[Trust]

I know nothing about plants and such. I was just wondering what you would recommend for people like me. I'm looking for something inside my apt, that won't get any sunlight and then maybe something for my balcony that might get a few hours of sunlight a day. Was looking around and I need some plants/flowers in this place. I see you carry some lilies, I heard peace lilys is what I'm looking for, for inside my apt. Thanks.

[Rexanne]

I know nothing about plants and such. I was just wondering what you would recommend for people like me. I'm looking for something inside my apt, that won't get any sunlight and then maybe something for my balcony that might get a few hours of sunlight a day. Was looking around and I need some plants/flowers in this place. I see you carry some lilies, I heard peace lilys is what I'm looking for, for inside my apt. Thanks.

I'll let Leader answer the specifics but if your balcony has minimal sun, flowering plants could work great.

Eastern exposure is best for flowers,

Southern great for most plants and flowers.

Western exposure (massive sun) will kill most plants and flowers and only cactus or really insensitive plants will do well. Ficus trees do well with Western sun.

Northern exposure is usually not enough sun for anything to grow well but a delicate flowering plant might work.

Flowering plants indoors are hard to maintain. This one's for Leader. :-)

Have fun. It's not hard to grow plants and flowers, just follow insturctions for each plant and don't over water them.

[MichaelColey]

If it weren't for my wife, I would need plastic plants.

[Rexanne]

If it weren't for my wife, I would need plastic plants.

Plastic plants are not plants! Neither is anything else that doesn't actually LIVE. I have a problem with fake flowers and fake plants - I'll /rant on that. :-)

Really, guys, growing plants isn't hard at all. Just don't get some complicated delicate (high maintenance) thang that needs REAL TLC. LOL

[Trust]

What about silk flowers/plants :) They're looking like a good option for me.

[Rexanne]

What about silk flowers/plants :) They're looking like a good option for me.

Those are not plants or flowers, no matter what they're made of. LOL - They get dirty and are not living, nor are they giving you the really cool benefit of oxygenating your "space" which is a highly underrated benefit of having plants and live flowers in your home. I'll shut up before I start sounding like the Southern Californian quasi-earther that I am or (worse) Martha Stewart. :escape:

[Trust]

hehe I wanna be good.

[Rexanne]

hehe I wanna be good.

OK then get a book and learn how to keep plants alive. LOL

[Donuts]

Trust, I was thinking peace lily before I even got to the part where you mentioned it.

They are survivors and reasonably good looking. My wife and I had one that made moves with us to 7 different houses in 5 different states (the Navy thought moving was good for me). Sometimes we'd ignore it for long periods and it'd get sad, but water that sucka and back it came every time.

We kept it in a closet for 3 weeks once on accident and when we took it out, it was perfectly fine and a few flowers bloomed a few days later (insert "happy to come out of closet" joke here).

We put him on the porch for a while and I used to flick cig ashes in his soil - never seemed to bother him. Some non-smokers are all bitchy and uptight, even outdoors - not him.

I think I finally killed him with tequila, again on accident. He took his time dying though. I bet I could have yanked him from it's pot, rinsed him completely clean with a hose, dropped it in some new peat-y soil and the sucka would have lived, but I thought tequila was a fitting end and giving him a bath seemed such a violation of his person (we called him Ben).

People say they shouldn't even get below 60 degress - Ben spent 2 winters on my Orlando porch and he never said a word about it.

I tossed him potless and limp from an overpass and never went back. I'll always wonder if he took root somewhere just to mock me with his steadfast grip on living...

Get one.

[westgroup]

I believe that air ferns would be good for you. LOL

[Trust]

"Here is the only true No Water - No Soil - No Care Plant!
A great conversation piece! Your air fern requires absolutely no care. Just place it wherever you like and leave it alone. And I do mean Leave It Alone! You never have to do ANYTHING to it! Air ferns are a must for any busy household, and will quickly become your most favorite addition to your household."

Alright, finally a guy's plant.

[Donuts]

yeah, but they're emotionally shallow...

[Rexanne]

yeah, but they're emotionally shallow...

LOL

[Leader]

Finally I saw this thread. The notice came yesterday, but I was just logging off at the time and then it completely slipped my mind...

As for indoor plants:
Every "air fern" I've seen has actually been a FAKE plant, that they didn't admit was fake. I've even had salespeople insist they were real, only to get one home and see the green DYE come off upon further testing...revealing a plastic thing underneath (after that I learned to spot the fakery right in the store. Hint: Sniff it...real plants don't smell like plastic resin...).

I'm not going to say that there is no such thing as a real "air fern" but I have huge doubts about anything for sale under that name.

For REAL plants, I'd agree about the peace lily. Another good one is diffenbachia (there are several varieties of this species, but all the ones I know of are fairly tough). Those are hard to kill, too. Spider plants are another good house plant, but I don't know how they'd do in low light.

But my personal experience doesn't cover many typical houseplants.
Personally I don't have much interest in "normal" houseplants, and the only ones of that type I get are ones that have been given to me. Plants I've grown inside (other than those gifts) are fairly challenging: They're flowers that normally grow outside in full sun.

Marigolds, zinnias, geraniums, etc. have all graced my windowsills. Marigolds especially have been the target of my hybridization attempts, too.

Keeping plants like that alive inside mainly requires LIGHT! If they're not right next to the window, forget it, unless you set up a shelving unit with full-spectrum bulbs (which still doesn't produce nearly as good of results as real sunlight--the plants get way too leggy).

It's a wonder the house wasn't raided because of all the full-spectrum bulbs, etc. that I bought (after filling up the windowsills but I still wanted more marigolds). I found out that at one point, the cops were watching everyone who bought that kind of stuff (since it's also used to grow pot!) and they did a sting on some people... I didn't get searched/harrassed, but ever since that sting story came out, I wonder if they surveilled me...
Unfortunately, the garden center quit selling some of the indoor growing equipment after the sting, which left us growers of legal plants SOL! (I wonder if they cased this place and were disappointed to find a shelfful of marigolds plainly in the window~?)

As for EXPOSURE:
It must depend on where you are. Here in MI, WESTERN exposure is the best exposure for high-light-requiring plants. Granted my view is slanted by the fact that MARIGOLDS are my favorite plant to grow! The more light the better, for them.

EASTERN exposure is next-best and I even put the "standard" houseplants facing that window.

SOUTHERN exposure has the porch overhang in the way of the sun. So, it's no good in this particular house.
NORTHERN exposure not only has a roof overhang, but a bunch of trees. It's out of the question.

[MichaelColey]

Air Ferns are actually dead, green-dyed hydrozoans (primative marine animals):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_fern

They do look like plants, though.

[Leader]

Air Ferns are actually dead, green-dyed hydrozoans (primative marine animals):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_fern

They do look like plants, though.
Ew, nasty...
I think I'd have preferred the plastic :crap:

(Maybe what smelled like plastic was actually the dye...in any case, they sure don't smell like plants!)

[webmarm]

For years I never had houseplants besides herbs (my policy on plants was that it should be edible, which most houseplants aren't, and many houseplants are poisonous especially to small children). Then one lab I worked in had a cleaning lady with a green thumb. She started keeping a collection of plants in my lab near the window, and darned if they didn't do really well.

My living room faces south-westerly, and I have a large set of shelves near the windows. I took home cuttings of two types of wandering Jew (one has small green leaves, and one has elongated purple leaves). I've been negligent a couple of times with watering, but they always spring back. Then I got a cutting of a spider plant, though I had one in Portland, OR that never ever spidered under full spectrum ligths. I put my spider plant on the window end of the shelves, and it is very happily spidering for years.

Then there's the plant whose name slips my mind. I think it's called Variegated. Big colorful leaves that look different depending on how much light the plant gets. It's a bit of TLC pig, however, in terms of being watered regularly.

I never thought I'd have so many typical houseplants, but they do make that corner of the room look nice.

[MichaelColey]

For years I never had houseplants besides herbs...We planted some rosemary in our front flowerbed, and it has done incredible! It smells great, and it's great to be able to just walk out front and cut some fresh rosemary to cook with. It's almost grown into a little hedge.

Does anyone have suggestions of other herbs that work great in flowerbeds? (We're in Texas, so we see a lot of upper 90s in the summer and a few freezes in the winter.)

[Leader]

Then there's the plant whose name slips my mind. I think it's called Variegated. Big colorful leaves that look different depending on how much light the plant gets. It's a bit of TLC pig, however, in terms of being watered regularly.
"Variegated" refers to the color of the leaves, rather than the plant variety. It means the leaves have at least 2 colors (usually green and cream, but some have different colors than that). I would guess that they get greener in lower light (since it needs more clorophyll to make use of the light there is), and more "other" in high light.

[John Powell]

I know Rexanne says that it has to be live but this would be an attractive conversation piece. Silk Marijuana & Hemp Plants (http://www.newimageplants.com/) :nerd:

[webmarm]

We planted some rosemary in our front flowerbed, and it has done incredible! It smells great, and it's great to be able to just walk out front and cut some fresh rosemary to cook with. It's almost grown into a little hedge.

Does anyone have suggestions of other herbs that work great in flowerbeds? (We're in Texas, so we see a lot of upper 90s in the summer and a few freezes in the winter.)

Oh, well outdoors I still primarily have herbs. Bulbs were a happy addition this year, BTW. Tulips are nice, but I'm really, really pleased with freesia. The blooms are lasting quite a while, and I love the smell of freesia. Of course, my easter lilies have missed Easter, but I look forward to when they bloom.

Let's see, next to my rosemary plant to the West is a big huge lavendar bush taking over the retaining wall. Lavendar can also be used culinarily (no I haven't tried, I keep forgetting to, but the wife of a friend told me she cooked up pumpkin with lavendar to the delight of all). My favorite uses of lavendar are infusing alcohol with the flowers, and making smudge sticks for discouraging flying pests while eating outdoors. To make those, you just cut nice long lavendar stems, wrap them in some pretty embroidery thread, and then wrap the bunch in newspaper to dry. Light the end of the dry bunch until smoking when you have an outdoor picnic for a pleasant incense addition to a citronella candle that the bees don't like.

Rue does well in hot dry weather. It's classically a strewing herb, but I have neighbors who use it medicinally. I have to cut mine back several times a year. My mint is only now living up to the "it'll take over your garden" legend, and it's at least six years in the bed. Sage does nicely in hot dry environments, and is good in soups, dressings, stuffings, stews, and as a gargle in the winter against throat infections. My bay laurel bush/tree is a slow grower, but it take zero TLC. Bay leaves are great in soups, sauces, stews, and roasts. They also make very good natural moth repellant in your closets and drawers. I have a couple of "wild" rose bushes thrown in there, and a jasmine bush that takes too much TLC for me. It grows, but it needs more water and sun than where I planted it to get a good plethora of blooms.

Melissa, lemon balm, does well in hot dry environments, too. Mine is about three years old, and just went into its first major growth spurt. It is taking over a bed that was mostly calendula last year. Herb Louisa, Lemonscented Verbena does well. Drying combinations of Louisa, Melissa, mint, lavendar and rosemary make really nice sachets/dream pillows. They all also make nice teas. I'm sure I've seen recipes with Verbena as well.

All mine have weathred hot summers with a few minor winter freezes.

I actually planted my narcissus and freesia north of the rosemary and lavendar bushes in the same large bed. Someone tromped on the freesia in the late winter, but it's survived. The narcissus bloomed when I was barely looking outside, sigh. And now the rue is towering over their greens.

I put the tulips, lillies, and an amaryllis in a bed all by themselves.

Gee, Leader, thanks for the plantophile forum!

[westgroup]

Any tricks to growing lavendar? I have tried for years and as soon as it looks really good it croaks. I 've tried in containers, in sand, in loamy soil, wet, dry etc. I live in Utah and water often but no luck.

[Trust]

Maybe I should just find a new gf with a green thumb. Will go to a garden center and look helpless :)

[webmarm]

Any tricks to growing lavendar? I have tried for years and as soon as it looks really good it croaks. I 've tried in containers, in sand, in loamy soil, wet, dry etc. I live in Utah and water often but no luck.

Dunno. I have two different types growing. I have to admit to being a lazy gardener. I always think "I should set up those micro drip systems", but never do. I bought starts of both of them.