Tuesday's Tip

i love extending the life of "stuff."  i realize i run the risk of sounding redundant by saying that, but it bears repeating.  the idea of finding multiple uses for things and re-using items appropriately thrills me.  seriously.  i was recycling before i knew how cool it was.

you may be surprised to discover that this philosophy has carried over to my plants.  every fall, i make a game out of seeing which plants i can get to survive til the spring.  incidentally, if you keep pansies in planters and leave them out all winter (even with three back to back blizzards), you will have new growth in the spring.  amazing.  they aren't perennial - they just re-seed very easily... and are quite hardy.  i've been known to find tiny sprouting pansies in the grass under my hanging planters which i will carefully dig up and transplant into a garden or container.  i know, i know...  but, why not?

i really love playing this game indoors, too!  for a while, i wasn't having much luck with houseplants... but then i started working with the ones i had and discovered a few truths.
- no matter how well cared for, some plants just get old and need to go
- changing a plant's location in your house can give it a boost
- even a dying plant has something to offer

here are a few examples:

this is a Spider Plant - a very normal  house plant.  i like them because they are easy to grow, hard to kill, and very full and pretty.  but i love them because they have babies.  look closer...

see the tiny spider plants hanging from the big plant?  you can leave these on the spider plant as part of the plant's fullness, or you can start brand new spider plants with it.  here's what i do...

the babies are carefully cut from the mother plant and then placed in water (here, i have 2 babies in each bowl).  try to arrange them so that only their bottoms / roots are in the water.  they can live like this for a very long time (or until you are ready to move them) but the idea is to keep them in water til they grow a small root system.  once that happens, plant each in a small planter and keep them well watered.  

this "baby" is about a year old.  she is doing very well, but started out just as tiny as the ones pictured above.  in fact, she's almost ready to be moved into a larger planter and hung in a window.  and that's good, because after a while, even that big, healthy mama plant will start to look a little "tired" - but not before sprouting lots more babies.  incidentally, the big mama plant pictured at the top, started as a tiny baby from a plant i had kept for years.  now look at her!

another favorite of mine is the Wandering Jew plant.  Wandering Jews are more of a vining plant and are fun because of their purple color.  here is my original Wandering Jew:

she's not pretty.  in fact, she's on her last legs, which is why she hangs from a window in my bedroom where no one has to look at her.  it's ok, though, because she's served me well.  Wandering Jews are soooo easy to regrow.  occasionally, it will lose a "branch" or vine.  they can also be cut off.  place several cuttings in water, like this - 

over time, but rather quickly, these vines will start to root and will grow longer.  you may prefer to keep them in water as they are pretty this way.  in fact, the ones below have been in water for quite a while:

as long as their container stays full of water, they do very well.  they also like sun but don't need to be in direct sunlight.  this is a good example of a plant that you may want to rotate throughout the year - a fresh location or varied amount of sunlight is a nice change of pace for the Wandering Jew.

once your plant is very full, like the one above, it may be time to plant it.  here is a Wandering Jew that i started from just a few vines from the original:

she is very pretty and full, and although there are occasional dead leaves or dying vines, they can easily be removed.  i like to snip vines from this one as she is getting bigger - it keeps her from getting too overgrown and keeps my houseplant population growing.  

there are others!  i won't bore you with all of them, but try your hand at fostering some "babies."  what a great way to extend the life of your plants!