The Patio Gardener's Guide to Potting Soil

Tell me if this is weird:  Last week, I finally had a chance to go buy a pot for my gardenia, gifted to me almost 4 weeks ago by my aunt Olivia (I know, I should've planted it ages ago... where does time go??).  With it, I also bought a large bag of potting soil, which I left in my trunk overnight because it was too heavy to carry up along with the very large pot.  The next morning, on my way to work, I enjoyed the smell of fresh soil in my car so much that I left it in my car for the entirety of the week just so I could smell the fresh soil every time I got in my car....  I have always loved the smell of dirt.

As a side note, my father has always loved the smell of cow fields -- not quite the industrial closely herded cow stink that comes from that part of the drive up the Grapevine but a slightly different cow stink of black and white spotted dairy cows in wide green Dutch fields.  Smells very similar to me (stank), but my father likes it... remind him of home in Holland.

Since I've had dirt on my mind, I have decided to do a post on the types of potting soil.  As I started to read about all the types of potting soil, I realized that this is no simple topic!  So many variations!  So, here it goes...

What is good soil?

Plants need air, water, and nutrients from their soil.  That's why gardeners obsess over their soil type -- Too silty?  May not have enough air if it gets compacted.  Clay?  Likely retains too much moisture for certain types of plants.  Too sandy?  The opposite of clay, it is more likely to dry out.

Well, as container gardeners, we have to pay for dirt, but we get to choose dirt that has characteristics we like.  Like well-aerated soil that will retain moisture and nutrients, and maybe even has some fertilizer in it already.

There are separate variables as well, most notably the acidity of the soil which is often varied by adding lime components which increase the pH (make it less acidic and more alkaline, in case you have forgotten your grade school science).

What is in potting soil?

The main ingredients in potting soil are generally--

-Sphagnum peat moss -- Sphagnum moss grows in bogs.  Sphagnum peat moss is partially decomposed sphagnum moss which is added to soil.  Although there is some debate about the sustainability of this peat moss, it is widely used as a soil additive to improve aeration and water retention.

-Vermiculite or Perlite -- both inorganic materials used for aeration and water retention.  Vermiculite holds more water, perlite aerates a bit more, but they are similar.  Perlite are those bright white balls that look almost like styrofoam that you sometimes in potting soil. 

-Aged composted materials -- nutrients!  This may include manure of various types (the stuff I use has earthworm castings and bat guano)

What are the types of potting soil?

It depends on how specific we want to get, but the main types so far as I can tell include:

-All purpose -- The name is pretty descriptive.

-Premium / Professional (some sources say there is a difference... after some searching, this does not appear to be a broadly agreed upon difference) -- These tend to have additional fertilizer additives. 

-Seed starting mix -- Good medium for your seeds and cuttings.

-Plant specific mixes -- from here, the options are numerous...

*Acidic mix:  for plants that like acidic soil, like blueberries or azaleas... or gardenias apparently.  Oops.

*Cactus mix:  for plants that like well-draining soil like cacti or succulents

*Orchid mix:  specifically for orchids which do not like to have wet roots.  It's actually bark, not so much soil.

*Others... African violet mix, Rose mix, Bonsai mix, etc.

Can I make my own potting soil?

Certainly!  It may be cheaper than buying bags and bags of soil if you're motivated.  The Home Depot website which I have linked has a fantastic chart on how to make your own potting mix using various proportions of the basic soil components.

My approach:

I use all purpose organic potting soil rather than premium potting soils for most of my plants.  I then fertilize intermittently with Miracle Grow, either the regular stuff or Bloom Booster.  I only use organic pest control substances.  Over time as I get better at gardening, I intend to transition over to completely organic gardening.  Especially living so close to the ocean where our drainage can have direct impact on the earth around us, I hate to think that my hobby could have ill-effects on the ocean and the world.  That's an aside.  Maybe I'll write a separate post on the environment sometime.  For my succulents, I use cactus mix, of course.  And then occasionally, I buy special plant specific soils for my blueberries, for instance.

Well, I hope that has been educational.  It's certainly been educational for me...  starting with the fact that the gardenias I just planted this afternoon probably should've gone into acidic soil!  I may be going to the store for some acidic additives.  

Speaking of the gardenia...  I love this pot that I got for my gardenia, both because I love blue and also because it has that Italian terracotta look that I've been obsessed with since going to Italy.  It's not actually terracotta though but rather a light weight polyurethane foam made by this company.  Not cheap, but way lighter and quite lovely...

Always a work in progress...

An aside, I've got upcoming Hawaii on the brain... IZ "White Sandy Beach"

Revisiting TFS

Great news!  We are not moving!  We will get to stay in our apartment for one more year.....  which means one more year in my lovely patio, gardening!  I appreciate my garden that much more, having faced the prospect of losing the opportunity to garden!

Well, as soon as I found this out, I did not waste any time.  Last week my front stoop got a much needed makeover.  You may remember our "thriller filler spiller" pot from last June.

If you don't, here is what it started of as:

Very cute

It turned into this:

A bit overgrown

Which turned into this:

Disaster

Now there are a few things going wrong here.

1) The "thriller" fuchsia plant, instead of growing out and full, turned "leggy", growing up and up.  I tried pruning it a bit when this happened, but it was too little too late.  Furthermore, the flowers always grew at the top, and it hurt me to chop off these tiny dancers

2) The "filler" Helichysum, while a lovely color, was not a filler at all.  It too grew long and leggy.

3) Let's be honest, do you ever see the same plant outside a well-manicured building in the summer to winter?  No.  I should have replanted long ago, but I was hopeful because the fuchsia was is a perennial.

About the only thing that did not disappoint was the "spiller" Muehlenbeckia.  But even that grew a bit aggressively for my tastes, choking out the other plants a bit.

So anyway, it was time to start over.  Learning from my mistakes, I went back to Armstrong to look for a new thriller, filler, spiller.  Specifically, my wish list included a filler that I knew was going to grow into a small dense plant and a softer spiller that maybe would not be so viney.  Having loved the fuchsia's blooms, I wanted to try them again if it was possible that I could find a plant that would somehow grow into a fuller plant.  I didn't have the bug problems I was worrying about with the first one.  So here's the new front door plant family:

Fuchsia = "Thriller"

Notice that this one has more stems, 6 to be total.  According to the people at the gardening center, the pruning has to begin early -- much earlier than the stage you see the plant in now.  The downside of picking this bushier one was that I did not get the multi-colored blooming fuchsia that I preferred (those were already all tall and skinny), but I think these will be quite beautiful as well.

Beautiful Begonia = "Filler"

These popular flowers have somewhat unusual blooms with big waxy leaves that add a nice texture and contrast.  They will also always remind me of my opa who once visited us in Texas.  My dad was convinced no flower could really successfully grow in the Texas heat and our dense clay-like dirt.  And yet, Opa came to visit, planted a bunch of begonias which grew into a luscious garden.  And even came back the next year.  It was amazing.  

Dichondra, aka Silver Falls = "Spiller"

I like the delicate silvery shiny look of these leaves.  And I feel like anything called "Silver Falls" is going to be a good trailing plant.

Here is the final product!  What do you think?

Good luck pot!

Lastly, regardless of how your week is going, today is hump day, and I would like to give you two mid-week pick-me-ups.  First, a few reasons to smile!  And secondly, music from The Lego Movie, which you should definitely watch (warning: if you listen to the clip, you will probably have "Everything is Awesome!" stuck in your head for the rest of the week... is that a bad thing?)  Happy early Valentine's Day! 

The Best Flower Ever

Okay so that photo above was taken approximately 1 year ago.  ONE YEAR.  And this plant is still alive, not just anywhere, but on the top row of my felt hanging planter, which if you've been following my blog, is the planter of death. 

Let me explain something:
ONE human year = SEVEN dog years = EIGHTY-SEVEN Michelle's garden years

This plant is basically 87 plant years old in the mini-cosmos reality of my patio garden.  All its contemporaries have died, and yet it still lives strong.

Furthermore, I neglected to mention, that during winter time when it was too LA-cold to go outside, I didn't water this plant at all.  For at least a month!

So what is this wonder plant?  Dipladenia.  I picked it unaware of its awesomeness because I thought it was pretty.  You might see other tropical plants that look very similar to it vining all over trellises and walls -- these are a very closely related plant called Mandevilla.  Some sources say they are the same, that Dipladenia is the old name and now these plants are called Mandevilla.  Other sources say they are the same family or perhaps Dipladenia are in the Mandevilla family (very confusing).  Nevertheless, from what I can tell, they are slightly different -- Mandevilla grow well as vines while Dipladenia are bushier and do not vine in the same way.

A few facts about Dipladenia:
-Sunlight -- varying sources recommend everything from full shade to full sun; mine are doing well in full sun.
-Originated in South America, they like warm climates
-if your climate is temperate enough, they are "evergreen" as opposed to annuals
-Moderate watering (unless you have a super-plant like mine which is totally okay with drying out a bit)
-A good container plant
-They are the Best Flower Ever

Thank you, dear Dipladenia, for making me feel good about my gardening self.

The last very cool thing about this plant is that the Italians love it too.  I do not know if they are partial to the color red or if they just choose what works, but there were lots of red Dipladenia and Geraniums in Italy.  Below is my Dipladenia's Italian cousin in Rome -- I am sure you recognize the structure in the background!

Anyway, today's really awesome track of the day suits my feelings very well today -- I love this plant and even more than that, I love you for reading my little garden blog.  Que Dios le bendiga!

Evan's favorite

I am not sure which one I would have expected to be my husband's favorite plant in my somewhat broad indoor/outdoor collection of flowers, but it is definitely not this one:

Evan's favorite plant, also known more formally as Kalenchoe blossfeldiana, is a type of succulent, of a larger family of Kalenchoe plants.  In fact, if you have a good memory, you might recall that I actually have another type of Kalenchoe plant, of the magical notoriety.

And just in case you don't believe me, here is another picture of it as a baby.  See, it's written right there on the pot.  

Anyhow, these are actually quite popular as gifts, so you have probably seen them at your local Whole Foods.  In the past, I had actually always seen them in their single petalled version, like so (sources here and here):

I did not actually become aware that they existed in this other multiple petalled type until we went to the Keukenhof where in addition to tons of tulips outside, they were also having a flower show.  One of the flowers featured was the Kalenchoe blossfeldiana.  And it was here that Evan decided he liked them.

Wow! And in Dutch orange!

In the interest of keeping things short and sweet, I will not say too much about them.  I'm feeling bullet points today...  blooming Kalenchoe care:

• They're easy to grow with long-lasting flowers--  a great starter plant
• Plant in well-drained soil (preferably cactus mix)
• Lots of sunshine (they're succulents, remember)
• Not too much water, especially if they're not flowering (they're a succulents!)
• When the blooms turn brown, cut them off so that they will re-flower
• They generally rebloom in the spring, but there are ways to "force" reblooming by altering how much light/dark they are exposed to.  (That's Kalenchoe advanced, so we'll save it for another time.)

And that's all you really need to know to keep your Kalenchoe alive!  After all of the flowers turned brown, Evan insisted that it had died and we should throw it away.  Fortunately, however, I trimmed the dead blooms, and sure enough, it rebloomed (and I didn't even have to wait until spring!).  So it's still his favorite.

Look how much it's grown!

Finally, here's the track of the day, both because it is also Evan's current favorite (he has good taste-- this woman can sing) and because my brother-in-law and very soon to be sister-in-law are getting married this weekend.  Congrats Cal and Rachel!

Roots + New Kids on the Block

And we're back!  Wow, I wish I was more computer savvy...

Anyway... summer!  Even though I don't always get breaks in the summer like I used to, I always think of them as being so much fun.  Fortunately, this summer I have quite a bit of free time, and better yet, I have my sister to come visit me!  Just in the last couple days, we've done some Santa Barbara, some spa, lots of shopping, and gotten sunburnt on the beach (much to my doctorly chagrin).  This past weekend, we saw an outdoor concert at the Hollywood Bowl -- if you've never been, my LA folks, go!  So with summertime concerts on my mind...

 

Roots:

I thought I would be really sad to pull out my tomato plant  which I had put so much blood, sweat, and tears into.  But it was actually a huge relief.  That tomato plant was stressing me out.

Anyway, once I pulled it, here's what I found -- a big ball of roots.  In the second photo, you can actually see how dense the roots got around the plant nanny that was stuck in the dirt there.  One of the primary issues with the plant was that I mistakenly put it in a too-small pot.  Here's what happens when you do that.  

 

Another interesting find whilst uprooting all the dead things was the dahlia tuber.  They are indeed tuberous.  If they had been healthy plants, I could've saved the tubers in a cool, dry place until next year and planted it indoors several weeks before planting it outside to regrow the same plant.  Here's what a dahlia's tuber looks like.  

 

New Kids on the Block:

Out with the old and in with the new.  As I mentioned in my last post, I've started getting more into cooking, in part with the help of a book called "Cooking for Geeks" (I've already learned a lot!).  One thing it mentions in the introduction is that the best and perhaps only way to learn to cook without burning out and quitting is to redefine success.  Instead of a perfect meal, success is having learned something, meaning that failure in the kitchen is a true success in the sense that it offers the most opportunity for learning.  I'm going to go ahead and say that applies to gardening as well.  And there is some joy to being able to pick out new and interesting plants.

So here's the newbies, good luck to you all.

Ptilotus "Joey"

 

An Australian native that I planted as a replacement for the tomato, this specific type of Ptilotus is an annual (meaning it will die at the end of the season), though perennials do exist.  It is touted as being very drought and heat resistant.  That's great!

It also has interesting cone shaped grey-pink flowers.

 

Yes, I instagram'd that.

Portulaca "Cupcake"

 

I picked this lovely plant because I loved the color with my tall yellow pot.  They will also theoretically slowly trail down the sides as they grow.

 

 

These plants are fleshy sun-lovers whose blooms open for a day in the sunlight and close forever at night.  Fortunately, there are a continuous crop of buds waiting to bloom each following day.  

Vinca

 

Also, known as the periwinkle, now's the time for these cute little flowers, often with differently colored centers.  I got them in an array of pink which I am partial to, and if all goes well, they will bloom through early fall.

 

These are also hardy plants with good heat and drought tolerances.

Maidenhair fern

One of my two hydrangeas died (the other one is doing great!).  So I replaced it by the relatively shady area next to the front door with this lovely fern, in part because my neighbor has a huge version of this plant and its leaves are just so delicate looking.

 

Ferns vary, but they generally lovely shady, moist areas (like forests).  They do not grow flowers but are grown for the fronds and reproduce by spores.  

 

How wonderful it is to have a whole new crop of plants growing rather than a bunch of dead plants judging me from outside...  I'm feeling optimistic!  

I leave you with a track that I dedicate to the scores of my LA friends who paid to see New Kids on the Block a week or two ago, you know who you are.  Here's the link.  (Yes, they are not only still around, but making new music...

The Pretty Pot: "Thriller Filler Spiller"

Recently, Evan asked if i might plant something nice by our front door.  Obviously, the answer was yes.  This afforded me the opportunity to buy new plants, explore the world of shade plants, and also come up with a pretty display pot.  It is an art, if you let it be one.

So how do you pick the perfect pot of plant?  First there's the pot, which I won't say much about.  You need to consider your space which affects the size, shape, and color of pot you will choose.  There are also a variety of types of pots available -- ceramic, plastic, terracotta, metal, wood...  it's a topic we can cover another day.  

Then there's the type of plant which will grow well in your pot.  What is the microclimate of the pot's location?  Sun, part sun, shade?  Is the pot one that will dry out quickly?  Is it very hot or windy?  All things that will narrow down your plant selection, and thank goodness, because I have a hard time choosing regardless.

What I really want to talk about is something that is not a new concept in the garden world:  "Thriller, Filler, Spiller"... which makes me inevitably think of Bob Marley singing "Iron, Lion, Zion" every time.  It's a cheesy name that kind of sucks, in my opinion, but I must give credit where credit is due, sort of...  I did not come up with this concept.  But really, neither did the garden world.  It's kind of like the background, middleground, and foreground in art.  In essence, you want something eye-catching and tall in the back, something fairly leafy and space-filling of medium height in the middle, and something short and ideally trailing in the front.

Enough words, let's do some pictures:

Having just been to Italy, I picked a plastic (lightweight!) pot with a Tuscan-esque design and color on a stand to bring the small plants closer to eye level.  

Then I picked my thriller, which was easy -- I have thought fuchsia plants were gorgeous since I saw them in my aunt's garden in Holland.  They do have a proclivity towards developing mites, but I am pre-armed with spray.

It was much more difficult to pick the other plants.  After more than 30min of walking back and forth at Armstrong in indecision, for the filler, I picked Variegated Helichrysum and for the spiller, I chose Muehlenbeckia.

Why?  I wanted a variety of colors and shapes of foliage.  I thought the Helichysum was a nice contrast with the silvery light green that also matched the accent color of our apartment.  Also, the Muehlenbeckia had nice small leaves in a tangle of dark green to contrast the other two plants.  

I absolutely love the fuschia so I stuck with other leafy plants so that other larger flowers wouldn't detract from the delicate look of the fuschia flowers.  But there are tons of options.  Perhaps in another pot, one could do pink impatiens with trailing ivy with a tall purple leafy plant of some sort in the back.  Here's a few examples from the web (Sources linked here: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th):

  

 


And they are all beautiful and different in style!  I have noticed that other people (at least on the interwebs) tend to plant their pots significantly tighter than mine.  How do their plants have space to grow?  Anyway, I planted this pot about 1 month ago, so it is slowly filling out beautifully.  Updated photos to follow!  And remember, next time, you want to plant a pretty pot, think "Thriller, Filler, Spiller"  (or Iron, Lion, Zion).  Happy planting!

In baby stage, welcoming guests

Murder

I feel like I've mentally neglected my little gardening blog recently in the busyness surrounding our upcoming trip to... wait for it... Europe!  This incidentally coincides with me turning 30 and being very nearly done with residency, which would be the first time I will have ever not been in school or training since preschool.  It has been a long road.  I have not, however, neglected my garden.  So better the blog than the garden, I guess...

Anyhow, about a week ago, as I was happily garden outside, I heard a loud CRASH! and turned around to see that the rack that we have in our protruding kitchen window (or whatever you call it) had collapsed, squashing one of my beautiful succulents which I had raised from babyhood, and tearing several leaves off in an apparent attempted murder.

so sad

I was naturally very upset.  "Just throw it away," says my husband, "We can get another one."  He is clearly missing the point.  But once I got over the initial shock, the question remained:  do leaves of succulents grow back?

Now you may know, succulents propagate like crazy.  They are like hydra of the plant world (you may remember hydra from your elementary school science fair-- the kids who had parents who did their science fair projects for them all used hydra that they chopped in half in different configurations).  For instance, see exhibit A, namely the piece of jade that independently fell of my big jade plant and grew roots...

Exhibit A: little roots with no preceding intervention

And now, exhibit B: the same piece of jade, subsequently repotted.  It is growing happily.

Exhibit B: happy growth

See also, exhibit C.  The jumbo piece of jade which also fell off my big jade plant.  I put it in a little pot of water and it has been growing for at least 6 months.  Maybe 8 months, I can't remember.  There is a whole root system now, and I anticipate replanting it at some point.

Exhibit C: jumbo jade

Now, I have seen multiple websites on regrowing Echeveria from the individual leaves-- this is a good one with proof in the pictures-- but I cannot determine from my google searches what will happen to the part of my Echeveria which was skinned alive.  Perhaps it will grow a bunch of little baby side Echeveria?  Perhaps it will dry off that part and nothing will happen?  

Anyway, I am glad that I kept the little leaves.  Perhaps I will end up with lots of little Echeveria babies to plant or give away.  And maybe this is a good experiment.  I will update you with the results.

Here's to regeneration!  Here's to the last week and a half of my twenties!  AND a shout out to my brother who has just turned 25 today!