Time for the Autumn shift. Outdoor flowerpots are replanted with cold-hardy flowers, so it’s time to start cleaning up Big Jim, my fifty-year-old rubber tree, before dragging it indoors before winter.
Pity the little lizards that had snuggled down in the soil but now find themselves having to find new winter quarters. This is one of my concerns every October as I begin a transition I have done for decades, since as a kid I had to drag mom’s treasured bird of paradise in and out with the seasons.
And what home is complete without a phytopet or two? These “portable hobbies” unquestionably livens things up, bringing comfort and the satisfaction of keeping something alive with little real effort, plus fussing over an African violet or Sansevieria connects us to our agrarian roots.
Unlike my garden club grandmother, who fussed over her blue-ribbon African violets on a special lighted plant stand, I am not one to coddle plants and am usually gone for weeks at a time in the winter. So, I mostly stick with low-care kinds with broad, slick leaves that are able to collect maximum light and, unlike ferns and palms, tolerate low humidity and not being watered regularly. My favs include Ficus (rubber tree, fiddle leaf fig, weeping fig), Sansevierias (mother-in-law or snake plant), Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema), Pothos vine, ribbon plant and other Dracaenas, Philodendrons, Begonias, dumb cane (Dieffenbachia), wax Hoya vine, dwarf Shefflera, and quite a few succulents. Oh, and the oft-overlooked cast-iron Aspidistra.
Me, I’m growing way too many. To accommodate all my leafy lovelies, I added a large room to my tiny cabin, with large, energy-efficient double-pane windows on three sides and a stained concrete floor that is easy to mop dry.
Low humidity indoors dries tropical leaves out more quickly than misting can help, causing burning around edges or complete defoliation, so I arrange plants in layers, with smaller pots set on the potting soil of large ones, to create a humid jungle-like micro-habitat around them, plus when I water the excess drips onto those below and eventually into pans that can be emptied easily. Good idea to also position something by the heater vent to shunt dry air away from the plants, lest they lose valuable humidity.
By the way, recent research has clearly shown that potted plants make practically no difference in indoor air quality, don’t filter anything other than what is caught in dust on leaves or sucked into and absorbed by potting soil between waterings. Not enough to measure, much less matter.
Sorry, but the over-hyped Mississippi-conducted NASA research of the 1980s, leapt on by the potted plant industry as a feel-good marketing campaign, was conducted in small seal chambers, not real-life roots with doors, windows, and recirculating air. So, grow them because you love them, not because they clean the air. Really.
Anyway, most of my largest potted plants get pruned hard every fall to get rid of dead or scraggly growth, spider webs, bird nests, and the like; this also heads off a lot of the inevitable leaf drop caused by the sudden shift to the lower light and low humidity of indoors. I also dust everything with the garden hose and hand-sweep fallen trees leaves from foliage and potting soil. Finally, I soak the roots three times, a few minutes apart, to drive out ants, roaches, and other hitch-hiking critters.
I’m giving Big Jim a cleaning and haircut ahead of time, trying to avoid the usual last-minute rush to frantically drag stuff in right before that first fall frost. Hopefully sans ants, spiders, and lizards.
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.
