The great autumn migration has begun – the moving of tender plants from outdoors to indoors. At sunrise today it was 38 F, not factoring in the brisk wind. It’s supposed to reach the mid-30s tonight, and there’s a larger chance of an actual frost tomorrow night. Yesterday I moved the potted tender plants indoors (except for the petunias, which were already not doing too well, and the potted purple basil, which was already flowering anyway), and the number of plants in my apartment has dramatically increased:
Before the First Migration:
- 12 catci
- 3 aloe: 1 Aloe vera, 1 Tiger’s Jaw aloe, 1 miniature aloe I got at the fall plant sale
- 3 other succulents: a Christmas cactus (also from the fall plant sale), a jade plant, and an echeveria
- numerous other houseplants: umbrella plant, variegated ivy, dieffenbachia, 2 sad African violets, 2 philodendrons, pothos, spider plant, tender cyclamen, and an unknown variegated plant
After the First Migration, this is what has been added:
- 7 pots of tender geraniums, 2-4 plants in each pot (mix of ornamental & scented ones)
- 2 pots of tuberose bulbs (1 pot single-flowering, 1 pot double-flowering)
- bay leaf tree
- lemongrass
- brugmansia ‘Charles Grimaldi’ (one of the oldest brugmansia cultivars still available in the US)
- a pot containing 2 fucshias and a tender sweet violet
- tweedia
- gotu kola
- cestrum ‘Orange Zest’
- snail vine
And I still have to pot up some things that are out there in the garden.
[The brugmansia and some of the geraniums have already survived one winter inside. The rest of the plants are spending their first winter indoors.]
These are the plants I’m most strongly considering adding to the indoor fray:
- My three rosemary plants (’Arp’, ‘Tuscan Blue’, and ‘Irene’)
- Flowering tobaccos – supposed to be easy to overwinter inside, according to a book I read this month
- Coleus plants & irisene & Persian shield & quicksilver (all foliage plants)
- Salvia discolor, which is difficult to find in the US
- Cuban oregano (a relative of coleus, it looks like a very fuzzy one), which is common as a houseplant so should be easy to overwinter, and is difficult to find in my region
- Lantana ‘Samantha’, the variegated lantana I grew this year
- Salvia ‘Indigo Spires’, which is not hardy in my climate, and is currently blooming away in the garden
- Agapanthus
Exactly where I would fit all these, I am not yet sure! The table is already nearly full, and that’s with some of the tender plants being elsewhere in the apartment.
On top of that, when I went to the nursery greenhouse today to get a present, I ended up getting two blooming African violets and a begonia. The begonia was because I’d never seen the cultivar ‘Escargot’ locally and I find it so charming (its leaves intricately curl like a snail’s shell), and the African violets because having sad, diseased ones makes me sad, and now that the A/C is out of the east window, African violets will do so well there (I know because before they became diseased at some point after being moved out of the window to make room for the A/C in May, my older African violets were happy in it), and so I got a couple of blooming ones. I think I’d best put a moratorium on further plant purchases, though.
(I apologize for the lack of apostrophes in captions; WordPress’s photo software won’t allow them.)
Tender plants, just brought in yesterday: Brugmansia Charles Grimaldi is the huge plant in the foreground.
Newly indoor plants from the other side. My apartment kitchen is very large (by city standards) but makes very poor use of space, with most of it simply empty floor/walls. I take advantage of this in winter by setting up a large card table and putting most of the tender plants on it. One of the two windows faces south and the other faces east, so it gets heaps of sunlight in wintertime.
Brugmansia Charles Grimaldi, newly indoors & with six buds: I felt badly bringing this inside since it seemed to be doing so well outside, but kept reminding myself that a slightly sadder indoor plant was better than a newly dead (frost-killed) outdoor plant. I will be curious to see if its buds open indoors.
Tuberose, blooming indoors: The last tuberose was budded instead of blooming when I brought it in yesterday. Overnight, the first bud opened! This is the double-flowered variety. Tuberoses, popular in Victorian days, have a scent that makes me imagine that this is what Tahiti smells like.
Pothos (foreground), one of the philodendrons, and five of the tender geraniums (4 scented, 1 ornamental).
A closer look at the geraniums from the last photo. The 4 scented ones are some of the scented ones I mentioned here that I got at the end-of-season sale at the nursery. The pink-flowered ornamental one is the one I got at the farmers market this year.
Gotu kola, newly indoors: I have yet to find anything on overwintering gotu kola, a tender medicinal plant, so thus far I am making it up as I go along. I set it on the window seat when the sun lights it, and move it up to a shelf (out of kittypaw reach) the rest of the time. The pot is one I bought from a local potmaker last year.
Cacti in south window: The cacti seem to do well all year round in this south-facing window. If you look closely, you can see the Earth Machine composter in the background, which I now use to store finished compost that hasnt been sieved yet.
Houseplants in eastern window (L-R): Tiger Jaw aloe, 2 African violets, spider plant, another philodendron, jade plant.
Aloe vera: After taking the above photos, I rearranged one of my kitchen shelves to make a space for the Aloe vera, which loves such a direct-sun spot as this and which should be safer away from the newly indoor plants (just in case any have brought along a disease or pest).
The aforementioned present that I got at the greenhouse today, an indoor orchid. I wont be visiting till tomorrow, so for today I have it in the kitchen, sequestered from the other plants to limit chances of disease/pest transfer.
