, scale

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