Operation: Houseplant Rescue

My houseplants have to put up with a lot.

Things like only getting watered when they're visibly drooping, and pretty much being ignored the rest of the time. No fertilizer.

Did I mention not much water?

Somehow the philodendrons, spider plant, and the aloe have stuck with me anyhow. Oh, and a mystery plant I got at a garage sale, and an orchid that was given to me.

In fact, I think they were all given to me (except for the garage sale find.)

Lucky them.

I guess.

 

This orchid, by the way, is not the finicky customer all those websites would make it out to be. Just when I think I've killed it off for sure, it grows a new leaf, or blooms...again.

It hasn't been my favorite, because it sort of looked like an alien life form for a long time. It had a baby plant growing out of the top of a dead flower stem, complete with roots reaching into the sky.

Call me heartless, but I finally just snipped off the whole shebang.

I just can't handle orchid offspring right now.

It makes the plant look so much more normal.

It's better. Much, much, better.

 

ANYWAY, back to the topic of hand...

Oh pish! It can't be that bad! (I can hear you muttering.)

Oh yes, friends, it can.

It's pitiful, really.

Houseplants and I have had a rocky relationship from the beginning.

I like having them around, but I just don't have it in me to baby them.

...or provide basic care, it would seem.

 

It was past time to do something about these poor, long-suffering plants.

 

 Some of the extent of the problem becomes clear in this picture:

the overflowing aloe vera, several inches of orchid roots clearly visible in a pot way too big for it, and you can't see it, but the spider plant actually had a root coming up out of the top of the soil.

I've never seen that happen before with a spider plant.

 

Houseplants: post intervention

 

I can almost hear the spider plant's sigh of relief as it stretches out in its new pot. Ditto the aloe.

Meanwhile, the orchid is in a pot much more reasonable for its size, and wouldn't you know it--all the roots are actually covered up. I read somewhere you can use bark as a planting medium for orchids. So I got some mulch out of my flowerbed. It's probably the exact wrong thing to do, but knowing this orchid, it probably won't matter one bit.

One philodendron got a bigger pot, and the other got a new cache pot. The mystery plant in the back was put in a slightly smaller pot, as well.

 

I have 3 containers of aloe starts to give away now.

 

Okay, everybody set for the next couple of years?

Ha!

I only wish I was kidding.