some of my favorite posts

Back again with another edition of how’s it growing!

avocados!

I’ve been feeling very encouraged by my baby avocado trees lately. I go through spells with these dudes. Love them for a period of time, then get mad at them for not growing well then I’m back in love.

I would like to do a better job documenting them and how they’re growing though. I’m thinking about numbering the bottom of each planter so I can more easily keep track of each one. Despite the fact they’re all in different looking planters, I still get confused which is which in older photos.

Winter is supposed to be a more chill season for growth but I feel like in the last month or so all of these have really taken off. I’m considering pruning back my two largest (especially that one on the right side below). I don’t know though, I hate losing leaves and height. We’ll see!

above – February 12th below – January 22nd

I’m experimenting with Joyful Dirt currently. I don’t really know much about fertilizer and house plants. In the past I’ve used fertilizers for outdoor plants but I almost feel like that’s a whole different thing.

I do think it will be hard to tell whether or not it’s making a difference. The one consistent thing I’ve found with growing avocado trees is that they are all wildly different. Some start to grow roots in a few weeks, some literally take months. Some pop out leaves immediately, others seem to be very stingy with leaf growth.

Joyful Dirt has two different ways you can use it. You can mix it with your water or you can apply it directly to the soil. I opted to sprinkle a bit at the base of one of my newly planted avocado pits and then water that thoroughly.

As long as I don’t see any negative effects, I’ll probably start to use this on all my avocados.

exciting things –

My new trellis! I mentioned in my last plant post that I had purchased this small trellis for my swiss cheese plant and wow, it did not disappoint. I’ve already been eyeing up the rest of my plants to see if anyone else would benefit from one.

In the past, I would plant things in just about any container but now I’m realizing how much more I love all my plants when they’re growing in something I actually enjoy looking at. I had considered buying a cheaper trellis or even some plain stakes but I’m glad I opted for this one. I love looking at it.

My Watermelon Peperomia is flowering! Not the most spectacular flowers, I’ll give you that but still, any type of flower is exciting to me!

Even more flowers! This dumb cane, which I rescued from my parent’s house after my mom passed, is flowering. This feels so special, especially since it opened up the day after my mom’s birthday. It has two buds. Currently only one is open but I’ve been anxiously checking the other one approximately every ten minutes since realizing it was there. You can see a photo of the whole plant here.

new arrivals –

I had a tough week. Okay? That’s my excuse for five new plants when I had just recently told myself “you have no more room, stop it!” I purchased another orchid to experiment with (It was on clearance! How could I resist for five bucks!?) Also, from L to R; Peperomia San Marino, Sansevieria Starfish, mystery yard find, and cyclamen.

My mystery plant! I don’t know what this is (and to be fair, I haven’t tried to ID it yet.) It was growing in an old, unmaintained planter outside my house. I don’t grow anything outside here, and in the time that I’ve lived here, no one else has either so I figured snagging this was fair game. I just thought the leaves were neat looking. The fact that it had survived the winter outside so far makes me think it’s super resilient. It already has some new growth starting to sprout! I’m curious to see what happens with it over the next couple months.

Cyclamen leaves are just SO pretty!

I really do try not to purchase larger plants. I don’t have the space. Period. BUT I could not resist this guy. The top side of the leaves is gorgeous but that bright red underside!? Ugh. I couldn’t stop myself.

sources

striped planters // trellis // face planters

If you’re local, stop by Suncrest Gardens. I just discovered them this week. Easily my new favorite plant store! I’m used to nurseries only having a very small selection of house plants to choose from but they had so many things I had never seen in person! I already can’t wait to go back.

Professor says ‘Youz lucky I let you have dees.”

Check out my instagram hashtag for more photos of my plant collection – #kaylahheartsplants.

My kitchen table. Purchased so we didn’t have to eat on the couch but now covered in plants. Whoops.

I’m back to blogging about plants. No apologies. I love plants. Growing things is my favorite just for fun hobby and in this day and age of turning everything into some sort of side hustle – I am really really thankful for it.

I want to create a series – How’s it growing? – that is just for keeping tabs on what I’m growing, how it’s doing, what I’m experimenting with, etc.

The internet is FILLED with articles on how to grow this and that properly but really, my favorite way to learn is just to try different methods and find what works for me. This series will be a great way to document that and maybe give some tips I’ve found helpful.

I also think that taking photos of your plants is the best way to document growth. When you see the same plant every single day it’s easy to not really notice changes. Being able to look back on photos from a month ago can be really encouraging!

So, without further ado, let’s get started!

My pilea was getting pretty tall which I didn’t really love the look of. I chopped off the top, let it heal for a day and then popped it in a small container with water. As you can see, it definitely grew roots and fairly quickly too. (This is six week’s progress.)

Right now, I have no plans to put this in dirt – partially because I already have two others in pots – but also because I really love watching roots grow!

What was left in the dirt, a short stem, grew new leaves at the same incredible rate. The plant seems much happier now without this huge piece on the top. Cutting things off always seems a bit counterproductive but this definitely proves that it’s worth it sometimes.

My pothos, shown above on the mannequin legs, is just thriving. Gosh, I feel like I shouldn’t say that or I’ll jinx it but look how long! I spent a bit of time trying to find an older photo of it to show how much it’s grown but could only find this one where it’s in the background. The wild thing is though, that photo is from almost exactly a year ago and it had barely any length to it.

Sitting on top of the legs, it reaches the ground but since I don’t want it to be an easy target for my pets, I have it draped across my curiosity cabinet to it’s left and reaching up to my wall on the right. Two months ago, it only reached the horns.

For Christmas, my mother-in-law bought me an AeroGarden. It’s a neat little contraption that you grow plants in. It has an LED grow light that’s on a timer and everything grows in the water that is cycled throughout. Mine has thyme, two varieties of basil, dill, mint and parsley. It’s basically THE coolest.

I was shocked by how quickly everything sprouted. I set it up on December 30th and I was already able to harvest some dill and basil. I’m super impressed so far. Actually, even though this photo isn’t old at all it looks super out of date. I swear, you can see a difference in it every single day. I have never seen anything grow so fast.

They have different seed pods (and you can grow whatever you have seeds for as well) so obviously my brain is full of ideas. I’d love to do flowers in here so that I could have a fun little garden indoors. I was browsing photos of flowers that people had grown in the AeroGarden and it has me questioning how much I really love basil. (I love basil a lot a lot a lot but….flowers!)

Here’s a shot of the one closest to the wall from August 2019.

Avocados! I currently have six trees growing right now. My two largest are beside my coffee maker. I had to move them there because they were getting too much sun. It didn’t seem like it was a lot but every day at the sunniest point of the day, they’d wilt. They definitely are much happier not being directly in front of the window. As you can see on the one on the left in the white pot, we’re getting new leaves fairly consistently so that’s reassuring.

Below is one of my most recently planted avocados. I wanted to get rid of all the ones I had in water for the winter since it’s so chilly right up against the window where I keep them. Since none of them had any growth on the top, just roots, I decided to pop five of them in the same pot. If something doesn’t have any leaves, it’s basically inevitable I’m going to forget to water it. I figured putting multiples in one pot would give me a better shot at remembering to water it. Ya know, that or I’d kill them all at once!

I guess it was a great idea to plant them though. Within a week I had the shown below which is just wild! Maybe I need to reevaluate at what point I put things into dirt…

Striped pot found here. It’s a set of three for under $30.

I bought this holey lil dude on Amazon back in September and wow! has it grown! The earliest photo I could find of it was this one. I don’t really think my photos show how much larger it is now. More exciting than that is that my leaves have more holes! The first few leaves it put out once I got it were solid but now, more often than not, they have holes (which is desired despite the fact it doesn’t sound like it should be!)

It’s getting a bit tall. I can tell that it wants to start laying down and stretching but I think I’d rather it grow up. This morning I purchased this super cool mini trellis that I’m excited to weave the plant around.

One last thing for this giant post, my first orchid. Okay, not my first orchid but my first attempt in at least ten years. For the longest time, I’ve just thought that orchids were really hard to grow but I now realize that I probably just never read anything on how to take care of them. They definitely require a bit of knowledge to grow properly.

On my instagram explore page, I stumbled upon a photo of someone growing an orchid in water which sent me down a rabbit hole of research on the subject. I LOVE growing things in water so this seemed like the perfect excuse to give orchids another whirl. Definitely not super confident in this method yet but I’m excited to learn.

It seems like everyone has a different opinion of the best way to grow them in water. Some folks even recommend water for a few days, drying them for a few days and repeating but gosh, that seems like too much work. I’m opting to go the route of just leaving it in water all the time. I removed all the dirt, moss and other stuff from the plant and trimmed off almost all the roots. I read that the smaller the number of roots at first, the better since that way any new roots will be accustomed to growing in water. Instead of water from the tap, I gathered some freshly fallen snow, let it melt and warm up a bit and then placed my orchid in that. It hasn’t been very long but I already have a tiny bit of root growth.

This could turn out two ways. One – a dead orchid. Two – a full-blown orchid obsession!

That is just a small sampling of the plants I have in my apartment right now. I guess this is the stuff I’ve really been tending to the most and keeping my eye on recently. I definitely go through spells where certain plants get more attention than others – mostly based on how much they’re growing and how pleased I am with them. Fingers crossed all these babies continue to thrive!

PS. Get in the habit of photographing your plants! You’ll thank yourself later!

Check out my instagram hashtag for more photos of my plant collection – #kaylahheartsplants.