Herself's Houseplants

( or any other non-bulb plant )

The number one reason plants do not bloom indoors is they need more light. More light should always be the first thing you think of when ever a house plant has a problem.

So first try to find a sunnier location or put a fluorescent light over the plant several hours a day.

If the plant is still being difficult about blooming, try a balanced fertilizer, say 10-10-10 or so.

The second number is phosphorus and this is usually what is needed when a plant doesn’t bloom because of a nutritional problem. If you can find a fertilizer that has a higher middle number than the other two numbers try that. Because so much phosphorus is out in the environment and because of the harm it does most fertilizer companies don’t sell high phosphorus fertilizer any more.

If the plant stubbornly refuses to respond to light or fertilizer try giving it less water than it wants. You don’t want to dry it out, you just want to stress it a little. I find this almost always works if sun or fertilizer doesn’t.

If the plant still refuses, you must either learn to love it for its foliage or dump it and try a different plant.

When my great-aunt Carrie headed to assisted living 25 years ago, her patio garden was parceled out to relatives and friends. I inherited her night-blooming cereus, a plant that has become a most unlikely family touchstone.

I know it was that long ago because my memories of our son’s tumultuous first months are still perfumed with the flower’s scent. Nathan is now 23.

The cereus, formally known as Epiphyllum oxypetalum, had been with us for a while before Nate came along. It already had outgrown one pot and had taken up much of our small front porch.

Most of the time, it was a gangly eyesore. A member of the cactus family, the night-blooming cereus has long, flat stems that look like leaves and are so thick and fibrous that even snails do little damage. Dead stems turn from a wan green to a gray-mottled yellow and then shrivel, hanging indefinitely until someone hacks them off.

But the flowers are showstoppers. . . .

Blooms evoke family memories

Thanks for the photo!