Specialty Gardening: Starting a patio "landscaped" container garden, 1 by zhinu

zhinu wrote:
I know it's not much, but it means a lot to me.

As of Thursday, I can start buying things for my garden. I have several native seeds I'm going to try to propagate, and a few I've nabbed from other people's gardens. I have the start of a garden now, plus a vague plan for what I want. Finally, what actually spawned the beginning statement, all of my spider plants have babies (I realized I'm not sure what they are actually called, I don't think it is spider babies, I think that name is a hold over from when I was a kid).

I'm not sure I can explain how much this means to me or why. I thought I had a black thumb for years. When I first moved here in September of 2002 I got several plants. I have always loved plants, and I had grand hopes of plants in every room. Many did not survive. I had a couple herbs that came back the first year, and then didn't. I had a couple my cats ate to the point they couldn't recover (the plants, not the cats, I'm careful about having only cat friendly plants in the house). One I'm not sure why it lived for two years nor why it suddenly died early this year. One, a door hanging hen-and-chick just didn't get planted right. I had a "Christmas tree" (think Charlie Brown's Christmas) that was badly planted, but which died due to a combination of lack of water (it got moved due to the apartment owners redoing our porch, all the other plants got moved indoors, it took them forever to get the job finished, about three months, and I forgot that it was outside still, and now under cover), and then too wet a winter. A Christmas cactus that was planted in a drainless pot, that I could never seem to find the right water balance with, either it was too much and it did that weird soggy segment thing that succulents do when they get too much water or too little and it shriveled, even when the other two were doing fine. I had a cactus that got diseased, and I couldn’t figure out how to cure it. I’m sure there are a couple that aren’t covered by this, but I can’t think of them, and you get the idea.

But, I have had a few that have survived the years, and which I am quite attached to, even the geraniums (originally a geranium) that I did not like when I got, but have come to love. They amount to three spider plants, two Christmas cactus, and two geraniums (I tripped over the plant and broke a piece off summer before this one, stuck it in a pot from one of the plants that didn't make it, and it survived and flourished). These are the heart of my garden no matter where it goes from here, because they have been with me since I moved out of my parents house, they have stuck it out, and flourished when they got the chance, which showed me that I could have a garden.

The first spider plant was the first indoor plant to go outdoors more or less permanently, it didn't hang like the other ones, and I couldn't prevent my cats from eating it. That was very early on. I thought I had killed it two winters ago. I had brought all the outdoor plants up next to the porch window for the winter and they were doing fine, until we had a snow that had been sitting for five days (it stayed for a week in total, unusual in this area). I had been checking the plants daily, and realized that the spider plants leaves looked like two week old lettuce all the sudden. I brought it indoors with little hope that it would survive at that point; I kept it inside until spring, did what I could for it, and then put it outside to get it out from under foot. It quickly put out new leaves, flourished over the summer, and ended up doing way better than the other spider plants that had been indoors all winter. This was probably why I decided to put the plants outside this year while we in the UK, with instructions to bring them in if it got really cold, or snowed. We ended up having record heat over January and February here. When I got back from England this year in May it had the start of the first baby it has put out since I've owned it. I have attached a picture I took of it tonight. This was my first success, and the seed of everything else that I have put on this thread, and the event that triggered the chain that led to me joining DG at all. Shortly after we got back from England the Geraniums put out the first bloom stocks they have ever put out for me, this gave me hope that I could own plants. Then the Christmas cactus put out new segments for the first time since I've owned them, and I realized it wasn't me but the apartment.

I've already explained how the garden idea came to me, but it was this event that led to me accepting new plants, rather then waiting for my last remaining plants to die. So all of my core plants were flourishing, and trying to reproduce for the first time since I've had them, except my Variegated Spider plants. I wasn't upset about this, I was happy they were looking so healthy. But, when I realized the two Variegated Spider plants had put out babies, I actually believed for the first time that I could actually pull my garden idea off, and the idea has come to mean a lot to me. I think it has come to symbolize my life to a certain extent. I feel that if I can get this to work, I can get my life to the point where I am doing more than just surviving. I don't know if that will make sense to anyone, but it is the best I can do to explain.

This message was edited Sep 14, 2005 7:26 AM