As the holidays continue this week, I am spending more time with my indoor plants. My orchid has been blooming for months. The plant sits in an east-facing window with a mass of orchid bark around its roots. I water the roots occasionally and keep the plant cool. Although the room has a wood stove burning during the coldest days, the plant gets a cool draft right next to the window.
I also have amaryllis bulbs shooting up stems but no flowers yet. They will provide a long-term show by mid-January. I could start paperwhite Narcissus bulbs still for January blooms as well. Paperwhites grow quickly and add a strong fragrance—some say “stinky odor”—to winter-stuffy rooms. Since they don’t need fertilizer and won’t be saved from year to year, I don’t bother with potting soil.
To start paperwhite bulbs, begin with a dish or bowl about two inches deep. Fill the dish about halfway with small stones, then arrange the bulbs—they can be touching—on top of the stones, pointy side up. Fill around the bulbs with more stones until the pebbles reach the widest part of the bulbs. Now fill the dish with water to just below the level of the stones. Place the dish in a bright location.
Has your beautiful Thanksgiving/Christmas cactus lost its luster? Although called “cactus,” these plants prefer regular but well-drained moisture. Also, low light causes buds to drop and the plant to grow poorly. Make sure your plants are near a window, away from heating vents, and rotate the plant to expose all plant stems to sunlight. Try placing foil or other reflective material under the plant and to the sides to create more light as well.
Dry indoor air can create a desert microclimate in homes. That is perfect if you have traditional cacti but not so nice for our more common tropical houseplants. Sadly, a humidifier in a room rarely adds enough humidity around your plants and misting dries up too quickly. Instead, group your tropicals that need similar temperatures and humidity together. Provide humidity trays under a few groups and they will all benefit from the humid air created as the water evaporates from the trays over time.
This week I am also exploring some dried plant material that I have saved for winter arrangements. I am not experienced at this. So I have a full, lazy gardener admission: It took some work and trial and massive error. I won’t share the truly awful. My goal was to use easily compostable paint and only natural material. It was hard. I decided to paint these seed heads with diluted white tempera paint by dipping them into the color. No acrylic spray paint for me! I learned that fully dried organic material will change shape in the wet paint but will dry back to its original, pre-painted form—mostly. I think this time of year is for experimentation and research. What can you learn?
Early winter is also time for organizing the summer gardening gear. Maybe you need to sharpen tools, but in my case, I just needed to get the summer stuff out of the way to make room for snow shovels, car scrapers, and a snow thrower. We mounted a rack for all the messy, easily tangled peony plant hoops. I tried to put too many on one hook and invariably a shovel knocked a clump behind the bin and swearing ensued. So we decided to hang a dedicated rack for out-of-season gear. This consists of a two-by-one-inch board with coat hooks and screws partially screwed into the board at intervals. The board was then screwed into the garage wall (works in a shed, or basement too). Is it elegant? Only in its simplicity. Is it functional? Absolutely!
While I enjoy my houseplants, I still look out the windows, and feeding wild birds keeps the view lively. Position feeders where you can see them easily from your most comfortable indoor spots—a dining table or while sitting by the fire. A few evergreen shrubs or trees nearby provide a safe haven for birds who will take a seed from the feeder to eat in private. Suet provides necessary fat for our winter birds. Black Oil Sunflower seed is popular with the widest variety of birds. Dried meal worms will attract passing bluebirds to your feeders. I have a red-bellied woodpecker visiting regularly for the first time this year. The most reliable visitors at the moment are black-eyed juncos, who look elegant with their black back and white chest feathers.
Soon that cut evergreen tree loaded with decorations will need to come down—can you say fire hazard? What will you do with yours? Some towns and rubbish companies will offer tree pickup. Check with your town’s DPW. Community groups may also collect them for a small fee as a fundraiser. Perhaps a local goat farmer will feed it to her goats?
You can repurpose yours by removing all the decorations and laying the tree near your bird feeders as another windbreak and roosting spot. If you are in a very windy location, I recommend gently staking the tree in place somehow or it might blow around the neighborhood making you unpopular. Another option: Prune the boughs off the trunk and use the greens as added mulch protection on your perennial beds. Save the limbed trunk for future use as a long weight to hold polyester fabric in place along a nursery bed or cold frame.
Finally, I wish you a joyous New Year celebration and a productive, environmentally responsible 2025.
I call myself the Lazy Berkshire Gardener because I don’t want to work too hard in my gardens. I want to enjoy them. I find it easier to observe my landscape and let the compost happen, the water pool up, or daisies to self-sow. I look for ways to do the minimum task for the biggest impact. For example, mulching is better than spraying and much better than weeding all season. I look for beautiful, low-maintenance plants that thrive in or at least tolerate my garden conditions. Plus, I am willing to live with the consequences if I miss something.
