Boston Fern (Nephrolepis exaltata 'Bostoniensis')

Boston Fern

(Nephrolepis exaltata 'Bostoniensis')

I have had a Boston fern in every home we have had.  My oldest Boston fern was acquired during our early newlywed days, moved with us from Ontario to Alberta and back, then graced our first four owned homes.  It had a long, long history and really was more like a family member.  I was devastated when it failed to thrive at our last house.  As mentioned earlier, that house had serious bad karma with respect to houseplants! 

I bought a new Boston fern for my office at our new house.  It sits in the corner where I can enjoy it while on the computer.  Boston ferns are an age old low maintenance plant that graced the parlors of many a home.  This is a medium light plant that does well in filtered to partial sunlight.  A trick I learned eons ago was to water my Boston fern wih a little milk.  By little I mean putting a bit of water into an empty milk bag then water the fern.  Done once a month and this little tip will keep your Boston fern happy and healthy.  The second trick with Boston ferns is humidity so mist the foliage  couple of times a week.  The foliage will fade if the plant is not getting enough water.  Keep the soil most.  I'm using a watering globe to make sure the fern gets the right amount of water that it needs.

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Houseplants and Watering Globes

Dollarama is likely quite happy with me!  I discovered their watering globes back in May of 2010 and have been experimenting with them ever since.  We spend upwards of five weeks at a time away from our permanent residence to enjoy our vacation home.  That leaves the dilemna of houseplant watering.  In our case, this is not a huge issue as our kids look after the house while we are away but I'm working on re-establishing my extensive houseplant collection in our new home.  Watering globes make perfect sense!

The watering globes I'm buying come in two sizes with the large one costing $2 and two of the smaller ones costing the same price.  The watering bulbs will keep each plant watered up to two weeks.  That means instead of the kids having to water my houseplants weekly they will only need to refill the watering bulb once during a four week period.  This is a lot less work for them!  There will still be a few trays of houseplants that will need to be watered individually but for the most part the watering the kids will need to do will be minimum.  Next I will be working on a self watering DIY system for my houseplants.  That way they will be rather self sufficient when we are away!

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Mother-in-Law's Tongue (Sansevieria)

Sansevieria

Sansevieria is commonly called Mother-in-Law's Tongue.  It is a good air purifier that removes toxins such as formaldehyde, xylene and toulene all of which can occur in homes with laminate flooring, panelling, other manmade wood composite building materials, carpeting and upholsteried furniture.  The release of these chemicals is known as off-gassing, something quite common in newer homes. 

We have a lot of laminate flooring in our new home so I am being careful to include plants that act as air purifiers.  I bought a Sansevieria for our bedroom.  This plant, despite the benefits to indoor air quality, lives on neglect.  It prefers low light conditions, temperatures about 50ºF and moist soil.  Sansevieria is recommended for offices, bathrooms and other low light living areas.  Our bedroom has a northwest facing window so there is light but it is not a bright light.  I'm using a watering globe to ensure the plant doesn't dry out.  Other than that it is a very tolerant, low maintenance houseplant.

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Epic Cordless, Electric Self-Propelled Mower

Our New Mower

My husband has been looking for a mower solution for quite sometime.  An electric mower was not a practical option for our last two rural properties.  Gasoline fumes triggered respiratory problems so for a couple of years we hired a lawn cutting service.  That had a lot of benefits especially when we were away.  Two years ago we bought a very nice gas powered mower and while it did save us money it was not a good solution for reducing our carbon footprint or reducing respiratory problems.  The reality is using a gas lawnmowers for one hour puts out the same amount of smog-forming emissions as 40 new automible do in an hour!  My husband finally found the ideal solution - a cordless, electric self-propelled mower for the new house.

He bought the Epic cordless electric self-propelled mower on sale a few days after we accepted the offer for the sale of our home.  This is a 19" full sized steel deck mower that uses the 24V Terra Phase Power System.  There is no gas, no oil, and no emissions.  According to the label we will save as much as $327 over the next 6 years in fuel and maintenance costs compared to a regular gas mower.  The mower has a push button start and rear wheel drive.  It mulches and there is a bagger (not pictured).  I've used it twice now and the most impressive feature is the noise level.  This is a very quiet mower!  You can barely tell the mower is going so we have greatly reduced the noise pollution we create through lawn maintenance.  The two batteries stay in the actual charger when the mower is not in use.  They only go into the mower compartment during use.  While we are currently charging the batteries using hydro, they can be charges via a solar panel and inverter.  One charge is enought to cut 7,000 to 10,000 square feet.  Our last property was 17,500 square feet so it would have taken two charges to cut the lawn but this lot is 11,500 square feet but buildings, gardens and pool reduce the square footage to under 10,000 square feet so we can cut the full lawn on one charge.  We will store the batteries indoors for the winter. 

With the purchase of this battery powered mower along with our battery powered trimmer/edger we have effectively eliminated the use of gasoline for any gardening equipment.  We have greatly reduced our carbon footprint as well as lessened noise pollution we produce.  I am rather pleased with this reduction!

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Yardworks Cordless Grass Trimmer/Edger

Yardworks Cordless Grass Trimmer/Edger

Yards need weeding, trimming and edging even if you replace the grass with another ground cover.  My husband bought a Yardworks cordless grass trimmer/edger just before we sold our previous house so I had the opportunity to test it on a larger rural lot.  The beauty of this edger is it is battery powered.  Using battery powered yard maintenance equipment makes a lot of sense when moving towards living off the grid.  These devices can be charged using solar power and and inverter.  Even if we never get entirely off the grid which is less of a possibility now that we are living in town, we can still set up solar panels to recharge our lawn maintenance equipment as well as my husband's battery powered tools.  The removable battery sits just below the handle for easy removal to the charger. 

This trimmer can easily be turned into an edger by adjusting the handle knob.  I have to say that I am quite impressed with the performance!  There are no extension cords to worry about damaging and no gasoline fumes to have to deal with.  Unlike the gas powered trimmer, the battery powered one starts up with only a press of the button.  There is no fussing with the spool of cutter line either as all you do is pop it into place then it is automatic from there.   The battery lasts about 20 minutes which was more than sufficient to trim our larger rural property. 

I've used it twice in our new urban location without a problem.  As you can see we have a bricked drive so I even used it on edging mode to rid the cracks of weeds.  The first time, the trimmer was used here it lasted over the twenty minutes and that's with a bit more trimming than normal given I was cleaning up the driveway.  The nice thing about this battery powered trimmer/edger is I know it reduces our carbon footprint.  It is an environmentally conscious product that doesn't contribute to air pollution and it is quieter than electric and gas powered trimmers so reduces noise pollution.  That's always a good thing!

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

My First New Houseplant at Our New Home

First New Houseplant at Our New Home

October 12, 2011

The beauty of houseplants is aside of adding life and vitality to a room while softening the hard edges of the room is they can be used to camouflage those little room idiosyncrasies that can be a bit annoying.  When the Bell satellite television installer ran our lines he made the assumption we would place the television in the corner thus hiding the large switch box.  The problem was there was no furniture in the room.  We want the television on the end wall, not in the corner so my husband straightened the wires then we did a bit of camouflaging with an endtable and larger plant.

The main television room is open to the dining room so it can carry a larger plant nicely.  A couple of the local stores have houseplants on sale so I've been taking advantage of the sales buying houseplants as I find a spot for them.  The first houseplant I bought was this beautiful tropical.  It is in the palm family but did not have a tag for positive identification.  The palm is about three and a half feet tall.  It  does just what it was intended to do, looking quite happy in it's new home.  Now I need to find a nice decorative pot for the palm to sit in.

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Houseplant Problem at Our Last House

I have always had an abundance of houseplants in every home we've lived in.  I do mean an abundance too, with houseplants in pretty much every room.  Houseplants are a wonderful natural way to soften a room, bring interest and life into a room and improve air quality.  Our last hose was horrid for houseplants and yet I never did figure out what the problem was.  I honestly believe the house was veiled in bad karma!

We moved into that house in June of 2007.  Every houseplant I brought with us and there were a lot, was dead within three weeks with the exception of my variegated pothos.  Even the poor pothos looked like it was struggling though.  I lost my beautiful Boston fern, asparagus fern, several African violets, all of my indoor herbs and even the potted English ivy.  I spent close to $100 replenishing my houseplants figuring there was something with the move that affected the houseplants.  Within the following three weeks most of the new plants were dead.  Over the next four years, every single houseplant I brought into the house died while the poor pothos continued to struggle.  I brought in tomato plant clippings and herbs from the garden.  It was a struggle to keep them going throughout the winter at that house and yet I had been doing that successfully for years in our other houses.  I started cacti seeds from Nevada brought back from our spring vacation in 2008.  They germinated and survived but were struggling as well.  Of the four springs that I started seed trays, the majority failed.

It was not for lack of effort.  I tried to troubleshoot.  There were no signs of insect infestation or fungal problems in the house.  I used chamomile tea to ward off any dampening off for seedlings, fertilized houseplants, moved them into the sunporch during the nicer weather, nippped and tucked them, supplemented with plant lighting and still the houseplants failed to thrive.

We started moving in here September 1 of this year.  I brought the struggling potos and cacti, a sad statement of how bad that house was for growing houseplants.  Within a week both were looking quite healthy!  I went houseplant shopping, picking up a few here and there whenever I had to go shopping for something else.  It has been a little over six weeks now since we started moving in and the houseplants are looking marvelous.  I can't wait to share what I bought with you, the reader!

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

The Huge Weed at Our Vacation Home

We have lived in I  beautiful Ontario, Canada most of our lives so we are used to gardening in Zone 6A.  We know what is considered weeds and what isn't.  Our vacation home is in US Hardiness Zone 9B.  We bought it in March of 2010 but did not see it until May of 2010.  The house had been empty for over a year so there was a bit of overgrowth.  While we have become accustomed to some of the plants at our vacation home, we are still very much newbies to gardeing in this zone.

We spent a couple of weeks in May at our vacation home.  A neighbour behind us mentioned we had a weed at the back of the house.  I looked at the 'weed' but it looked like a small tree to me so we left it.  When we arrived at our vacation home in September, the small tree was huge!  I honestly could not believe that a 'tree' that was about two feet tall when we left in May was well over ten feet tall .  To make matters worse there were a couple more of the free trees in our garden.  Apparently the rainy season was very generous to us!

Now, I still would have left this woody weed.  To me it looked like a tree.  We hired another resident in our resort community to clean-up our gardens.  He never told us what the plant was but he did confirm that it was indeed considered a weed.  We gave him full reign to remove any plant in the gardens that wasn't considered ornamental.  I picked his brains about the care and maintenance of the existing plants.

Pictured is the back of the house with the huge weed removed and bushes shaped.  He removed the stump the following day.  Now all of the bushes have been shaped we will be able to maintain the gardens easier.  The gentleman we hired was originally going to maintain the gardens each month but before we left he said he would not be able to due to increased reactions to fire ant bites.  We have not noticed any fire ants around our house.  At any rate we are now in the position of looking for another gardener to care for out property when we aren't there.

The reality is we spend about three months of the year at our vacation home but it is spread out two to five weeks at a time May, September and December.  We rent the property out January through April but the tenants do not do any yard work.  The resort does the yard mowing and trimming so at least we don't have to worry about that.   The rainy season is June through August precisely when we aren't there to catch any problems as they happen before they become big problems.

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Turning Cold

It's turned rather cold here meaning that we aren't getting a lot done in the way of gardening at home or at the vacation home.  We left home in beautiful Ontario, Canada just before we had to turn on the furnace.  According to our kids who are housesitting and doing a bit of garden work there has been few days since we left that they could get anything done.  It was a balmy 90°F plus at our vacation home, so still using AC and staying out of the direct sun.   Despite the high temperatures we managed to get a lot of landscaping done, some of it hired out.  Then last Sunday it turned rather cold in the sunny south just in time for us to be heading back to Ontario yesterday.  With any luck we will have a nice Indian summer so I can get my crocuses planted.

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Old Garden Gnome Taking a Rest

Old Garden Gnome Taking a Rest

September 19, 2011

I love taking walks around our vacation home resort to enjoy not only the scenery and wild life but to get a bit of daily exercise.  Being a garden gnome lover, I'm always on the look-out to greet other gnomes.  I spotted this tire, old gnome taking a break from his gardening duties under the shade of a toad stool.  He must have been working quite hard throughout the night to be this tired!

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Unidentified Frog

Unidentified Frog

September 23, 2011

For the most part I love garden visitors.  Ok, I'm not overly happy about having some pests visit but you have to take the bad with the good.  Frogs are always a welcomed visitor in my gardens both at our permanent home and vacation home.  I'm getting to know some of the garden visitors at our vacation home.  This cute little guy was enjoying our carport.  I'm not sure what he is but I think he may be a Greenhouse Frog.  

Happy Gardening!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011