I hope you had a chance to read the first half of my interview with Aunt Linda, my mom’s sister. In this installment, we’re talking about gardening mistakes, favorite plants, houseplants, and advice for gardeners.
Shelly: Are there any plants you’ve tried and thought, Never doing that again, or wish you hadn’t?
Aunt Linda: Let me think. Oh yeah, I’ve got a bluebell out there now – I think that’s what it’s called – and I’m trying to get rid of it. Because it sends out these tiny little roots, and it’s taking over everything. This spring I got out and dug out a bunch of it. The problem is, to dig it out, I have to dig out the plant that’s there and try to pull those little pieces out. That one, I probably got from a friend. That was a huge mistake.
There was another one…I can’t remember the name…it’s a tall spiky thing, and I planted that one time and same thing, it started taking over the bed. Anything that just – lilies of the valley –
Shelly: Oh yeah, I’ve heard about those –
Aunt Linda: I’ve done that. I had those along the house before; I had to get rid of them because they started taking over. So, things that really want to take over that you can’t just pull up. You know, I’ve got some of those, I call them sundrops – I don’t know the scientific name – they reseed and come up, but they just pull right up, they’re easy to pull out.
I have trouble with delphiniums. The gal next door – she’s gone now, but she had a huge delphinium that came back every year. I’ve planted delphiniums a couple times out there, and they don’t come back. I don’t know, they don’t like that soil, where other things love that soil. There’s something about it that the delphiniums don’t like, and they don’t come back. They’re a beautiful flower.
Shelly: Do you have a favorite?
Aunt Linda: I like those lupines in the spring. I like the blue and there’s different shades of blue. That’s probably my favorite. In the fall – I’ve cut all the greenery down – I have these things called colchicum, it’s a fall blooming crocus. The green comes up in the spring. The bulbs get fed in the spring, and then the green dies down. But, I just cut it last week, so its there. It kinda takes over and they spread like crazy, but in the fall then, in October, I get these pretty little purple crocuses all over: no leaves, no green. People walk by and think oh my gosh, what is that? because they’re not used to seeing crocuses in the fall. So they’re really pretty, but they’re kind of a pain in the spring because of the green, big leaves, and it takes over. [points to where they are planted] So there’s nothing there, there’s this huge bare spot because it was full of those leaves. In the fall there will be a bunch of flowers, but it looks bare now. I don’t want to dig there and plant something because then I’ll disturb all those bulbs.
Shelly: What about your houseplants?
Aunt Linda: I’ve done houseplants since the day I moved out of college. My mom always had houseplants – she grew violets and had a few plants. I probably – it’s the hippy thing from the 60s and 70s, you know. And I’ve just always, I used to have a bunch of those macramé hangers, which I hear are coming back now. I had them in front of all the windows. I had plants hanging in them, upstairs – I still have one upstairs – but every window had hanging plants in them. Then, we put in that garden window back when we did the kitchen, back before Ashley was born. If they made it – it can get cold in there, in the winter it can get icy. It can get below zero here. In the summer, it’s above 90, so the plants that live there have adjusted, and if you can’t adjust, you’re gone. A lot of them are those sedum-type, succulent-type plants that do well there. I’ve got a couple now I’ve got to repot because they’ve gotten stringy and aren’t that nice looking.
Shelly: Do you bring these out in the summer? [pointing to houseplants that are on the front porch]
Aunt Linda: Yep. I bring them out once the weather clears up and it warms up, and in the winter I take them in and they’re just over here in this corner in front of the window. I fertilize all of my plants starting in about February or March; I fertilize every couple of weeks and I fertilize with Miracle Gro when I water them. I repot periodically if the plant really looks like it needs to be repotted. Aloes are big for needing to be repotted periodically because they just overgrow the pot. Some of those succulents I just reroot – I’ll cut off little stems and root them just in water, and when they’re rooted, I’ll redo the whole little pot.
A couple years ago when the garden window needed to be replaced, and I kept thinking, nobody does garden windows anymore, they’re not in style, and the window guy came and he just said “Do you like them?” And I said, “I do.” Then do it! You know and I thought, okay. And the cats want to get in there. Sometimes in the winter I make a little space, move the plants aside, and the cats can climb up there and lie in the sun. And I’ve got orchids, there’s one in there now. Matt gets me orchids regularly for birthdays, Mother’s days, whatever, and when they’re through blooming I take them up and put them upstairs in our bedroom. A lot of them rebloom.
Shelly: Yeah, one of them’s reblooming.
Aunt Linda: Yeah, yeah.
Shelly: How do you take care of those?
Aunt Linda: Same as everything else, I water them once a week. Just a little bit of water. Every so often, there’s an inner plastic pot, and I pull that out, and if there’s any water sitting in the bottom, I pour that out. So the feet don’t get wet. What I need to do is start marking the ones that come back because I know I have some up there that have never come back and never will. But I’m not very good at throwing away plants.
Shelly: Yeah, I’m not either.
Aunt Linda: I feel like I am killing a living organism. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and just do it and not listen to them screaming. [both laughing]
Shelly: So you just fertilize, you said, in February?
Aunt Linda: I start and I fertilize them through the summer, so I just keep fertilizing them. And then, in the winter, they kinda need to hibernate a little bit because it’s just not a growing season, and the house is cooler, and there’s not that much sun. So, once August comes, then I don’t fertilize much, but I fertilize them coming into spring and throughout the summer, you know, every few weeks with a little bit of Miracle Gro, and I do that to my outdoor plants once or twice in the summer: I throw a bunch of Miracle Gro in the water that I’m watering everything with so they get a little food during the summer.
She has a houseplant in every room! A monster sansevieria on the stairs She feeds them with Miracle Gro every few weeks
Along every ledge… …and in front of every window I love this woolly looking plant!
Shelly: Do you have any advice for new gardeners or current gardeners?
Aunt Linda: I guess just be patient and see what’s going to work in your soil. You know, it can be real frustrating if you want to make something grow and it won’t. Nature has a way. The things that like that soil are the things that are going to grow there and let those take over. You know, I at one point, out in the back, I always think I’m going to make it neat: I’m going to have this little plot of this and this little plot of that, and this little plot of that, but when I look out there the whole garden is full of flowers and I have to quit worrying about – and they kind of are separate plants – but you just can’t worry. And I’m not a neatnik, and I’m not OCD about making sure everything has its perfect little place. That’s not who I am. It’s more natural.
I would say just the best advice is let it be. Some plants are going to like your soil and some aren’t. If you want to do a lot of mixing things into your soil, that’s fine. But for most people, new gardeners who may be younger and have a full-time job, or maybe have a family, you’re not going to have time. So, plant them. Try to find time through the summer periodically to go out and pull all the weeds, which even itself can be hard to do. Every time I walk out to the garage, I bend over and pull a few weeds just as I walk by. When I water my hanging baskets, I pluck off the dead flowers and any dead leaves that I find, and so I kind of groom them. Then its not a huge job, it’s just little bits.
Aunt Linda’s advice reminds me a lot of Amy Cate’s advice – try something! Some things will work and some things won’t because so many aspects are at the mercy of mother nature. Do your best with what you have and with the time that you have. But as my aunt Linda says – be patient and don’t be too hard on yourself! Do you have any advice about gardening? What plants have you tried that didn’t work out? Thanks for reading!
