A hard time for house plants after a cool summer and grey winter in Caithness
Gardening on the Edge by Diana Wayland
Our house plants have had a hard time this winter. The endless grey with few days of actual sunshine has taken a toll on the conservatory ones, which is most of them.
They are there because they like the sun! This lack of sunshine has accentuated the lower temperatures in the house due to the current gas shortage.
Because of the grey, chilly days and our battering from strong, cold winds, I have been keeping the plants there on the dry side, only watering them a little and infrequently. Too much water during winter time and many houseplants simply rot in the compost.
But this has come after a summer of repeating haars. They, too, kept the temperatures down, and hung around for days, only finally retreating to give the next one the chance to drift in. This meant lower temperatures in sunless days throughout the summer, and I kept the watering restricted then, as well, out of necessity, although less restricted than in winter.
I normally repot or pot on my houseplants in spring and early summer. However, my wrist fracture in April last year stopped that. Consequently my house plants have used up the nutrients in their compost, and supplying weak liquid feed in winter does not help much, although a special one for citruses can be used.
As a result their health has suffered. My four home-raised avocados became three, and those three dropped their leaves in January and are only now starting to regrow. That is very unusual for them. One is about 20 years old!
My two patchouli plants, that I had had for about three years, keeled over and died. None of my citruses – orange, lemon and kumquat – have flowered at all, and the fruits on the lemon that were swelling last autumn all just dropped off.
I have been plagued by repeated outbreaks of greenfly, scale and red spider mite on the lemon verbena, jasmine, ginger, one avocado and the myrtle; a sure sign they are not in good health. Two indoor roses in the kitchen finally succumbed to the repeated spraying and cutting back. My dwarf pomegranates have had several autumns, although they are starting to regrow now. The Stephanotis, a climber that has flowers scented like jasmine, grew toadstools in its pot!
The few plants that have been unaffected by the poor summer and then miserable, grey winter are the Aloe veras in a room that faces east, the Swiss cheese plants in shady parts of the house (I have three... it is a fairly long story), a strange fleshy plant with the scent of thyme and oregano, a form of Plectranthus bearing the name Queen of Herbs, and the scented pelargoniums.
The olive tree has dropped quite a lot of leaves but is, once again, flowering – this time unaided by the cats. Sometimes I even get a couple of olives forming!
And the lemongrass. This huge plant will be one of the first to be divided and repotted, which hopefully will make it less tough. I use its swollen, lemony, stem bases to make Thai curry paste from scratch. It grows very big but it stands repeated cutting back because it is, well, a grass.
As for the others, all I can do is wait for milder weather and hope for a better summer.