Houseplants and cut flowers bring life to any room, especially during the cold, dreary days of winter.
Whenever I am home, I like to decorate with an assortment of potted plants and cut blooms that provide color and interesting and expressive foliage. It’s an inexpensive way to add beauty and texture to any space. Right now, I have a cheerful selection of orchids, witch hazel, and amaryllis to enjoy in my kitchen, servery, and sitting room.
Enjoy these photos.
I have some of the most beautiful orchids displayed on the counters and tables of my Winter House. Orchids come in a range of colors. Cymbidium, Phalaenopsis, and Dendrobium orchids come in blue, red, pink, white, purple, yellow, orange, and green.
Orchids grow on every continent except Antarctica. They are native to the tropical regions of Asia, Australia, the Himalayas, and the Philippines. The orchid forms one of the largest families in the plant kingdom, with more than 25,000 species worldwide.
Paphiopedilum orchids are often called ‘lady slippers’ or ‘slipper orchids’ because of their unique pouch-like flowers. The size of orchids depends on the species. They can be quite small or very large. However, every orchid flower is bilaterally symmetrical, which means it can be divided into two equal parts.
Sitting in between two ‘lady slippers’ orchids is this blooming amaryllis. Amaryllis are large, flowering bulbs originally from the Andes Mountains of South America. They show off dazzling trumpet-shaped blooms for weeks on end.
Here’s my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, bringing in two Dendrobium orchids into my Winter House. Native to Southeast Asia, the genus Dendrobium is among the largest of all orchid groups. There are more than 1000 individual species that vary in size, bloom color, and appearance. Dendrobiums grow in all climates, from hot, wet lowlands to high-altitude, colder mountains. All Dendrobiums are epiphytes, which means they grow on other plants. In nature, they grow on the branches of trees.
These white Dendrobiums look great on this center table in my foyer. The evergreen canes are topped by a single three to five inch long inflorescence, each one producing four to eight flowers.
Here is a closer look at the graceful floral sprays. The flowers are bright, showy, and fragrant.
Dendrobium orchids also come in white, pink, orange, yellow, purple, brown, and green.
Here is another Dendrobium in pink. Notice the roots on the outside of the pot – these roots creep over the surface instead of growing in the soil.
Dendrobium flowers are smaller orchid blooms. They have a butterfly-like shape and are about three inches across.
These cut orchids are in my Green Parlor. Once cut, keep them out of direct light to prevent them from dehydrating or fading in color.
Fresh cut orchids have an impressive shelf life. With proper care, they can last for weeks.
Here is a potted Christmas orchid. Rule of thumb – orchids that receive a proper balance of light, humidity, and temperature will have healthy bright green leaves. Too little light would make the leaves very dark. The size, shape, and texture of leaves depend on the habitat. Orchids that live in dry climate have large, thick leaves covered with wax, while species that live in warm and humid areas have thin, elongated leaves.
The Christmas Orchid is a lavender-white flowering, tropical epiphyte orchid native to Columbia with succulent light green leaves.
On the other side of the room is this bright yellow and magenta colored orchid. Optimum temperatures for potted orchids in winter are 45 to 55-degrees Fahrenheit at night and 65 to 75-degrees Fahrenheit during the day.
These cut orchid flowers are on the coffee table.
Each stem has about eight to 10 blooms, each light green with burgundy speckled markings.
I also asked Ryan to bring in some of the blooming witch hazel. I have lots of witch hazel at the farm. The name witch hazel is a derivation from the Old English “wice” or “wiche” meaning pliant or bendable. Early settlers used the pliable branches to make bows for hunting. The same forked branches also became favorite witching sticks of dowsers, who used them to search for underground water. Nowadays, witch hazel is often used ornamentally as splashes of color during winter.
When cutting witch hazel, Ryan slits the base of the stems vertically to allow more intake of water.
The slits don’t have to be long – about an inch.
Then he places like colors into a heavy vase of water to keep them sturdy. Witch hazel grows as small trees or shrubs with numerous clusters of rich yellow to fiery orange-red flowers. Common names include Witch hazel, American Witch hazel, Common Witch hazel, Winterbloom, Snapping Hazelnut, Striped Alder, Spotted Alder, Tobacco-wood, and Water-witch.
Most species bloom from January to March and display beautiful spidery flowers that let off a slightly spicy fragrance. The flowers are able to curl inward to protect the inner structures from freezing during the winter. They unfurl again on milder days.
Witch hazel is a genus of flowering plants in the family Hamamelidaceae. There are four types of witch hazel – Hamamelis virginiana, Hamamelis vernalis, Hamamelis japonica, and Hamamelis mollis. All of these produce flowers with strap-like crumpled petals.
This vase is in my Winter House kitchen. Do you decorate with flowers and houseplants? What are some of your favorites?
Inside my main greenhouse, we've already planted lots of seeds for the coming gardening season and they're all growing so nicely.
Starting from seed is not difficult to do, but it does require careful attention and patience. And once the seedlings start to develop, it’s important to keep up with maintenance care - thin out seedlings that are weak, prick out those that are growing too big for their seed starting trays, and transplant them into larger pots and flats.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
The tiny seeds we planted just a few weeks ago are already sprouting and ready to move. These seedlings are lupines – those colorful pea-like flowers with an upper standard, or banner, two lateral wings, and two lower petals fused into a keel.
Here at my farm, most of the seedlings start off in our commercial-size Urban Cultivator. The automated system provides a self-contained growing environment with everything the plants need to thrive.
The seed trays sit over reservoirs and are automatically watered from the back of the unit. The trays receive about 18-hours of light a day.
Every winter my Skylands gardener, Wendy Norling, comes down to help at the Bedford farm. She comes just in time to transplant hundreds of growing flower seedlings. It’s a great way to learn about my farm and how its growing season differs from the one up in Maine.
As the seeds germinate and begin to mature, it’s important to check their development, so they continue to thrive. Regardless of how perfect seeds may appear, germination is never guaranteed, so multiple seeds are always planted in each seed starting tray cell. This provides a better chance at least one in each cell will take root.
When the seedlings are a couple inches tall and have reached their “true leaf” stage, which is when each seedling has sprouted a second set of leaves, it’s time for a process called selective thinning. Selective thinning prevents overcrowding, so seedlings don’t have competition for soil nutrients or room to grow.
When thinning, Wendy carefully inspects the seedlings and determines the strongest ones. She looks for fleshy leaves, upright stems, and center positioning in the space. The smaller, weaker, more spindly looking seedlings are removed, leaving only the stronger ones to mature. These stronger specimens will be transplanted into larger cells or pots.
These tools are great for transplanting seedlings. The tool on the right is a pair of extra large tweezers. The one on the left is from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. It’s called a widger. It has a convex stainless steel blade that delicately separates the tiny plants.
A good quality organic mix designed for seedlings will be fast draining and light. These mixes are formulated to encourage strong, healthy growth in new plants.
Using the widger, Wendy carefully moves the seedling from the tray to its new and larger pot. The widger also helps to avoid damage to the plant’s leaves or roots.
Our greenhouse cat, Blackie, loves to watch from the nearby counter.
Wendy gently firms up the surrounding soil. She avoids handling the seedling by its tender stems, which can bruise easily. The stronger plants now have more room to grow before getting transplanted into the ground.
The purpose of transplanting is to provide enough room – overcrowding can stress the sprouts.
The seedlings are then loaded into our trusted Polaris vehicle, so they could be transported to one of my hoop houses, where they can continue to grow. Foxglove, Digitalis, is an attractive plant that grows throughout the United States. It grows in the wild and is cultivated in private gardens for its beauty. Its bell-shaped flowers are usually bright purple but can sometimes be white, cream yellow, pink, or rose and generally bloom in the spring.
Ryan places the trays where they have good exposure to the light. I have several hoop houses here at the farm. A hoop house is a semi-circular-like structure covered in polyethylene, which heats from incoming solar radiation to warm the plants.
These seedlings will remain here until spring when they are transplanted outdoors.
Right now, these shelves still have room, but it won’t be too long before they are all filled with healthy strong flower and vegetable plants for the garden.
And then come June, the gardens will be bursting. Remember my lupines? They grow so wonderfully here at the farm.
And here is a foxglove in bloom – completely grown from seeds right here at Cantitoe Corners.
Here is my garden in early summer. When I started it, I wanted the plants to be mixed, so every bed is planted with a variety of specimens. Every row of flowers is interesting and colorful – a beautiful sight every year.
Among my favorite plants are the exotic forms of succulents - they make excellent container specimens.
If you like growing plants, but don’t really have the time to care for them properly, I encourage you to consider growing succulents. Succulents are so easy to maintain and are able to survive prolonged drought because they store moisture in their fleshy stems, roots, and leaves. Some succulents look like smooth stones, while others display perfect rosettes or puffing, crescent moon-shaped leaves on long stems. Not long ago, I was gifted some beautiful succulent cuttings to add to my growing collection.
Here are some photos.
Succulents are often grown as ornamental plants because of their striking shapes. Succulents, or fat plants, are those that store water in fleshy leaves, stems, or stem-root structures for times of drought. Most varieties need lots of light, at least half a day to a full day of sunlight.
Recently, I was gifted a nice selection of cuttings. Most succulents root easily in the right container and soil. As soon as I got these cuttings back to the farm, I gave them to Ryan to pot up.
Among these beautiful succulent cuttings – aeonium, euphorbia, senecio, jade, prickly pear cactus, and aloe.
Ryan chooses the appropriate size container for each specimen. I’ve been using Guy Wolff pots for many years – he makes every one of them by hand. I love the patina on these vessels.
For succulents, we use a mix specifically formulated for succulents. This mix contains sand and perlite to help prevent soil compaction and improve drainage. The right soil mix will help to promote faster root growth and provide quick anchorage to young roots.
Ryan also adds in some horticultural sand, a very gritty sand made from crushed granite, quartz, or sandstone. Horticultural sand is often known as sharp sand, coarse sand, or quartz sand.
Ryan sprinkles some Osmocote fertilizer with the soil and sand. Osmocote particles include a core of nutrients – nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
Ryan thoroughly mixes all the elements in a trug bucket. Because succulents don’t like wet roots, it is important to use a soil mixture that is appropriate and will drain well.
Each pot has a drainage hole. A clay shard is placed over the hole to help with drainage. I also like to use clay pots because they allow proper aeration and moisture to penetrate through the sides and to the plant.
Ryan fills the pots with the soil mix, adding just enough so it is filled up to a half inch below the top of the pot. He also lightly taps on the soil, so it packs into the container for added support.
Opuntia, commonly called the prickly pear cactus, is a genus of flowering plants in the cactus family Cactaceae. Prickly pear cactus is easily identified by its broad, flat, green pads. They also have tiny, sharp, and irritating barbed hairs on the pads known as glochids.
The butt end of the cactus pad is left alone for a couple days to heal and dry before setting it in sandy, well-drained soil. In fact, all the new succulents were left to form calluses where they were severed from the mother plants.
Then, using thick protective gloves, Ryan inserts the base end of the prickly pear cactus into the pot just enough so it stands upward.
Ryan adds some pea gravel to the top of the pot. Pea gravel, so named because the pieces are pea-sized, is available at garden centers and comes in different colors.
Here are four smaller specimens planted in one pot. Succulents grow in so many different and interesting formations. I often bring succulents into my home when I entertain – guests love seeing and learning about the different varieties.
Senecio is another succulent grown for its decorative foliage. It is a great plant for trailing over a planter. Before planting, Ryan trims off anything unsightly, along with any leaves that are too close to the bottom of the stem and then just presses the stem into the soil mix.
Aeoniums are fleshy, succulent plants native to Madeira, the Canary Islands and North Africa. Members of the Crassulaceae family, they have rosettes of glossy, waxy leaves.
Aeoniums are mostly grown for their distinctive, unusual shapes and foliage that comes in shades of green or purple-black or variegated in shades of white, yellow, and red.
Here is one in dark purple with a deep green center.
Succulent roots are light in color, long enough to hold the dirt in the pot, and veiny. Healthy roots will appear moist and will taper in thickness the further they get from the plant.
This is a jade plant, Crassula ovata. These succulents look like little trees, with a thick central stem, branches, and oval, green succulent leaves.
A stem cutting should be a few inches long. Ryan also cut off the lower leaves before inserting into the pot.
In the front is euphorbia, a genus of more than 2000 species commonly called spurge. About 1200 of them are succulents, some with unusual shapes and wide, fleshy leaves. After potting, these plants are placed on a table where they can drink in lots of natural light even when the sun isn’t directly over their pots. I am so happy to add all these to my growing collection of succulent specimens.
Martha Pins
Martha Tweets
