- Welcome everybody to the September meeting of the
Dodge Country Master Gardener Association.
And tonight, we have Patti Nagai.
She's gonna speak about gardening,
brightening your indoor space with living plants.
Gardening year-round, she says,
can be a joyful experience, or a big mess.
And she's gonna to tell us which it is.
She's here to tell us which it is.
She's the Horticulture Educator from
Racine County UW-Extension.
She's gonna talk about selection
and care of house plants.
She's gonna talk about tropical foliage.
She's gonna talk about citrus.
She's gonna talk about herbs.
Plants can create a healthier
and more beautiful indoor environment,
but only if they're in the right place
and if they're cared for
to stay insect and disease-free.
She wants you to brighten your indoor space
to enhance your quality of life
through the natural therapy of
nurturing a productive and healthy plant.
So please join me in welcoming Patti.
(applause)
- This is one of my favorite topics to talk about,
because I am a year-long gardener,
and I'm assuming that you're here
because you are year-long gardeners as well,
or you would like to be.
Now, in this room, I'm sure we have plenty of people
who have killed many house plants.
I will be the first one to raise my hand
and say, "Yes, I have done that."
That's totally okay.
We're going to present to you today
some of the plants that you can select
that hopefully will make it
a more positive experience for you.
I'm gonna give you a few tips
about how to take care of the plants that you have,
and how to deal with any little pests
that might come your way over the course of the year
with your indoor plants.
And we're going to discuss a lot
of different care factors that will hopefully
bring you lots of success
when you decide to bring plants
into your interior space to make your
house healthier and more beautiful.
One of the reasons that we bring plants in
is for the color, and I'm sure
that all of you have this sort of
magnificent color in your homes, right?
It's fabulous, these are amazing hanging baskets
at Chicago Botanic Garden,
and although they're probably not on the scale
that we would have in our own homes,
there is a lot to be said for bringing
a flowering plant in the house.
What I want you to take home from this slide is
it's okay if these flowering plants
become disposable plants.
Because sometimes color is very seasonal,
and if you get to the point where
it's not doing well for you anymore
and you decide to throw it away, don't feel bad.
You're doing a great job supporting
our green industry in the state,
and so, go for it.
Bring color into your home.
Sometimes it's about form.
And again, I don't know that you're going to have topiaries
of elephants or dinosaurs or birds in your house,
but it's a fun project to play with.
And form can come in both
the topiary style as well as just
in the natural form of those interior plants.
It might be textures that you're interested in.
And with this you need to be
kind of careful with interior plants
because some plants are not very friendly
on the interior.
If you've ever grown some of the
Phoenix palms, you know the ones
with the really long thorns or cactus,
you know that there are plants
that grow very nicely inside,
but have really painful textures.
Sometimes we're looking for very soft textures,
we want ferns, we want that combination
of color, form, and texture
to bring into our homes
in the same way that we might
plant a garden for our exterior.
And in this case, you can see, this is a multi-planted planter
with many different types of color, texture,
and form in one planter.
So it really is a mini garden
within one interior planter.
You can do this in your house too,
but it's a little bit more complicated
to take care of a planter that
has a lot of different things in it.
So why do we bring plants inside?
Most of the time when I ask people
why they want to bring something inside,
aside from the "I just want to garden year-round,"
is that visual enhancement.
In a lot of interior situations,
plants are looked at as another form
of interior design.
So you see the plant rental companies,
you see plants in office buildings,
doctors' offices, malls, and in most cases
those plants are placed there with the idea of,
this is part of the entire interior design.
We want that color, form, texture.
We want living things in our space.
But it's very much a design element:
we want it to look better.
But we also know that plants,
in general, provide a huge amount
of well-being.
Whether you are viewing plants,
whether you are actually planting them,
whether you are, you know,
walking around in a garden space
or taking care of a small houseplant
on your window sill.
We know from many years of research
that this is very good for you.
It's good for you and it's good
for everybody around them, around these plants,
to see a healthy, living, growing plant.
It makes us feel better,
it makes us a little less stressed,
it can help us heal faster
if we're recovering from an illness.
Plants are very useful in many different ways
to help with our emotional health.
Environmental health.
I'm sure most of you know that plants
give off oxygen and they take in carbon dioxide,
which is what we, what we exhale.
But the other thing that plants do
is take in a huge amount of toxins from our air.
And NASA has known this for many years
and has done a tremendous amount of research.
Some of the earlier research was done
in the sixties and seventies,
but it has been going on for a very long time.
But what they've generally found
was if you just even had one or two medium plants
in 100 square feet of living space,
it would be enough to cleanse the air
of some of those pollutants that
come with interior space.
And the tighter that houses and buildings get,
the more chance there actually is
for interior pollutants.
They come from your carpet, your paint,
varnish, they come from furniture,
mattresses, curtains, blinds,
and just the building materials
associated with any kind of structure.
So there are a lot of interior pollutants
that plants naturally take in.
And some plants are better at that than others.
The ones that are really good at it
tend to be the ones that are really dark green
and can grow in very low light.
Isn't that a nice thing to know?
Because what are the light levels
like in your homes, in your interior spaces?
For the most part, we live in a pretty low-light environment
especially here in Wisconsin over the winter.
So, you know, plants, there are plants
that can grow in your house
in almost any area of your house even during those winter months.
So we're gonna talk a little bit about
some of the best plants
for those sorts of locations.
But they clean the air,
so plants are great for environmental health.
So how do we choose the plants
that we put in our houses?
Do you go to the grocery store
and see the pretty flowering azalea and go
"Wow, that looks really nice" and put it in your grocery cart
and bring it home?
It's okay if you do that, 'cause I do that too.
I find great plant deals at the grocery store,
especially with those flowering plants
that are gonna bring me some really nice, beautiful color.
Sometimes at a very much-needed time of year,
when you don't expect to see a flowering hydrangea or azalea
or orchids, all of these beautiful plants.
You can buy them in a lot of different places.
But what you really need to think about
before you invest in a plant,
and it may be an eight-dollar grocery store plant,
or it may be a $300 large, tropical foliage plant.
But you want to invest your money wisely,
but more importantly, you want to be able
to bring that plant home and
be successful with it and have it grow and thrive
and not go through that sad, sad stage
of death, you know, in your home.
Because that is really bad feng shui,
that's not good for anybody.
So make a good selection.
So you do want to pick a plant that's visually appealing.
You need to make sure that it's available in our area,
and sometimes over the winter months
lots of things aren't available.
It needs to be the right price.
And I wasn't exaggerating when I said
you could pay $300 for an interior plant.
You could very easily pay more than that
for some of the large palms
that are really slow-growing.
Size.
Make sure you're buying a plant that really fits your space and
you're taking into consideration how much it will grow over time.
There are some plants that you can't do anything about
once they get a certain size,
and I just saw a notice on Facebook
for somebody who has a Norfolk Island pine who,
they had it outside over the summer and now
it doesn't fit in their house anymore.
And you can't prune a Norfolk Island pine.
It just, it doesn't work.
So make sure that you're selecting a plant
that's the right size for your location.
And, along with that, make sure
your location is suitable for a plant.
You need to know what your light level is like,
and what the care is going to be involved
for that plant in the location
where you want to put it.
So, I have a few plants that I want to show you
and talk about and some of them,
you're gonna say those are so common,
everybody knows about that.
And there's a reason they're common.
They're common because they're difficult to kill.
And so, they're not so expensive,
they're difficult to kill,
and they mostly do really well in interiors.
So, pothos is one of the first ones I want to
introduce you to, if you haven't grown pothos before.
Epipremnum pinnatum.
Now this is not philodendron.
It is in the same family with philodendron,
but it is not philodendron.
And a lot of times when we see pothos
at our garden centers, local greenhouses,
or even in some of the big box stores,
you'll see that it has a lot of variegation.
This one does not have quite as much variegation.
And the reason for that is that
pothos can grow in a wide range of light levels.
When you bring this plant home
and it's a marble queen with lots of white on it,
and it's really bright and fresh-looking,
and you put it in your interior environment
on top of a bookshelf
with no light above it,
that marbling color, that whiteness,
will eventually go away.
Because the lower the light levels,
the less chance you have of maintaining
any kind of variegation.
It doesn't mean you can't grow the plant there
or that it's not healthy,
it's just the plant is going to adapt to that light level
and the way they adapt to it
is by getting rid of that variegation
and making more chlorophyll.
So eventually you're gonna end up
with a plant that has no variegation at all.
So, they can handle a lot of different levels of light,
but in general, the darker green the leaf,
the lower the light level the plant can handle.
Moist to dry.
The biggest problem with this plant
is people overwater it.
This is a plant that you can go
for weeks without watering,
and it actually will be just fine.
But if you go in there and lovingly water it
every day for two weeks,
it will be dead very quickly
because it can't handle that saturated root ball.
So make sure that when you water,
you water completely and let it drain.
The insects to look for on this one
are mealybug and scale.
Mealybug tends to be the biggest problem with pothos,
so you want to make sure
that you know what those insects look like
and to never bring a plant
into your house that has them.
We'll talk about those in just a minute.
Heartleaf philodendron.
So this is the real philodendron here,
and there are lots of different types
of philodendron.
The cutleaf philodendron
gets to be enormous,
so make sure if you're gonna buy that one
you have enough room for it to really grow.
And then compared to the pothos.
You can see that the heartleaf philodendron
has very much heart-shaped,
little bit smaller leaves, much darker green.
Very fragile-looking little stems,
whereas pothos has stems as big around as my finger.
They're huge, thick stems with root nodules
all up and down them.
So, philodendron's a little bit different.
Both of them are excellent plants for the interior
if you need a place for a vining plant to hang down,
these are great choices.
English ivy is another choice for
a vining kind of plant,
and there are a lot of different kinds of ivies.
There are also Algerian ivies and various types.
This one happens to be variegata.
This is just like the hedera helix that grows outside,
except for it's a smaller-leafed
variegated variety.
This makes a fine interior house plant.
Again, with the variegation though,
if it's not in high enough light,
it will lose that variegation over time.
The biggest problem with all of the vines
in this ivy family
are spider mites, and they're kind of tricky
because spider mites, when you initially get them,
you might not notice them because they're so tiny.
And then by the time you get to the point
where you have brown, crunchy leaves
and spiderwebs all over the plant,
it's almost a little too late to do anything about it.
So, the solution to discourage mites
and other insects is to wash your plants
on a regular basis.
And I have an example of how to do that
in the coming slides.
Chinese evergreen, or the aglaonemas,
are a really beautiful group of plants
that grow well in very low light
and can thrive in many different types
of interior environments.
There are a lot of different cultivars
of aglaonema now.
Some of them are much larger than others,
and they come in a lot of different colors.
So, you'll see some with red, pink, cream-colored
patterns on the leaves.
You will see some that just have
the silver and the green,
and this one is called silverqueen
because it's, you know, that silvery color.
But there's also an emerald gem,
which is more of a dark green color,
and then they have this whole series
of Monet Rembrandt that have all these
beautiful pink and dark burgundy kind of colors.
But you do need to remember what I've told you
about the variegation.
The more variegation you have,
the higher the light you need for it
to successfully maintain that color pattern.
So, get it in a nice, bright location.
That doesn't mean that it needs full sun.
These interior plants that we're talking about today,
and probably almost everything you would grow
in your house,
are understory plants.
That means they grow in very dense shade
in the tropical rainforest or in
a heavily forested area.
But that light level is still probably higher
than what you have in your house.
So, but they like bright light
but not necessarily full sun.
They will, they will burn.
You can get leaf burn on these
from too much light.
These also are susceptible to mealybugs,
so it's an insect that,
if you're going to be growing houseplants,
you need to become familiar with
because the mealybug is
a nasty one to deal with.
Snake plant, sanseviria.
Sanseveria is a fun plant to grow
because it is the most tolerant plant
of any I know.
If you need a strong vertical element
in your interior,
there is nothing more vertical
than a snake plant.
And they get very tall.
An interesting fact about them, though,
is that they are, if they are in a happy place
where they're really growing,
I have seen them break pots.
I have seen them break concrete pots
because they divide from the bottom
and spread out,
and they are incredibly strong.
The real problem with these, though,
is again, people like to love them too much.
And if you overwater this plant,
the whole bottom will rot.
The top will stay standing upright,
maybe for months.
And you might not even realize that the bottom is rotted
until you smell something one day.
And you go, ew, what? Something has died in my house!
Or, is that a bad potato?
It's a horrible, horrible smell,
and you'll sniff around until you figure out
that it's in this pot.
You touch the plant and the whole thing will fall over,
and you'll realize that the entire crown
and root system is just a big, mushy mess.
So, the top is so resilient, though,
and so sturdy and so waxy,
that it actually will remain standing
with no viable root system at all
for months, it can stand like that.
You can also take cuttings off of these, though,
it's also a fun plant to work with with children
'cause you can take little blocky cuttings
off of them and root them really easily.
So, make sure you don't water it too much,
make sure that you have it in a really strong pot,
and that you keep an eye on it
to make sure that it's not being overwatered,
and also that it's not breaking the pot.
Dracaena is another really good plant
for low light conditions,
and you'll find that dracaenas come
in many, there are many species and cultivars of dracaenas,
from the corn plant to the red margin dracaena
to this one happens to be a Janet Craig dracaena,
which is incredibly tolerant of low light.
This is the plant that office buildings
choose to put in the stairwells,
like at the bottom of the stairs
where they want to block off a view of something
and there's no light in there at all.
This is the plant they'll put in here
because a dracaena, a Janet Craig dracaena,
can live for months and months,
as long as you don't water it,
it will live with very low light
for quite a long time,
but it will not grow.
So if you want it to grow and thrive,
you need to give it a little bit more light than that.
But it can actually tolerate very, very low light levels.
Whenever you're growing plants in really low light, though,
you need to be very conscious of how much you're watering them.
So, water is critical for their survival,
but too much water is deadly.
I mean, deadly.
It's the number one reason that houseplants die,
whether it's in an office building
or in anybody's home,
overwatering,
there is just no going back from overwatering
once that rot sets in.
So make sure that you are
watching the water level on that very carefully.
Mealybug. Mealybug.
It's like my least favorite insect and
the plants that grow really well in low light,
that's the number one insect that bothers them.
The figs, ficus species.
And there are a lot more figs out there
to grow in your home other than just ficus benjamina,
but ficus benjamina's a great one to grow.
In this picture, I have a ficus alii,
a ficus benjamana, benjamina,
and then a variegated one down here
that's a lot smaller.
That's another fact about those variegated plants:
because they have less chlorophyll,
they often grow much more slowly.
So, in some cases, they tend to be more expensive
because they do grow more slowly,
but you need to remember that,
when bringing them in your house,
they need higher light levels,
and they will not grow as rapidly
as a plant that doesn't have variegation.
The biggest problem that I hear
from most gardeners
about growing figs in their house
is the leaf drop.
And I'm sure if I did a survey of all of you,
and you've all grown these ficus,
you've gotten rid of them because
they are just such a big mess
because they're always dropping their leaves.
Well, the secret to that is to find
their happy place in your home
and do not ever move them
for any reason.
I have a very large ficus in my
upstairs little loft area
that I move every year,
because I put a Christmas tree there.
Every year, it completely defoliates.
(laughs)
So I don't follow my own advice,
so please do as I say
and not as I do.
If you can find a happy place for them,
they will maintain their foliage.
They will have some normal leaf drop
because they are a tree.
Trees lose their leaves.
No tree keeps its leaves forever,
you know they do cycle through
and they'll get new leaves.
But always watch for the new growth coming out.
This is a plant that can put out new growth
any time of year,
so if you want to maintain it,
and maintain that level of growth,
you need to make sure that you're
providing it with adequate moisture and fertilizer
so that it can continue to grow.
And if it does drop all of its leaves,
don't do like a lot of people do
and throw it away
because it may have a lot of life left in it.
And it can refoliate fairly quickly
under the right light and water regime,
it'll come right back.
So, be careful.
The biggest insect problem we have with the ficus
tends to be scale,
and scale are sneaky on ficus
because they get on the bark,
on the branches, on the twigs, primarily.
They will get on the midrib of the leaf,
on the underside of the leaf,
and that's usually when people figure out
that they've got an insect problem,
when they see them on the leaves.
But if they're on the bark, you can't even see them.
They just look like part of the bark.
What you might notice, though,
are shiny leaves.
Very shiny leaves or a sticky floor,
or anything that's underneath that tree
getting shiny and sticky,
because scale is a sucking insect
and it sucks the sap out of your ficus
and then it excretes honeydew
all underneath the tree.
And so if you're seeing shiny leaves or sticky stuff,
there's a good chance that you've got scale
on your ficus.
Here's another picture of the alii fig.
You'll notice that it has much, much longer foliage.
This particular cultivar of ficus
is much less likely to drop its foliage.
It's a little bit heartier than the benjamina.
And then as a comparison,
this is ficus elastica,
which is the rubber tree.
This is the alii, this is the variegata,
and this is the benjamina
where you can see that the variegation.
It's interesting that I chose a small leaf,
they're usually about the same size.
But I just wanted to show you the difference
in the color on that one.
But lots of different leaf shapes.
There's also a ficus that's a ground cover.
And it's used extensively in office buildings
when they have large internal planters
where they have other bromeliads
or different trees or palms growing.
They'll use ficus as a groundcover.
And in the South, that's used outside as a groundcover.
They use that more than they would use,
for example, vinca.
So the ficus is a really nice little
delicate little hanging plant, as well.
Orchids.
A lot of times people are afraid to grow orchids,
and I have killed a few myself.
I've also kept many growing for years and years,
I've given them as gifts.
It's a wonderful gift plant.
But it does tend to frighten people
because they think it's so exotic.
And it is a very different style of plant.
But if you stick with the phalaenopsis,
and that's probably the easiest orchid to grow,
and it's the one that's most commonly available,
and because of that, it's also the one
that's least expensive.
So this is a good one to start with
and to practice on.
The reason that I like orchids,
you can get them in almost any color.
Once they are in bloom,
they typically will be in bloom
for at least three months.
So they're in bloom for a very long time,
so if you're one of those people
that needs some winter flowers,
an orchid is an excellent option for you
because they will hold their blooms
for a very, very long time.
When you purchase an orchid, make sure you're purchasing one
where the buds are somewhat closed
so that you have, you can gain the benefit
of those flowers for a longer period of time.
There are a lot of different ones.
Typically, we grow them in a pot
that's got some extra drainage holes on the side.
They're planted in a fir bark kind of mixture,
they're not planted in soil.
And the reason for that is they do not like to be in soil,
they don't like a lot of water
because this kind of orchid
in its natural environment
would grow in a tree.
And so they don't need all of that soil.
But because of that,
you have to be a little bit more careful
about how you water and fertilize them.
So, typically with orchids, you know,
we will fertlize every time you water.
But you might only be watering every ten days to two weeks.
And you're doing a very, very dilute amount
of fertilizer.
But that way, they get the right amount of moisture,
they're getting a little bit of extra fertility
with every watering.
And this is one of those cases where
it's important to buy orchid fertilizer
because it's formulated very differently
than some of the other houseplant fertilizers are.
The peace lily is probably the most commonly
grown flowering plant,
and this is the plant that
I get a lot of calls with
because it is the most popular plant
to give after someone has passed away.
It's a very common florist plant to give,
and when they come from the florist,
they are big and shiny and beautiful
and they're in full bloom
and they are just gorgeous
and people really want to care for them
because it's like a memorial to their loved one.
And they want to care for them,
but they realize when they get it in their house
now it's wilting,
now it's turning brown on the tips of the leaves
and the flowers have all died back
and it's not flowering anymore,
and you know, this is what,
this is what they end up looking like.
You know, you've got some yellowing on the margins,
the leaves are all over the place,
different sizes, you've got the browning on the tips
and there are no flowers to be seen.
What you really want is
beautiful, bright green new growth.
You want to be able to have, you know,
new flowers coming up continuously,
and yes, there are some tricks to doing that.
I think everybody can grow peace lily in their house.
They do not need a huge amount of light.
I grow them on my kitchen counter,
which is a good eight feet away
from the nearest window.
And they grow and they bloom
and they do, they do great.
But they're needy plants.
They're very needy plants.
And if you've ever heard anyone give a talk
on houseplants where they say it's winter,
it's fall, you should stop fertilizing your plants
and you know, let them go kind of dormant
because they need to do that.
That's crazy. It's not true.
These plants are still growing.
And if you want them to flower,
they need to be watered and fertilized
on a regular basis.
In addition, plants that flower on the interior
when you've got them potted in a really tiny little pot
and very limited soil mass,
they actually need a lot of fertilizer.
But they need a fertilizer that is formulated
for a flowering plant.
They need a little bit of extra magnesium.
They need a little extra some of the minor elements.
So get a complete fertilizer that's formulated
for a flowering plant, and use that.
One of the things that you can do
just to try, if you've got one of these plants
that has not been blooming,
and you're using just a regular houseplant fertilizer:
supplement that houseplant fertilizer
with about a half a teaspoon of magnesium sulfate
per half gallon of water.
So a teaspoon per gallon of water,
and use that with your fertilizer
when you're fertilizing your houseplants that flower.
And you'll find that that little bit of magnesium
goes a long way to help these plants
regain their health and their ability to set flowers.
So make sure that you've got a really nice, rich soil mixture.
You're using a complete fertilizer,
and you're watering them on a regular basis.
You really don't want these plants to wilt.
Hibiscus is another common plant
that I see people using as houseplants.
Of course, in the South,
this is an exterior plant and you want to,
you know, you have them all over the place.
But the tropical hibiscus,
the hibiscus rosa-sinensis,
is a great interior plant.
And if you have those outside on your patio
or your deck right now,
it is one of the plants that you can
bring in successfully and you can
have flowers all the way through Christmas
if you take care of it properly.
But you need to remember
that this is also a needy plant.
It is, it's gonna be putting out new growth
over the winter because it's going to replace
those sun leaves with shade leaves,
so you're gonna get a whole new crop of leaves.
And you're supporting flowers
and bud development,
so it needs fertilizer and it needs to be watered
on a regular basis.
This plant doesn't like to wilt,
and even though it's in your house
in a lower light situation,
those first six to eight weeks
after you bring it inside,
it's going to still think it's outside
and it needs to be watered and fertilized
on a regular basis
in order to maintain that growth.
It's a plant that will do much better
if you can put it in a really bright window.
It can handle full sun,
it can handle and southern or a western exposure,
but if the only light you have
is coming in through an east window,
it probably is gonna be okay there too,
as long as you don't expect it
to look the same as it did when it was outside.
Once it warms up again in the spring,
you can take it back outside
and it'll make all new leaves again
and set new flower buds.
But right now, if you're bringing those plants inside,
you may notice that they are covered in flower buds.
So this is a really good time to support that growth
and have those flowers in your house.
Citrus is another fun plant to grow,
and I've talked about growing citrus a lot
with a number of different groups
and I have people calling me
from all over the state to ask me
about growing citrus in their houses.
So, it's become quite popular,
and you'll find that in most of your
local greenhouse nurseries, you know,
they're going to be selling different kinds of citrus.
It might be a kumquat, it might be a little mandarin orange
or a Meyer's lemon.
This one happens to be a eureka lemon.
You might have all different types
of things that you can grow in your house.
And yes, it's possible to get lemons.
This lemon tree is in my house,
and it doesn't look like that right now
'cause it's outside,
but I had at one point 52 lemons.
I didn't know what to do with so many lemons.
It was amazing.
I was giving them away to my neighbors and friends
and they all said, where are you getting?
They're off of my tree, you know,
it was amazing to have so many lemons
and so they can be grown in Wisconsin.
You do need a higher light level
to grow things like citrus in the house,
but it is possible and you can grow
fruit in your house.
And impress all of your friends
and neighbors and family
because you'll have these great things.
So the fun thing about the citrus
is that citrus are very weird in their
flowering and fruiting habit.
So, throughout the entire year,
you can have flower and fruit development.
So that means throughout the entire year,
you could potentially have fruit ripen,
ripening on the tree, and flowers at the same time.
And so, and that's very common.
It's very typical.
The flowers on the lemon are very fragrant.
So much so that if you have a problem with that,
this might not be the plant for you.
Because when they're flowering,
it's almost like having a gardenia in the house.
You know, it has that really heavy, sweet fragrance.
And so, I like it.
The leaves themselves have a fragrance also, though.
So, it's, you know,
it's all the way around a really fun plant.
It can be a little bit messy,
and they do get quite large.
Because this plant is always growing
and producing new leaves and flowers and fruit,
it's another one that needs regular
water and fertilizer to keep that growth going.
So, yellow leaves, very common.
That could be an indication that it went dry,
it could be an indication that you overwatered it,
or it could be a low light level.
So you have to play with it
and make sure that you've got it in the right place,
and then give it as much light as possible
and then keep an eye out for scale,
mealybug, and spider mite.
This is the messy problem with the citrus.
Citrus are very attractive
to a number of different insects.
And because it's a fruiting plant,
there are a lot of insecticides
that you really don't want to use
on your lemon if you're planning on eating those lemons.
So you need to be very careful
about keeping it clean and making sure
that you're watching for those insects.
Herb pots.
This time of year, there are some herbs
that I will bring into the house.
There are other herbs that I will either purchase
at a local garden center or start from seeds
so that I can have fresh herbs in my house.
Herbs do require high light.
If you don't have an incredibly sunny window
to grow herbs,
you might want to think about getting
a bank of fluorescent lights
or some sort of plant light system
so that you can provide them with the
the amount of light that they need
to really grow in a healthy manner.
So they like bright, you know,
they can grow in full sun
and you're not gonna have full sun in your house,
so try to supplement if possible.
They do like an organic and very moist
root system, so you need a really nice
soil mix that you're using.
They tend to be messy,
so if you're bringing in rosemary,
marjoram, thyme, oregano,
any of those kinds of plants, mint,
they, yes, you can keep them growing
throughout the winter and you can harvest them
and use them in your cooking or in beverages,
but just understand that they are going
to be dropping leaves.
And the smaller the leaf and the more there are,
the messier it is.
So if you're bringing in thyme, for example,
it actually will grow very nicely
if you've got a bright window.
But when those little thyme leaves
drop all over the place,
it's very messy.
So sweep 'em up and
keep it nice and clean.
Dish gardens. Dish gardens are fun.
I've done a lot of different types
of dish gardens with my kids.
This is my son's little gnome garden.
And it counts as a dish garden
because it has grass growing in it,
it's not just the little gnomes.
But these are a fun way to make winter
go a little bit faster,
and it's super easy to do if you've got kids
or grandkids and you want to do this in your house.
Those grasses, whether it's wheatgrass or annual rye,
they grow so quickly,
and they don't need a huge amount of light,
and it's just a temporary growth kind of thing.
But they are really fun to do with kids
and you get real plants growing nicely.
Sometimes we have these types of gift baskets
or dish gardens that may have been
given to you as a gift,
and those are wonderful.
I actually enjoy getting those,
and I've had people get them as gifts
and then they give them to me
because they don't know how to take care of them.
And that can be part of a problem
in taking care of this sort of thing because
everyone of these plants
has a different
requirement for living.
So sometimes it's better if you
take these gift baskets apart
and look at the individual plants
and make sure that you know what you have,
how they're planted,
and try to do a good job
of taking care of each one of them separately,
because they're not all going to need
to be watered at the same time.
And sometimes, they don't all need
the same amount of light.
This polka dot plant is not going to need
as much light, I mean,
is going to need a lot more light than this cyclamen.
And the ivy, eh, maybe, maybe not.
I mean, there are, and the orchid,
definitely a different thing, different thing altogether.
So try to look at what you have individually,
and hopefully they're not all potted together
into one dish.
Most of the time, if you start digging around,
you'll find out that they're actually
in separate little pots.
And that makes it a little bit easier.
But know what you're dealing with,
and look at each one individually
so that you take the best care of those
and keep them going for a long time.
So, steps in bringing plants home.
So you've made your selections,
you've gone to your grocery store
and you're bringing home something.
The first thing is to make sure that
the plant you've selected fits your space.
It's the right size,
it's the look that you want,
and that you have
the right location for it.
You can remember those little rules of thumb:
the darker the foliage,
the less light it requires;
the more variegation, or if it's a true flowering plant,
it may need more light,
a little bit higher light level.
So make sure that you've got a good place for it.
Check carefully for insects or other problems,
and I can't emphasize this enough.
Do not bring home plants
with mealybug or scale or spider mites.
Just don't do it.
I've had people call me and say,
well, I know this plant had mealybug,
but the greenhouse grower assured me
that they've treated it and it's clean.
No. Don't, just don't.
Because their eggs are gonna be down
in the whorls of the leaves,
you're gonna have things in the soil.
Mealybug is very, very persistent
and once you have it,
it is very difficult to get rid of.
So make sure you're inspecting those plants
very carefully before you bring them home.
If you're buying plants now, not a big deal,
but if you're buying plants anytime over the winter,
including those holiday kind of plants
like poinsettias, they need to be wrapped.
And sometimes the plastic wrap,
those sleeves that they put them in,
doesn't help because the plastic
transmits the cold very quickly.
So if they're in a plastic sleeve,
put them in a paper sack
so that they are not directly exposed
to the outside air.
When we get down into those temperatures
where it's, you know,
below twenty degrees,
plants can get chilled very, very quickly.
So make that the last purchase of the day,
do not leave those plants in your car.
Don't accept delivery of a poinsettia
that they dropped off at your front porch
at nine o'clock in the morning and you haven't come home
till six o'clock at night.
That plant is not gonna make it.
They just need to protected from that cold weather.
You need to make sure that you unwrap them immediately.
So if you're purchasing gift plants,
for example, for someone else,
you want to make sure that they're wrapped,
if you're not gonna give it to them right away,
go ahead and unwrap it
until you're ready to give it to them.
Because plants will build up ethylene gas
when they are in an enclosed space,
especially with that plastic sleeve.
And ethylene, do we know what ethylene does?
It's the ripening hormone.
It's also the abcision hormone,
and it will cause the leaves to drop.
And there's nothing better than getting a gift plant, and
"Oh, this is so beautiful," and taking it out of the wrapper
and having all the leaves fall off of it.
So, make sure that you're
taking care of those gift plants, too.
The first thing I do is clean my plants.
Sometimes I prune them if
they're too overgrown or too big.
And then water carefully and thoroughly.
So when plants come in from Florida,
and most of our tropical plants,
that's where they're coming from even in the middle of winter,
they're coming from Florida.
They've been on a truck for a good three days,
they've been wrapped tightly
and boxed and bagged
and they are, you know,
gonna be really tight in there.
They have to be unwrapped right away
so that they can start that whole acclimation process
and get rid of any ethylene gas
that might have been built up in there.
Washing the plants is really important,
and I do this on a regular basis with some of my plants,
not just when I bring a new plant home.
And it's as easy as putting it in a sink,
sometimes it's as easy as putting it in the sink,
and using lukewarm water,
you don't want too cold, you don't want too hot.
And the goal for this is if there are any little critters
trying to make a home on that plant,
water is a big discourager.
Water is the cure for spider mites,
it's not the cure for mealybug and scale,
but it, but this does help to deter
any insects from making a home on your new plant.
If you have really big plants,
and you can put 'em in a bathtub or a shower stall,
you can do that,
it helps to decrease any pests
that might be making a home
but it also can help increase light interception.
So, here, and trying to wipe off
all of the individual leaves of a ficus plant
is probably not gonna happen.
That's, unless you're really, you know,
very obsessive about cleaning,
you know, trying to clean every leaf.
But this has enough dust on it
that I could write "dust me" on the leaf.
And so, if you're not cleaning your plants,
it's a great place for insects to make a home,
but it also can reduce your light interception
by as much as 25 percent.
So if you're bringing a plant from Florida
into your home,
in the winter,
and you know that your light levels in your house
are way low,
nothing compared to even Florida in the shade,
and you're also letting dust accumulate
on your plants,
you're not helping the situation, you know.
You need to give them as much advantage as possible,
so try to keep them clean.
I've found that sometimes with dusters,
you can get a lot of dust off these little leaves
just using some of those electrostatic
kind of dusters.
But if you can put it into the bathtub
or a shower stall and give it a bath,
even once a year,
it makes a huge difference in the growth of the plant.
If it's a big-leafed plant,
you might just use a soft cotton cloth
and make sure that you're wiping the plant gently,
you don't need any cleaning solution.
You do not need any oils,
silicone, no spray, no nothing.
Plants make their own wax,
they don't need anything else to help them shine.
They just need you to get rid of the dirt,
and they will shine.
So, a little bit of a cotton cloth
wiping will make them nice and shiny.
When it comes time to water your plants,
every plant is different.
And you may think that every Saturday morning,
you have to go around your house and water all of your plants.
That may work for some of them,
but for some of them it's not going to work.
For hibiscus, that plant may already be wilted
by Thursday morning.
For other plants, watering once a week,
every week, forever,
is going to be the death of them.
So you need to look at each plant individually.
The best way to do it is to
stick your finger down in the soil
and see if it's wet.
That's a great way to do it
because your finger is pretty sensitive.
There are moisture meters,
and I have tried probably
six or seven different ones,
and none of them really work very well.
So, I've spent a lot of money
trying to find things that will
give a better indication
of what the moisture level is,
but it doesn't work.
Once you get into a routine with a certain plant,
you should be able to figure out
when it's dry and when it needs to be watered.
Hopefully you're doing that before it wilts.
So some things you can put
on a regular schedule.
With smaller pots, you might actually
be able to even just lift the pot
and kinda get an estimate
about whether or not it needs to be watered.
So, watering will change
depending on the humidity level in your house,
the light level that the plant is receiving,
the leaves on the plant,
how many leaves it has,
and what kind of soil mix you're in.
In addition to the type of pot it's in.
If it's in a glazed, ceramic pot,
it's going to hold moisture better
than if it's in a terra cotta pot.
If it's in a plastic pot, same thing.
It's gonna hold moisture a lot better
than it would in a terra cotta.
But some things do better in terra cotta pots.
Some things you don't want to hold moisture.
So you consider what kind of pot
you're putting things in, too,
and that will help you with deciding
when and how much to water.
So, please water before this happens.
This is one of the biggest problems
with spathiphyllum, or the peace lily,
is that people tell me, I love this plant
because it tells me when it needs to be watered.
Well, but the time it has told you
that it needs to be watered,
it really needed to be watered
about five or six days ago.
So, uniform moisture for a lot of these tropical plants
is what we shoot for.
We don't shoot for complete, dry, wilting,
and then overwatering,
and then dry, that is what causes
those lovely little brown tips
and irregular growth and lack of flowering.
Watering is very important, so try to get a handle on it
for each one of the plants that you have.
So make sure that you're watering
before the plant shows signs that it is wilting.
So, same thing as washing the plant,
and this works really well for small plants.
The best way is to take it out of whatever,
if it's in a decorative container or sleeve or a tray,
take it out of that, put it in the sink.
Water thoroughly until the water
drains through the bottom.
When it's through draining,
pick it up, take it back to where it lives
and make it happy again.
Absolute best way to water.
Is that practical for all plants?
No.
So do the best you can,
but basically what you want to accomplish
with all of your plants
is when it is time to water that plant,
no matter where it is,
what size pot it's in,
you need to water until the water
drains through the bottom of the pot.
Because the majority of the roots
are in the bottom of the pot.
So you want it to drain freely,
you do not want your plants sitting in water.
But you do want water to get to the bottom,
so it's a little tricky sometimes
to figure out when that magical
amount of water has been reached.
When you have plants sitting in water,
for some thing that are, for example,
African violets that you might water from the bottom,
generally, those, that water will be taken up fairly quickly.
And within 20 or 30 minutes
all that water should be gone.
If you have water sitting in your pot,
in the bottom of your pot
for more than about two hours,
you can have rot organisms
start working on your root systems.
That quickly.
So, yes, water all the way to the bottom.
Do not let them sit in water.
So, another thing that affects how much we water
is how much light the plants are getting.
So you want to make sure that
you have placed your plants correctly in your houses
and that they're really happy,
and so I'm gonna give you a couple of tips
on how you can figure that out
in your plant based on your windows
and some other indicators.
So, in general, if you have east-facing windows,
you're talking about pretty cool,
medium levels of light.
East-facing windows are great for
for a lot of different plants,
even flowering plants like spathiphyllum
do fabulously in east-facing windows.
West. West is hot.
West windows tend to be super hot
and very bright light.
You can get burn, scorch, and excessive drying
with some plants in a west window.
So choose the plants that can tolerate
that really high light
to put near those windows.
South, same. Especially in the winter.
One of the reason that I think my lemons,
my citrus, my hibiscus do so well
is that I have them on the south side of my house
on a window that goes from floor to ceiling.
And so I've got a huge expanse of window
and it's a southern exposure
and so they get, they get probably as much light
as they possibly could get in a house
over the winter in Wisconsin.
North window is going to be
your lowest level of light
for most of the year.
It's a very cool light,
it's considered very low levels.
However, African violets will grow beautifully
on a north windowsill.
That is like the perfect quality
and quantity of light for African violets.
So, there are a lot of factors
that can affect how much light you're getting
to your plants.
One is the kind of window you have.
They have these fabulous new windows
that have all these great filters in them
that filter out all of the light
that your plants would love to have,
and we choose those kinds of windows
because they reduce fading of our furniture
and our floors and all of that,
but it's not really the best thing for your plants.
Plants, of course, would prefer
a lot more light than that.
If you've got screens on your windows,
window treatments, those will definitely affect
how much light is coming through.
The size of your window,
and you might not take that into consideration
if you think I've got north window,
it's gonna be really low light
and I've got all these other things going on.
But if it's a super big window,
you have a lot more quantity of light coming in.
It may be a lower quality of light,
a cooler light,
but you have more expanse of open window.
So sometimes the size of the window
can affect it a lot.
If you've got an overhang on your house,
a porch, something along those lines,
trees, and then, of course,
the length of day is definitely going to affect
how much light you have coming in to your house.
So, when we get into these, you know,
happy fall, but we're going into the short,
short days of the year,
that will definitely affect, you know,
how well your plants will do.
The best way, if you have access to it, is a light meter
to really determine how much light you have.
And light meters are great because
we as people, we have our eyes
that see even in the dimmest of situations,
and we go into a room and we think
oh, this is really bright, I can see,
I can read, it's great.
Your plant sees things very, very differently.
So, if you go outside on a fall day,
so this is morning, fall,
no leaves on the trees,
full sun is 2,000.
The reading on this would be 2,000.
And this is a photosynthetic unit.
So full sun is 2,000.
I am outside, no leaves, it is full sun.
Fall, though.
And the reading is just a little over 1,000.
So, in the fall, we've already reduced
our maximum light by half.
Outside.
So, what do you think
it's gonna be like inside?
I have this great southern exposure,
with windows that go all the way to the ceiling
and it's a vaulted ceiling
so we've got huge amount of light.
I've got western sliding doors on this side,
huge amount of light, right? Huge.
I was just outside, it was a little over 1,000.
140.
So, no matter how bright you think your house is,
it is not even close to the level of shade
in your yard.
So this is an important thing to think about
when you are thinknig about taking plants outside
and bringing them back in,
we are talking about a huge difference
in light levels, huge.
But when we're also talking about
bringing new plants into our homes
and trying to make them happy
and grow and thrive and flower for us,
we need to keep this in mind.
That it's a tough road for some of these plants
and so we have to help them along the way.
So, indications that you don't have enough light.
You're not getting any new growth
because plants should be growing.
Your leaves are turning yellow, they're dropping.
You've lost variegation, your soil is staying too wet.
Too much light.
Sometimes it's kind of the same way.
You might see growth,
but it might look different.
You might get paleness or whiteness with the foliage.
Leaf drop, scorched leaves.
Very common in the spring when people get really excited
and really want to put their plants outside
or they've got new bedding plants
and they put them out in the full sun
and then they turn completey white.
It's fabulous when that happens.
Or your soil is staying dry all the time.
If you're having to water a plant every day,
maybe it's getting too much light.
Not usually a problem inside.
If it's perfect light, the plant kind of maintains
a steady amount of growth.
You've got nice, dark green leaves,
or you're maintaining the variegation.
Very few leaves are dropping.
Some leaf drop is totally normal.
And you're watering on kind of a regular basis.
And everything is really copacetic.
It's all in balance, it's all good.
Then you know it's all perfect.
And sometimes it takes a while
to reach that level of perfection with plants.
So when you bring your plants home
and you're going to be putting 'em in your house,
you've picked the perfect place for them,
you know that to water properly,
you need to let the water run through the bottom,
you don't want that water running
all over your floor or your furniture,
so make sure that you've got them properly contained.
They make these really great saucers with wheels on them,
which, for my large plants, I love
because I can move them around easily
and sweep under them and
do all of that.
It's very easy to tell when I've watered enough,
you know, you don't want to overflow the tray,
but just water till you see some water
coming out of the bottom and you're good to go.
The other way is to use what's called
a double-potting method,
where the grow container is inside here
and the grow container is just a regular black nursery pot,
and it sits on floral foam.
Just the water-based floral foam
that soaks up water.
And so this part is plastic and completely waterproof.
The plant is sitting on the foam,
I water it, the water runs into the foam
and gets soaked up and
no water gets on my carpet
and it's fabulous and it's a great way to go.
And then you can put your plants
in any kind of decorative container you want,
as long as it's waterproof.
What about insects? Chemicals.
How many of you like to use chemicals in your house?
Most people don't want chemicals in their house,
they don't want to use insecticides.
Let's go back to the beginning where I said
make sure you're not bringing those insects
into your house to start with.
But even if you're the very most careful person in the world
and you've done your due diligence
and you've inspected and you've made sure
that it's all clean and ready to go,
sometimes you may still bring stuff in
and so you might have to take a trip
to your local garden center to figure out what it is.
Here's the lovely mealybug.
And it's just a fabulous little sticky, yucky insect
that makes white goo to protect itself.
Because of that, it's a scale-type insect
that covers itself with this white, sticky mess.
It's very, very protected from
any kind of spray insecticide.
When you get to the point where you've got
mealybug all down in the whorls of your leaves
and you've got an infestation like this,
in some cases, it truly is better to get rid of the plant.
And start over.
If you want to battle it,
there are some systemic insecticides that you can use
that you can put into the pot
that will be taken up and will slowly kill them.
You can combine it with cleaning,
spraying with insecticidal soap
or another type of spray insecticide.
Whenever you use any kind of product, though,
on an interior plant, it is the law
that it be labeled "for interior use."
So you need to choose your product very carefully,
read the label carefully,
and make sure that you're applying it
to the very letter of the label.
Because that is how it will work the best
and that's how it will be the safest.
So you need to make sure that you're,
you know, you're using those products correctly.
Sometimes people with mealybug
will take a soft, cotton cloth
and dip it in rubbing alcohol
and try to clean the mealybug.
If you've only got a couple of mealybug,
you can battle it that way for a while,
but if you've got them like this,
it's not good.
And it's gonna be a battle.
Scale is another insect that is, once you get it,
it's a little bit more challenging to get rid of
because of the same reasons.
It's got this nice, protective layer.
If you've got it to this extent,
I wouldn't even try to cure that particular one.
I would, that one would be gone, totally gone.
If you've got it showing up on the undersides of your leaves
and on the stems,
there are some ways that you can battle it,
especially if it's a plant like your citrus tree
that you really want to protect.
It requires extensive washing and spraying
with insecticidal soap.
And there are also some organic pyrethrins
that can be used on citrus.
But that, in the middle of winter,
it's not always the easiest thing to do.
So you have to balance it all out
and see what will work best for you
in your situation and to what extreme
you want to go to in order to cure the,
this particular problem.
Spider mite, if you've gotten to this stage
with your spider mites,
where you have very little chlorophyll left in your leaves
and you've got this beautiful,
spidery netting all over your palms
and your ivies,
it is possible to salvage the plant, but again,
it would have been better if you would have caught it
you know, a couple of months ago.
So if you suspect spider mites,
the best thing to do for spider mites
is to wash the plant on a regular basis.
i have cured ivies of all types of spider mites
simply by putting them in the sink,
washing them with water once a week
for about six weeks.
And then it goes away.
So they hate moisture, they hate humidity,
they don't like it at all,
and you can cure it.
But if you've gotten to this point,
it may not, it may not happen for you.
So, always read the label.
There are some wonderful new products
out on the market that contain
a lot of organic, plant-based oils.
They smell good, they are totally safe
to use on interior plants.
And if you follow the label,
they are completely okay to use on your house plants.
However, they are sprays.
So, just the logistics of spraying a houseplant
in your house over the winter
is sometimes very challenging.
So use them if you have to,
but it's really better if you can keep your plants clean
and healthy and only go to these kind of products
as a last resort.
And finally, pruning.
Don't be afraid to prune your plants,
whether you have a new plant
that has got way too much growth on it
and you know that it's gonna be dropping leaves
and branches before
you make it through the winter in your house.
Go ahead and prune it.
Use your good pruning, pruning techniques
and thin it out a little bit,
make good cuts.
When you're bringing plants in from the outside,
like a hibiscus, and see,
I'm so not afraid of pruning
I let my children hack away at my hibiscus.
They love to do this, they just,
give me some pruners, I'll cut it off for you.
I sometimes end up with a very small hibiscus,
but that's okay 'cause it fits better in my house.
Make sure, just like when you're bringing a plant,
a new plant home that you inspect it
very carefully for insects.
You clean it, you can,
outside it's easy to clean plants.
Hose 'em down, use a lot of vigor,
inspect them really well,
make sure that you're flushing water
through the bottom of the pot very well.
Make sure you're not having little insects
come out the bottom of the pot.
Of course, you'd rather them come out than stay in,
'cause when you bring 'em in your house,
and you water it that first time inside,
they're gonna be all over your house.
So, earwigs, pill bugs, they are fabulous
to have crawling across your kitchen floor.
So make sure that you're flushing these pots out
and looking for these things
before you bring them in the house.
I had someone tell me they brought
a little snake in one time,
that would be exciting too.
So let's not do that.
If you need to, if you see signs of soft-bodied insects
like whiteflies or aphids or something like that,
you can do kind of a little preventative spray
of insecticidal soap or another insecticide
that is approved for interior plants.
Do it outside before you bring the plant in.
And that will take care of a lot of little
hitchiking insects that might want
to make a home in your house.
And then, if necessary, if you've got critters
and problems with the plant,
you might want to consider repotting it
with all new soil and a new container and everything.
And don't be afraid, as you're growing your plants
throughout the year in your house
to prune them as they grow.
Grooming is a necessary part of plant care,
not only removing the brown leaves and the yellow leaves,
but in the case of vining plants like this,
don't let them get like this like I did.
You need to cut them off,
because when you cut them off at the base,
they regenerate new growth
and they will make a much more beautiful,
healthy and happy plant.
So don't be afraid of your plants.
Take care of them well,
and they will bring you a lot of joy
throughout the winter and the entire year.
Thank you very much for your attention tonight,
I hope that you have some postiive ideas
about how to bring plants into your own homes
and how to take care of them better.
But with that, if you would like,
I'd be happy to answer any of your questions
that you might have.
Thank you.
(applause)