A nincompoop's uncertain first stabs at not killing plants

The new growth isn't coming from buds on the brown stems, is it? If not, you can cut them off.

<sad>

I came home late from work tonight - havoc on the balcony.

I cant remember the wind blowing hard today at all. Really can't. But it must have, because the relatively small (but very cute) rectangular pot on the wooden ridge, up by the balcony edge, that has two helichrysums in them, the stocky stems with the round, small grey/green leaves perching over the edge and growing alongside it - it had come crashing down for some reason. Broken in pieces on the balcony floor, some of the branches of the helicrysums torn off, the rest a mess.

Somehow it feels (this is going to sound really silly, beware) like I was assaulted or something. Like they came in and broke something inside a me, that was just ever so vulnerably cared for. I didnt have that feeling at all when that burglar had come into my flat and stole my clothes and money while I was sleeping right there in the room - go figure.

Anyway - I still owe you the rest of my photos.

Here's those helichrysums, pre-fall - in the late evening with flashlight, hence the weird light and colours. I think I remember that the name was Helichrysum Microphylla in full, not sure.



More "Blair Witch Project" photos, this time of the Bidens by night ...





And here is one by day:



Still to come: two pics of the capsicum and one of the "heksenmelk" (witches' milk, or euphorbia esula), but I first have to rotate those the right way round.

I love those Japanese willows! I finally convinced someone I know to plant one in their yard - my sister - as I don't have enough sun for them. Great photos nimh!

I loooooooove this thread, I am sooooo glad you started it.

Helichrysums, in my hands, er, subject to my devastating attention, pout but do not die. Well, I know some helichrysums... one called 'limelight', for example. And the gray one, what e'er its name. Anyway, if you cut them back in the yard, where they tend to advance to great size, horizontally anyway, when you cut them back they sulk. But then, then, they rebound. I think they are quite drought resistant, which means don't overwater for sure. But then you have these things in pots, so they need not to dry out entirely for long.

The pictures are great fun. I have to go back and look some more. What is capsicum, isn't that chili pepper? Or, she wonders, is it capers? I am no good without my handy Sunset Western Garden book at hand. I had some caper seeds once, seems they need to be scarified (scraped) before planting. I never did get them to grow, and they grow all over stony soil..

Very last pics, as promised - though they're already a few weeks old now!

Here's the capsicum (what we'd call a paprikaplant). Its doing well now, its already a bit larger again, and it has one flower after another. Originally I'd put it up on the shelf near the edge of the balcony, but it didnt deal too well with the wind!



The first flower there was, from closer up ... Of course, I'm still highly sceptical about getting any actual paprikas (I mean, capsicums). What, with it being in a pot on the balcony instead of in a greenhouse on amply spaced soil ... ;-)



Here's the euphorbia esula (is I think the name) - we call it "witches milk". As said, I saw a whole bunch of 'em looking healthy on a Rhine dyke last month ... mine, however, is looking ever less healthy. This picture here is from when it had aphids ... sprayed all those right off and they never returned. But nevertheless the plant has been looking ever worse ... much worse than what you see here, in fact. Little leaves turning first darker green, now part-brown and tough and dry. What could be the matter?

I've put the whole thing up on the shelf now, thinking that perhaps more sun might help ... but thats just a wild guess.

I've been rearranging my little balcony this afternoon, what, after the big crash on Friday I had to ...

Its OK again now. I bought a pretty green pot for the helicrysums to be in. They're probably happier this way too - despite the amputation of a branch here and there in the fall - cause the little pot they were in, however pretty it went with their leaves, had really become much too small ... Roots had gotten weaved all into a kind of basket around the bottom and sides, it was clearly gasping for space. I think.

Annoying thing is that the new pot is too big/heavy to put up on the shelf near the balcony edge ... which is a pity, cause the stringy, clingy branches of the helichrysums had this purty way of perching over the balcony edge, it looked pretty from out on the street. Now its down on the bottom of the balcony, and that means the branches basically lie on the floor (they really do advance very horizontally, like Oss said ;-)). Less nice. But I tried to arrange it in a way that it looks cool and goes with the zilverblad, ehm, dusty miller I mean. Felicias came down there too, capsicum moved over to the other side together with my latest adoptions - two "vrouwenmantels". Dunno what that is in English, will look it up. And the big pot with the euphorbia went up, like I said.

Still have this serious problem with this pot of forget-me-nots. The leaves are turning all white, or rather, something white and nasty is covering the leaves. Coupla weeks back I took out all the branches on which the flowers had finished flowering, cause they all had leaves that'd gone white - I really cut the whole thing a lot back, leaving only all the newer, still green leaves beneath so they got some space and sun. Thought it might still work. But now all those leaves are going white and gooey too. Some kind of disease?

I havent got a clue what it is - my neighbour didnt know either. When I took it out of its pot I did notice the same thing as with the helichrysums - the roots had formed something like a basket around the soil, the pot had gotten way too small I guess? The whole construct of roots had even "swallowed up" the pot shards that I'd put at the bottom of the pot on top of the drainage hole, I had to kinda pry them out from between the roots again. Is it possible that somehow, something unhealthy from the shards or the pot (outside of the pot is painted in a pretty pattern) coulda gotten into its system or something?

I've now put it in a leftover plastic pot in the corner, thats way bigger ... who knows. Anyone know of this kinda problem, tell me.

The capsicum plant is growing little paprikas! I mean, capsicums. Where there were flowers, there's now two budding capsicums, green. So cute!

I got another stupid question again as well. What about spider webs? My dead willow is full of spider webs, fine. But what if a spider spins up his home between, say - <looks> - my live nishiki willow and the dusty miller? Good, bad, should I gently remove him or let him (her?) be?

I'd say let the spider do his or her thing. After all, you're talking natural insect control right there. If there are insects to eat, the spider will stick around. If not, he or she will move elsewhere.

nimh

I thought of your spiders as I watched a video on rose care today ..... apparently there's this condition called "red spider blight". Affected plants have reddish, rusty discolouration on their leaves. So, if your spiders are red & your leaves look like that, then yes, they can do harm! Sulphur is the treatment for this condition.

Hello, I have a problem so I thought I'd check in here again. Hope someone has good advice!

I had a short holiday, went to Amsterdam for a week or two. Actually, I left for four days, dropped back in here at home, also to check on the plants, then was to leave for a full week.

Now when I came back after the four days - they'd been hot days - my balcony plants sure were feeling dry and weak, as I'd been afraid they would. My nice neighbour, unfortunately, was on holidays, otherwise I'd have asked him to water them. So for the whole week I was about to leave next, I had to think up some good improvisation to prevent the same or worse from happening again.

What I did was I bought a couple of bigger, plastic bowls/buckets, that happened to be on sale around the corner. Put the plantpots inside the bigger bowls/buckets, and apart from giving them lots of water right that afternoon, I filled those bowls also halfway with water. Hoping that this way, they could soak up some water from there through the little hole in the pots' bottoms when it would get really dry.

So, yesterday I came home with some trepidation - and stuff wasnt like what Id expected. Most plants were still doing pretty much OK. Better than after the four days, anyway. Except, if anything, they were way too wet - some of 'em were practically drowning. Well, it had been raining quite a lot ...

Now most will be fine I think, its just the one I'm worried about. My paprika (sorry, capsicum) plant. It still has nice, by now mid-size green capsicums, three or four - amazing that they ever came out! But oh my, the plant. Its leaves - strong, nice leaves, see above - are now all literally hanging down - not just drooping, but really reduced to drenched, thin wet wisps, strings. Like wet basil or something, or seaweed, rather than actual leaves.

That was last night. I threw all the water in the bowls/buckets out, put the pots by themselves again on the balcony, the capsicum too. But today still - the soil in the pot is not so wet anymore (tho still very moist) - but the leaves are still as painfully pitiful as yesterday.

Is there anything I can do? To dehydrate it, kinda? To revive the ailing leaves, and the plant with it? I dont wanna pluck those capsicums yet ...

Just let them dry out, nimh. & see how they go. Good luck!

I had to eat my baby paprikas (capsicums) ...

<sad>

They didnt recover from the drowning. I'm keeping the plant for now still (basically a stalk with some droopy seaweed of leaves), who knows it might one day return (I dont have a clue, really), but I had to take the capsicums off before they started going bad ...

I took the biggest first and gave it to Stasia the last time I saw her, in a bag full of other little gifts. Later I ate two smaller ones with lunch. Kindof like an ignonymous fate (tho they were pretty good). One is still on, see what happens.

That was last week, two weeks ago ... I kind of lost my sense about my little balcony garden now, just lost it. But so today I bought a beautiful dahlia with an outrageously luscious pink flower, they say the plant should be OK till November, and then some complicated story about drying it and taking it outside again in spring that I didnt quite get. Also got four lobelias, another cry of colour. Hope that'll revamp it ...

Hello, here I am again!

Time to revive this thread. Cause ladies and gents, winter is coming. ANy day now we'll have our first night of frost. That means, I assume, I'm gonna have to get some of those plants inside.

Now I've been trying to find out which I can leave out, which to take in and what to do with them. Looked across the net and enlisted the phone help of my father who's got some books on plants and stuff. But its all very confusing.

Before I tell ya what I got so far, I guess I should ask the general questions. The plants that won't survive the frost - do I just take them inside? But inside is warm - thats where I live, after all - just a one-room apartment. 20 degrees centigrade, or more ... wouldnt that be way too hot? Alternatively, I have my basement - thats much cooler. But dark - no windows, so totally dark, unless I leave the light on or something.

Alternatively, I understand that you can put straw on top of the earth, or bubble foil, to protect the plants? But that will only work with plants that need only a little protection I guess, others wouldn't be saved by just that, I think? Especially since I keep my plants in pots (the straw thing I've only seen mentioned for plants in a garden), and my balcony is on the east side as well (relatively cold and windy, though it has thigh-high "walls" that should keep some of the wind out.)

Final general question: I read somewhere that one danger is of the pots freezing - that that can kills the plant too. When and how does that become a problem? A webpage says that a good solution is to keep the plants in plastic containers with earth that you place inside the (otherwise empty) actual pot ... but well, thats not how I got my plants, they're all in the fully earth-filled actual pots. Should I change that after all? But that means repotting them all, and into smaller plastic containers to boot - isn't that a bit risky, especially right before winter?

[continued from general Qs in post above]

OK, so this is what I found per plant and what questions I'm still stuck with. So many doubtful cases!

- Salix integra 'Hakuro-nishiki', the Japanse willow thing. Trouble here. Every webpage I can find, it says that the tree is "winterhard" - comfortably so in fact. Just leave it out. OK, so why then did mine die last year? Winter was over, all I was left with was a very dead tree. I was assuming it had frozen to death - hey, it had snowed, and everything. And its such a pretty tree! I want it to live this year. What can I do to avoid another ignominous end? Was it that the pot had frozen, perhaps? Or perhaps because I was late with pruning it (I did it only in late April instead of in March, but then, it really looked quite dead by then anyway ...)

Anyone any expertise?

- Lobelia, or to be precise (because all these sites go on about blue one-yearer lobelias, and those are not mine): lobelia fulgens, "Queen Victoria". I got three of 'em left, one died already. Bought them because they had small flowers of this lovely, luscious darkred colour, but they soon finished flowering - guess I bought 'em too late, when their season had already almost passed. These apparently are sensitive. One site says it will bear up to -5/10° C, but another says it wont stand anything below 0° C. OK help, that's about now, what do I do? Just take 'em into the basement? Do I need to take anything off, prune them or anything, first?

- Felicias. The pretty little blue ones. (Felicia amelloides is the full name I believe. In Dutch also called either blauwe madeliefjes or blauwe margrieten). I was told they're one-yearers, as we call them - what do you call that in English? So, I guess, just throw them away?

But one website says that they can survive a mild winter sometimes. And another says to "protect them against frost". Well, if they can survive, I want them to - they're cute. So take them inside - or to the basement? Or leave them out with bubble foil and hope for the best? (They're in little pots, though ...)

- Helichrysum microphylla. This one is one of my favourites. Silverblue-green little leaves on long branches that eagerly stretch themselves out over and up the floor and the wall. "Soil coverers", we call such plants in Dutch, so I was betting it would be sturdy. But as far as I could find anything on the net (and I found surprisingly little, considering how often I see this plant outside - or saw it outside last summer, anyway - I'm now trying to remember whether I saw it in gardens or only in pots in front of people's houses and stuff), it actually isn't "winterhard". "Frost sensitive", they call it, though one website said that "in theory, it can't stand frost well, but in practice it often does OK".

What to do, what to do? It won't freeze -10° C or anything here in Holland, not likely anyway, but -5 it'll be often enough ...

- Dusty miller (or as its officially called, apparently, senecio cineraria. In Dutch: zilverblad.) Its pretty big now, from my fingertips up to my elbow. Like it a lot. Cant seem to find much online about how it does winters, but it doesnt look good. For one, it's called an "annual". Is that the English word for one-yearers? As in, forget it, it wont come back in spring? In fact, some websites specify that "it should be grown as a summer annual in colder climates", respectively that it "can be grown as a perennial in Zones 9-10, and as an annual in Zones 3-8". I had to look up the zones, and I'm quite sure Holland aint zone 9 or 10. Its not exactly Florida here. So, forget about it? That would be a shame ...

On the other hand, though someone from Colorado wrote that it never made it through the winter there, someone from Cincinnatti wrote that theirs had come back three years in a row now. Cincinatti is already pretty North/central-European in weather, or isn't it? And it says that in zone 8a (still not quite Holland, but OK), the plant is "hardy" up to -12.2° C (10° F). That should be fine then. (I dont understand that list though. How come the plant is hardy up to 10° F in zone 8a but only to 30° F in zone 10a? See why this is very confusing?)

So, another dilemma. The info seems contradictory about whether it stands a chance of making it through winter. But nobody mentions taking it inside. Would that not be an obvious alternative?

- Dahlia. I have this beautiful dahlia that had obscenely sensual large pink flowers. Every time a flower finishes flowering, you have to cut off the stem that leads to it as far down as where the next sidebranch goes to another flower. That way I had already cut away most of it, apart from three branches (stems?) that still had buds on them. But they never opened, I guess its too cold now.

Anyway, this is what I found on what to do with it: As soon as the first nightfrost has been (not sure whether it has, but it should be right about now) I have to cut the stems down to 20cm from the ground. Did that. Then leave it to dry. (I put it inside here in the room now, slowly drying - soil was very wet because it's been raining all the time lately). Then I have to dig out the bulb/tube (dont know the english word), leave it to dry on a newspaper for a few days (letting it dry but not shrivel), clean off all the soil, then preserve it in peat dust (another site says: in a well-closed box with peat dust.) In a cool, dark place (that would be the basement.)

Wow. Sounds like a lot of work for a plant I bought for 6 or 7 euros. But it would be cool to succeed, I guess.

- Bidens (or in Dutch also tandzaad). Hey, they're still blooming! Cant break those, it seems, they just keep on and on. Not the felicias, and topping off those just led to ugly empty stems sticking out. But with the Bidens topping off always augured in a new wave of little flowers, and even now there's a bunch. Just so you know, cant mess up those, recommended.

But, I understand, one-yearers. Wont survive the winter, wont come back next year. Pity. Then again, one site specifies that they're good up to -5° C. So what, if it doesnt freeze more than that this year it will continue into next year? My father said to bring 'em inside, I dunno ...

- Euphorbia esula (or in Dutch, heksenmelk, witches' milk). Well, I thought it was heksenmelk, that's what I wrote here earlier. But my dad gave me a book about plants (interesting and pretty, but not very useful), and the heksenmelk pictured in there doesn't look much like what I have. Instead, what I have looks like the Euphorbia peplus pictured in there - tuinwolfsmelk, in Dutch. Actually ... using Google's image search I just found out that what I have is more likely Euphorbia Helioscopia (or kroontjeskruid, pretty pictures here.)

Either way, it should be fine, apparently. Grows in the wild outside too.

- Vrouwenmantel (alchemilla mollis in Latin, I think). Same. Seen it grow outside on city streets too, I guess that means they should be fine. One site says to leave the falling leaves, so they'll protect the soil a bit from the cold. OK, can do.

- Astilbe, quite similar to a Spirea. Last winter I thought it had died (what did I know), this spring it came up again. Presume it will next spring too. But this time I wont forget to take the dead stems out, because I think thats what I did wrong this year - I just left it the way it came out of winter, and it never grew new flowery things, just green leaves.

- Pot with dead Japanese willow and cute weeds. Ehm, I guess I can just leave that one outside ;-).

Bump?

The willow: did you leave it out on your balcony in a pot? hat's why. Winter-hardy is good for when it's planted in the ground. Maybe last winter was particularly nasty....?

Lobelia: here this is an annual. You buy it, use it and toss it. After a while, the plant gets leggy - the legs/arms/branches get too long and the whole thing looks floppy. At this point, cut all branches down to about 5-7 inches (I'm guessing here). Soon you'll have new blooms. But, when winter hits, I don't think there's much you can do to keep them. Unless you have a very sunny window to put them in.

Felicias: annual is the word. Again, you could try to keep them inside in a sunny window.

Helichrysum microphylla: common name, here, is licorice (has not much to do with the actual licorice plant, I think). Another annual. Keep it out there and see what happens. If you know a night or day will be particularly cold, bring it inside until the cold snap passes.

Dahlias are tricky. It's a bulb plant. You could unearth the bulbs, clean off the dirt, let them dry for a couple of weeks and then put them in the basement in a paper bag. Then try planting them in the early spring (inside). It might work - try it. There are loads of websites about dahlias.

Astillbe: This plant likes shady areas with rich light soil that has a lot of organic content. The flowering probably has nothing to do with the dried leaves/twigs. Maybe try some generic plant food. When plants are grown in pots, they need the plant food even more than when they are grown in flower beds.

Annuals are very pretty, that's why people buy them, they also grow full and lush to fill in the bare spots (which we get often in the colder climates). They are perfect for potted plants because at the end of the year, you toss them and bring the pots inside till next year. But, if you get attached to them, it's hard to say good bye. I have a couple of warm-weather plants that I try to carry through the winter. I don't get enough light for them to be happy, but I can get them through, usually, until summertime.

Sounds like I maybe didn't give you any new info.

http://www.moplants.com/pots.html (a potted plant lover)

That looked like great info to me!

I'm actually avoiding my own getting my plants through the winter thread, which is beyond silly -- I'm really worried, and there seems like there is so much to do.

What plants, soz?