A nincompoop's uncertain first stabs at not killing plants

skipping past the last posts to felicias, in the ground they get pretty big, as in six to seven feet wide for one plant...

Ehm ... I water them and every two weeks or so I add some of this liquid "POKON Plant food for terrace and balcony" to it. <grins>

(Can you spell, 'slave to the corporate advertisement culture' here? :wink: )

Pictures!

Here's the felicias ... two plants, two pics. Notice the stupid bugs (aphids, Ms Olga?) just underneath the flowers ... bloody things. They're gone now, though. And I have one new flower blooming in each plant again now. Perhaps still some kind of rebirth for the rest of the summer, then.



Trippy thing is, I put them in the pot with extra soil, pot 1,5 times bigger than what they came in, but still, there's something that makes them feel quite wobbly on their feet, so to say ... like, if I slightly lift 'em up on one side to water underneath, I'm always afraid they'll topple over or come unrooted ... quite unsteady.

Now this is zilverblad. Still havent figured out what that is in English. Its growing like coal these last two months, after having been roughly the same size since late last summer.



So I did figure out it does indeed get flowers ... saw it in some people's gardens. But mine doesnt have flowers. Grows fast, but no flowers.



<looks at balcony floor, frowns>
It musta been a wet, dreary day that day I took pictures ...

Das Zilverblad ist ein dUSTY MILLER

Hey, when you fertilize your potted plants , water them first, then theres a greater opportunity to spread the fertilizer about the roots and leaves (pour the liquid solution diluted all ovet the plant)The roots wont get burnt when the soils pre wetted with water. Also the plant will get a quicker belt by diffusion of the fertilizers

Nimh

what farmerman said.

Hey you're getting serious about this, aren't you? Photographs even!
Well done! Everything likes like it's surviving!
Oh, BTW, I think the Felicias at the top of the photgraph DO have aphids on them. So keep the treatment going!

Yeah yeah, thats what I wrote! On the pictures, they still have those bugs. Pics were taken a week or two ago - just took me some time to get them online and stuff (borrowed camera). Since then, I've chased them off, thanks to your advice ;-).

Farmerman, that advice goes also for this liquid food I'm giving 'em? So, first plain water, then the water-with-fertilizer?

And you're supposed to pour the water-with-fertilizer over the leaves too? Wow, OK. So far I just poured it on the soil ...

Ooops, missed that, nimh!

More pics ... here's the famous Japanese willow, the Hakuro Nishiki. You see 'em everywhere in gardens, I noticed! They usually look really pretty ... prettier than mine.



You can see that I've had some trouble with this one, too ... you see, the leaves turn from green and quite sturdy in the center to white and even pink, and very frilly and thin, outwards. And many of the smaller white ones turned all crackly and brown with mine. I didnt know whether I was giving it too little or too much water ... See here, too:



I would take most of the brown leaves off, but that ended me with branches that became pretty bare midway:



So I talked with this man on the flower market who sold 'em, and he said it was probably the sun - that too sharp sunlight just burnt the leaves. That was strange, cause my willow was already in a place that only got sun in the mornings. But I guess that if its bright enough ...

So now I rearranged them, and put the willow on the corner that hardly gets any sun. And gave it lots of water from then on (I read that it often stands by the waterside and so on). And its true, now it is already doing a lot better than what it looks like on these pictures - there's lotsa new, cute white leaves on the end, thus far mostly unharmed ...

lol, dont worry. Just consider those nasty things you see up there stuff that you killed by proxy!

nimh, what'sa matter? you haven't managed to kill your plants yet. must i come over and finish the job?

LOL ... whaddaya gonna bring - ya dog?!

...ever see what a lawn looks like when dogs pee on it a lot?

my pots are too small to pee in. <nods>

well, just keep me in mind if you need help getting rid of your pots, or your pot... but, um, not your pee, if you pleeze.

yes, I'll keep your pee in mind. I mean, no, wait ...

There's more pictures still ... (dont even think I'm gonna let you all be)

Like this one. We had it last year, then it died. Or so we thought. Bare, bleak and brown ... but in a melancholic enough autumn tint for me to decide to just keep it, anyway.

Then this year, new leaves started sprouting, bottom up. First I thought it was more weeds, just like my dead willow pot now hosts pretty weeds (featured on the right in this photo). But I went to the market the other day, and saw that these leaves do actually belong to this plant: it's a Spirea.

Now I have two questions. One is out of pure curiosity: the leaves have come in two distinctly different colours as you can see, half a much lighter green than the other half. How come?

Two: as you can see the brown whatchamacallits that gently rise above the leaves are still quite dead. On the market I saw how they are alive. Seeing how the spirea isnt, considering all those new leaves, actually dead, how can I get new, live whatchamacallits to gently rise above instead? Should I take these dead ones out?

(I've been kinda reluctant, because dead or not, they are still, in their way, quite pretty - prettier than nothing in any case, should nothing appear in their place.)

Hey nimh! Your felicias look like my Alaskan Daisies except yours have blue petals. Must be in the same general family.

Spirea is deciduous, which means the leaves fall off more or less all at once (or just turn brown and hang on) and new ones come back in the spring, tra la. New foliage is often light green...

So should I take these brown stems and whatchamacall it - you know, the long brown ones - should I cut them off or take them out, and will new ones then appear (next year perhaps)? Or should I just wait?