House Plant Management

Yesterday and today were repotting days. The first plant was a Hoya owned by my late-former MIL. Her husband built a lovely stand for it, which the Hoya has thoroughly embraced over the years. The stand is about as tall as I am. I took one of the stays off the stand to remove the inner pot from the outer pot. I think the inner pot is the original nursery pot the plant came in 😳. Poor thing was 20-years root bound. It’s now tucked into the outer pot. 

A spider plant was next. Also root bound. All my spider plants are offspring of one from my childhood. My mom and I named the childhood plant Phylis because it looked like Phylis Diller’s hair on LaughIn!

A mini-Hoya that had been rooting in water graduated to soil.

Then came mom’s string of hearts… I foolishly gathered it up out of the bathroom, took it to the atrium (a fancy name for a porch the previous owner enclosed), and realized I had a madly tangled mess on my hands. The tangle was around the plant’s hanger… It probably took 3.5 hours over two days to untangle it. Those little heart-shaped leaves like to snag each other and the vine. I spread newspaper on the dining room table and worked it out (It had to come inside as the atrium isn’t heated). And then transplanted it right there into its new pot rather than carry it anywhere except back to the bathroom. It was not root bound 😜.

I extracted what looks like a Boston fern from another exotic fern that’s grumpy. Fortunately I have a very happy version of the grumpy fern. Fronds can grow 4’ long and are deeply lobed. Also a legacy plant.

It feels so good to attend to these seemingly small, or lower priority tasks.

I just listed some plant cuttings on a local Facebook board. These come about while tending/pruning the incumbent plants. While I’d have to take a count to confirm, I think I’m sitting at about 35 house plants. We don’t need or have room for any more!