Reorganized my plants and potted most of my jade starts.

Discussion in 'Houseplants' started by MountainGuardian, Sep 30, 2014.

  1. MountainGuardian

    MountainGuardian New Seed

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    Finally managed to get caught up on most of my houseplants today... Reorganized the living room plants and overflowed some of them to the dining room, kitchen and upstairs.

    I potted about 15 jade trees from my rooting box, I still have five large jades to remove from the rooting box but I ran out of soil. I wound up with enough cuttings and leaves for another 40 jade tree starts or so. I counted today I am currently at 57 jade trees in the house. All of those are from the original three 8 inch trees in a six inch pot given to us Oct of 2010. These jade trees just go nuts... I am now at 41 aloe plants in the house, I have three new friends wanting some, that should help a very small little bit. Pretty much everyone we know already has aloes from us, it is getting hard to give them away anymore.

    It is nice having my living room back.....

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    I built some boxes in the bottoms of my windows to get my plants to fit better, then I ran out of plant room and added a couple shelves higher up in the windows.

    Some of the small aloes....

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    My new jade cuttings and broken off leafs are below the shelf setting in egg crates until they callous and start producing the roots. As they start getting the root growth I will put them into the rooting box in the dining room.

    A few of the baby jades taken from the rooting box today.


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    I can't wait to get my plant room done and have extra room for a change..... well for a short time anyways.... lol...
     
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  3. eileen

    eileen Resident Taxonomist Staff Member Moderator Plants Contributor

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    If you keep going the way you are you could open your own nursery. ;) So many aloes and jade plants!! I hope you do soon have your plant room for all you new babies. [/i]
     
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  4. cherylad

    cherylad Countess of Cute-ification Plants Contributor

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    That's a great window area. And looks like you're using it to its full potential. That's an amazing amount of Aloes and Jades! And they all look so healthy.
     
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  5. Jaz Madrid

    Jaz Madrid New Seed

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    I love that window area, specially how it is look in the first picture :)
     
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  6. MountainGuardian

    MountainGuardian New Seed

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    Grrrrr..... This dang mousepad on this laptop is driving me nuts.... I cannot type without touching it lightly now and then and when I do all kinds of crazy stuff happens.... I spent 15 minutes getting a post setup and I touched it lightly with my thumb muscle and poof it was all gone.... I cannot find anyway to turn it off so I have now uninstalled the dumb thing. Gonna go get some coffee and come back in a few and redo my post....


    Okay back on track now.... Here is a pic of the living room from up the stairs...

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    I realized when I read the comment about the North windows looking better than the East that I really had not included much in that photo. This one shows the entire east wall.

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    North wall....

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    Now that I have plants out of the way I was able to get a pic of the momma aloe and how it is set up. This was in a window and grew to large, it had to lay over sideways to get enough light. We continued this trend by planting it in ever longer boxes and making grow across the soil toward the light. We eventually started turning around and heading it in the other direction. This stalk lays on the soil and is partially covered with soil. It grows roots out the bottom side and sprouts baby aloes along the entire stalk system in the soil. The stalk is about 12 inches shorter than it should be, I had a dog get in the house and dig it up about 6 years ago and it broke off the original start of the root system. We still have about 2 and 1/2 feet of stalk on the plant though. I cannot wait to get her into a larger planter where she can no nuts again....

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    We get these little baby aloes starts all along the underside of the stalk, they are physically connected to the stalk but grow their own roots as well. You just carefully dig your hand in and slowly loosen the soil and follow the roots as far as you can and then gently break the aloe from the mother stem, voilla a new aloe with root system. I let them get to 10 to 14 inches or so before transplant them usually.
     
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  7. MountainGuardian

    MountainGuardian New Seed

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    Starting in on the fall wet period with my plants.... That is getting to be a bit of work.... 25 gallons of water to get everything watered today...

    I have no idea if I water the way I am supposed to, I water very heavily in the fall and then taper off through the winter. By mid winter the soil is close to bone dry again and I do any transplanting that I have to do. I then start slowly bringing up the water until spring then I douse them again and get the soil fully saturated. I then back off on the water through the spring and do very little watering over the summer months. Late summer and fall I do transplanting again while the soil is dry and then restart the heavy watering.

    This watering seems to work really well with succulents, not so well other types of houseplants, the geraniums do not do well with extended dry periods I have found. I like the wet seasons because the plant growth is phenomenal during these periods.
     
  8. Kay

    Kay Girl with Green Thumbs

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    That is a lot of plants you have there! I know about the Jade... I have several of them that have come from a big old Jade plant given to me in 1999. I keep rooting them, planting them, and giving them away.
    Sounds like you're watering plan works well for you.
     
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  9. purpleinopp

    purpleinopp Young Pine Plants Contributor

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    Ooooh your windows! Oooh, ahhh, wow!!!
     
  10. MountainGuardian

    MountainGuardian New Seed

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    The windows in this house are well set up for growing, lots and lots of large windows. Not the easiest to heat, 8 cords of wood a winter but great for growing plants.
     
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  11. 2ofus

    2ofus Hardy Maple

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    I see you live in north Idaho. You must have the best of insulating windows and extremely well insulated walls to only need 8 cords of wood a year if it's your main source of heat. We lived in Pinehurst 42 years ago and it look us a lot more wood. Of course they didn't have very good windows or insulation available then.
     
  12. MountainGuardian

    MountainGuardian New Seed

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    Well a brand new $6k Blaze king stove and walls about 12 inches thick. This house has all batt and board on the outside that has been replaced a couple times... Rather than remove the old material they just added it over the old... lol... Some of the windows are pretty high quality some others are the old fashioned ones with many squares per window and they are not real great. It is pretty easy to keep the temp up to around 75 all winter on about 8 cords, we are kind of down in a hole and the wind all goes over us rather hit the house, that helps a lot. Our last place was directly in the wind and we went through 9 to ten cords a year in a 900 square foot house, where this one is just over 3k sq feet.
     
  13. purpleinopp

    purpleinopp Young Pine Plants Contributor

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    Of course people get first preference, but if the people would still be comfortable, the plants would be fine with cooler temps, although that probably doesn't result in more humidity in your location, with wood heat. Winter is mild enough here to only need to heat bedrooms a bit on cold nights, so some rooms where plants are can drop to 50-55 some mornings.

    Hey, forgot to say before, if there are plants you wish for, you could trade some of your excess copies of stuff for some of those. People are also usually interested in paying the postage to receive folks' excess plants if a trade isn't needed or possible. That's how I find homes for the increases I get from putting some plants in the ground for summer vacation. "As annuals." Why should Coleus have all of that fun? The growing season where you are might not be long enough to bother, but it helps me a lot to have less pots to keep watered in the brutal AL heat for so many months.
     

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