HiveGarden: My Indoor Garden #6, Science Experiments?

Deep down, I'm a scientist, possibly a mad scientist. While digging for photos of my houseplants when they were younger, I came across a few other photos I would like to share. I wish I had more but that presumes you are a receptive audience -- lol. These are plants OR science experiments I used to have. You can decide which.

The first two photos, just an innocent African Violet. A brown-thumb friend asked me to rescue it. I had it for some time and then when I packed up my house for my big trip to Australia, it had become scraggly and I didn't want to leave it for my tenant.

Another friend gifted me a sweet potato that had sprouted and I had never seen a sweet potato vine. It's not something we grow here.

At some point, I decided to plant it.

I have since learned they can be grown in southern Canada if you start with a slip, otherwise our growing season is too short.

This is the only photo I have of my Norfolk Island pine that came to me at 10" (25 cm) and I sent off to a bigger home when it was 4 feet (1.22 m). Its height was never a problem but with its 6' (1.8 m) "wingspan", I would push the branches aside to crawl into bed each night -- it felt like camping! I think I had it for 19 years.

I like to start seeds and my date palm was an amazing experiment. First, it shot a sprout up and then, as it filled out, I realized it was pushing soil out of the pot as its bundle of roots wound round and round. I transplanted it into a proper palm pot and it sat in my kitchen nook through the winter and outside on my deck during the summer. The pot was so heavy, that while I could still lift it, I couldn't lift it while squeezing through a door and I was pretty sure I was going to drop it on the floor. So I devised this makeshift ramp to get it over the threshold and onto the plant dolly. Then I wheeled it into its corner.

This is the day the date palm and the Norfolk Island pine went off to a new home with 15' (4.6 m) ceilings. I waved good-bye while telling my friends that date palms reach 40-80 feet (12-24 m) in height, depending on the species.

Just some hyacinths but it's pretty typical for me to be starting cuttings. I see a jade tree and geranium rooting behind it.

Look to the right of the fluorescent geranium to see the baby dragonfruit.

Maybe I shouldn't plant so many seeds because they grew.

And they grew.

By now, I had read that they could be grown commercially in large pails and trained into 5' (1.5 m) trees and all you had to do was mount a bicycle wheel at the top of a pole at that height for them to spread out on it...

It seemed to have other plans.

Not only was it damaging my floor while trying to "climb" it with its tendril roots, it had become the subject of nightmares. It looks like it's searching for something... or someone.

I bought some herbs at the grocery store and they started to wilt so I put them in water and they perked up. It still grows in my garden.

When I found a seed sprouting, I had to convince myself that I didn't want an apple tree. I had recently lost my clementine, another tree I had started from a seed and had for a long, long time, probably 20 years. It was one of the three big plants that moved into my house with me.

The clementine had thorns which I thought was odd, and I read that if it ever produced fruit, not to expect them to be sweet as oranges from Florida were usually hybrids whose seed would revert to some undesirable ancestor. What I didn't know until much later was that most clementines weren't hybrids. I put my orange tree outside for two summers which was another feat; moving the big pot across a room, down two steps onto a pillow covered ceramic floor, and out the door. Then I had "issues" with a neighbour's cat who thought the pot was his private toilet. And I don't know whether it was the sunshine or the cat's special fertilizer, but the clementine bloomed, bore fruit and I harvested five sweet miniature clementines. Somewhere I have a picture of a much younger me holding all five of them in my cupped hands.

But the clementine became infested with scale outside and it died. This is all that's left, this big 80 lb (36 kg) pot in my garage. The day I brought it home, I lifted it out of my trunk and promptly crumbled under its weight. Once I planted the clementine tree in it, I knew I would never lift it again. It took two of us to lift it back up the steps.