I’m dreaming of a green Christmas! Indoors finally filled with plants
As winter takes hold it’s the perfect time to turn your attention indoors and fill your home with beautiful greenery, says Agnes Stevenson
The recent spell of cold nights followed by sunny days has meant temperatures in the greenhouse have been fluctuating widely.
To keep everything inside ticking along nicely, I’ve been opening the door for a few hours every day to prevent fungal diseases building up.
There was a suggestion of grey mould on a new tray of hardy cyclamen but I caught it before it could spread and there has been no sign of recurrence. Meanwhile, I’ve been careful to water cuttings and seedlings sparingly and not allow anything to sit in damp compost.
I thought I had everything covered until I opened the door a few days ago and found two dozen sweet peas had been nibbled in the night and the floor littered with stalks. Also, a whole tray of rocket seedlings had vanished.
Going by the signs, I reckon the culprit was a vole, which must have found its way in along the drainage channel that runs the full length of the greenhouse, or perhaps it simply scampered in through the door during the day.
I’ll have to wait now until March before I can sow more sweet peas, but the nibbled stems were the promise of very early blooms, so I might also buy established seedlings from the garden centre next spring so I can have a guarantee of flowers to pick in June.
While the sweet peas may have suffered a setback, indoors things are looking better. After the latest round of renovations, we have finally been able to fill the house with plants and now peace lilies, ivies, and orchids flourish in abundance, along with a very handsome yucca.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be watching all of these to see how they respond to the
environment, checking the compost daily for signs it is drying out, and watching the leaves for the slightest sign they are wilting or turning brown. I’m sure there will some fine tuning of position, light levels and watering regimes to be undertaken, but these permanent residents have been joined by a festive poinsettia, which, after losing a few bottom leaves when it arrived, is now thriving.
An abundance of houseplants is easier to care for than one single specimen. Plants develop beneficial communities, regulating air quality and moisture levels in a way that benefits all of them.
If you’ve got two or three sickly plants dotted around the house, try grouping them together and you’ll see this in action; they’ll develop a micro-climate and be more likely to thrive as a result. Just so long as they share the same requirements for heat, light and moisture, plants do better in clusters than they do alone. It’s how they grow in the wild, after all.