The Tale of the Amaryllis and Other Bulbs to Force in the Wintertime

Miniature Amaryllis

My amaryllis bulbs, including the miniature amaryllis bulbs,  are all up and in various stages of bud and bloom.

The miniature amaryllis is pretty but isn't the variety I ordered. So I wrote the company this morning to see what they can do. My first choice is to get the variety I ordered, but it is sold out.

But I've ordered from this company for years with great success

Miniature Amaryllis

Amaryllis bulb, just planted.

You know how amaryllis can get really tall and floppy and sometimes requiring elaborate staking to keep them from toppling over, no matter how heavy their pot is?

And the elaborate staking, with only the depth of a pot to anchor the actual stakes, can look like something Gilligan himself tried to put together using sticks and vines he found on an uncharted,

Phases of house plant care identified

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. --After extensive study and observation, Dr. V. Q. Hortfreud recently determined that those who have house plants generally follow a predictable and repeatable pattern in caring for their house plants. She further observed that this pattern of care can be broken down into four phases.

In the first phase, which Dr. Hortfreud labeled Acquire, the indoor gardener acquires the

Kokedama - Must be willing to make a little bit of a mess...

Kokedama with ivy

I just finished cleaning up the sunroom after making my first kokedama.

Kokedama is a Japanese word that translates into English as "moss balls" though all the auto-correct editors want to translate it into chokedamp.

The idea is to mix a combination of peat and clay soil, generally a 70-30 ratio, so you can form the soil into a ball and it stays as a ball. Then you plant

Potting Tidy

Do you know the proper name for this?


The proper name for it is "Potting Tidy".

I love having a potting tidy because it makes the whole business of potting up plants neater than say, laying out some newspapers and dumping potting soil on the papers.

Really, potting soil on newspapers? How very uncivilized. You are gardening, not trying to make a mess. Do the right thing and get yourself a