Who wouldn’t want a delicious monster in their home?
The care and feeding (and hair cut) of an old family friend
House plants have been on a lively cruise back to popularity. For years they were out of favour, out of style and hard to find.
That was a crime, but now they are riding a victory lap. Married to their popularity is a sharp increase in price. Buy a sizeable palm, fig, or citrus and prepare for a $50 to $500 piece tag depending on size.
A real darling of the houseplant cult is the descriptively named Monstera deliciosa, a common and truly horrible name for this beauty, is Swiss cheese plant, or split-leaf philodendron. Translated as delicious monster, this tropical forest plant, commonly found in southern Mexico and Panama fetches top price at garden centres.
A baby plant might be $20, and climb up to $400 for a monster Monstera. You have to remember that older and bigger plants have been grown and groomed for many months or years by nursery growers, aging like a fine wine, so that contributes to costs.
I’ve had a Monstera for many years, growing in a modest size pot. Over time, the plant will absorb all the nutrients in the soil and grow into a maze of roots. Watering can be difficult as the soil disappears. Time to repot.
Find a big, shady spot outside, spread a tarp underneath the pot and right away you are likely to find that the roots are nearly welded to the sides of the pot.
Once again, I found the kitchen supplied the best tool for part of the job, a cake spatula with a long flexible metal blade, excellent for squeezing into tight spaces.
After loosening all the space between the wall of the pot and the plant roots, it took two people and a lot of horsepower to ratchet the Monstera free.
Roots spread wall to wall. So, out of the tool bag came hooks, saws, and secateurs. The Hori Hori Japanese gardening knife was particularly suited to freeing tangled roots with its serrated blade and sharp point. Roots were trimmed and untangled and old soil was brushed away.
Reducing the roots and scraping away old soil allowed the Monstera to be put back in the same size pot, but with a lot of new potting medium. I could have moved it up to a bigger pot, but it would be heavier to move and need more space inside the house.
The Monstera lives outside for the summer, in the shade of a Japanese maple, and puts out many new leaves. The growth is horizontal, because the Monstera in actually a vine, and wants to climb. Some people do train them to a support but I like the rambling look.
It’s a satisfying job, giving a plant a haircut and new look, something we humans in Hamilton have been missing due to the pandemic.
The beautiful cool temperatures make good conditions for these types of garden chores. The weather is also benevolent to the beautiful plants of June, roses, iris and peonies.
After the Monstera surgery, I went for a stroll along Dundurn Street North. While driving I had noticed some beautiful front yards, but little is revealed when glimpsed from a moving car. A walk is so much better.
In one yard, pink peonies and roses grew in waves in a yard framed by a white picket fence. It was as pretty as a tourist brochure for Cape Cod.
Another cottage style house had a walkway to the front door framed by urns full of pink petunias and lobelia.
Many houses had signs in the windows or chalked on the sidewalk supporting health care workers soldiering through the COVID-19 pandemic. And, in a cottage-style garden nestled in front of a lovely porch, a Black Lives Matter sign stood boldly against the foliage. Compassion and equality have a place in the garden too.