I've found over many years of plant care, that a lot of plants really love to be totally doused, then drained, rather than just a little bit of water now and then. I think it may imitate the conditions of nature, where there's a rainstorm followed by a period of dry, at least for these plants. It also washes dust off the foliage, helping them breathe better.
I have a lot of plants that have to stand on the floor, but I still water thoroughly and use a turkey baster to pull out standing water from the saucers. And the ever-shedding Boston ferns can be shaken into the tub and the foliage swept up later, better than having to sweep the floors.
Even the succulents like this treatment, to my surprise. As long as there's good drainage, all is well.
Take a look at this staghorn fern, coming on by leaps and bounds, as Bertie Wooster would say. I discovered that submerging it about weekly, then leaving it to drain before putting it back in a western window, filtered light through white cotton curtains, suits it fine. It's even started a new basal leaf, as you see, that little green plate at the bottom of the antlers. In fact it's moving so fast I may have to study what to do next.
And I did this today to the accompaniment of early music, of which I'm a total fan. Recorder players typically are. Early meaning medieval to Elizabethan. The later baroque stuff is not to my taste, too showoff, look ma, I can trill, sort of stuff. I love the purity of the real early stuff.
Of course, seven years of singing plainsong almost daily in my convent high school (hs started at that time at age 11 in the UK), may have affected my take on this. We used to sing Masses for visiting priests celebrating in our chapel, which was an unusual one, in that it was fully equipped, consecrated, etc., like a church. Most chapels aren't.
By the time I left school, I could sing ten different masses, and various other small services. From original plainsong notation, not modern transcriptions. Never occurred to us to think it was hard. Mother Gerardine said sing this, so we did..and most of us played modern instruments at home and could sightread modern music notation, too. When I see early music now, in manuscript form, I can still sightread it. Takes me right back to the choir gallery in the chapel.
Today it's Julian Bream's consort playing Elizabethans. If you want to hear what I'm talking about, go here
And now you have me listening to the only christmas music (with a few notable exceptions) there is, the Choir of King's College.
ReplyDeleteI remember our local nuns teaching us, one winter, Gregorian Chant. A bunch of small town kids, and two brave nuns; they never told us it was difficult, they just showed us how to read it, and off we went. By the time Easter came we had an entire Easter High Mass to sing, as a surprise to the priest, and sing it we did. I've never lost my taste for Gregorian chant.
Start 'em young, they never forget it.
I am impressed with your happy, healthy staghorn fern! Have often thought I'd like to have one but never really had a suitable spot.That may be changing when Phase Three of the almost-sorry-I-started-this Construction Project is finished. Hmmm. I think I'll try to visit the Smith College greenhouse one day soon and take a wander through the tropical types. I enjoy that anyway, even when not considering fern-shopping; reminds me of Puerto Rico.
ReplyDeleteJumping around catching up on blogposts today - hope you don't mind the odd comments. Also hope your weather is better than ours today - genuinely wretched.