Plants! Request for help
Aug. 22nd, 2010 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raxI... do not have a plants icon. I wonder if I should get one. [0]
Today I mowed the lawn --- all of it, which took maybe an hour and a half --- and tended to some plants in the back. Sadly, it looks like the housesitter who did an excellent job tending to the cats and gecko... forgot about the plants. The herbs are all dead, the plant from ab3nd is dead, and two of the three berry bushes are more brown than green. There's still some green left, though, and I'd like to save them if I can. The thing is: I have no idea how. Basically all I know about plants is that they are evil and how photosynthesis works. Is it best to trim away the dead stuff? Do you pluck off dead leaves, or let them fall naturally? If I do trim away dead stuff, do I cut into the green, or above the green, or? Is there a book I should buy?
I'm mostly OK with gardening being a "try again next year" project but if I can keep these bushes alive I won't have to buy new ones next year and that would be a big plus. (And there are a couple of bushes in the front that I think might have been berry bushes and I jut didn't know!) Any help is appreciated.
[0] If you are not saying "Holy crap" right now, perhaps because you're a new friend, I have a serious phobia of plants. Super maladaptive, right? When I was three or four I would not walk on grass, even with shoes on, even with a blanket on the grass. When I was around twelve there was this bizarre incident where my parents wanted me to trim a weed and I was sufficiently scared of the weed that I chose to sit in my bedroom all day without food rather than touch it. Eventually, really confused, they relented and dealt with the weed themselves. This has always made me sad because my hippie-woo-foxy side is super into undergrowth and shade and forest and those places would feel comfortable if they didn't trigger the phobia. I've gotten much better about this over the years, a big chunk from dating people like Stephen and Cassandra who are serious plant people but also just from saying "Goddamnit I do not want to be terrified of plants" and working on it. I once spent an hour staring down a poinsettia and almost touching it. In retrospect this is utterly ridiculous; at the time it was totally serious.
Today I mowed the lawn --- all of it, which took maybe an hour and a half --- and tended to some plants in the back. Sadly, it looks like the housesitter who did an excellent job tending to the cats and gecko... forgot about the plants. The herbs are all dead, the plant from ab3nd is dead, and two of the three berry bushes are more brown than green. There's still some green left, though, and I'd like to save them if I can. The thing is: I have no idea how. Basically all I know about plants is that they are evil and how photosynthesis works. Is it best to trim away the dead stuff? Do you pluck off dead leaves, or let them fall naturally? If I do trim away dead stuff, do I cut into the green, or above the green, or? Is there a book I should buy?
I'm mostly OK with gardening being a "try again next year" project but if I can keep these bushes alive I won't have to buy new ones next year and that would be a big plus. (And there are a couple of bushes in the front that I think might have been berry bushes and I jut didn't know!) Any help is appreciated.
[0] If you are not saying "Holy crap" right now, perhaps because you're a new friend, I have a serious phobia of plants. Super maladaptive, right? When I was three or four I would not walk on grass, even with shoes on, even with a blanket on the grass. When I was around twelve there was this bizarre incident where my parents wanted me to trim a weed and I was sufficiently scared of the weed that I chose to sit in my bedroom all day without food rather than touch it. Eventually, really confused, they relented and dealt with the weed themselves. This has always made me sad because my hippie-woo-foxy side is super into undergrowth and shade and forest and those places would feel comfortable if they didn't trigger the phobia. I've gotten much better about this over the years, a big chunk from dating people like Stephen and Cassandra who are serious plant people but also just from saying "Goddamnit I do not want to be terrified of plants" and working on it. I once spent an hour staring down a poinsettia and almost touching it. In retrospect this is utterly ridiculous; at the time it was totally serious.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-23 11:03 pm (UTC)Anyhow. Good for you, attacking your fears and facing the challenges of gardening!
I sometimes say that I like plants especially, because when (not if) they die, I'm the only one to cry (in my experience, anyhow).
The worst was when I'd nursed a macho fern from infancy (brought back from Hawaii by jsd my (first) frosh year) to more than a foot across, at which point it was extending rooted shoots (to make more ferns), which I tried to plant and take back with me to MA, but the trip was too much. The mommy plant I foolishly placed in the care of a non-plant-type housemate, who quickly neglected it.
The most sudden was when I discovered overnight that pitcher plants do not, in fact, deal well with open windows in winter. ;_;
Anyhow, good luck with the plant care and revival. :D
And, don't plant blackberries: they'll eat you alive. :(
(this comment brought to you by smiley-faces! :P )
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-23 11:06 pm (UTC)