Books and gardens

[kareid]

I just finished reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.   There wasn't much to it beyond the ideas he'd already written in the NYTimes article which was going around in Jan '07, though I found hearing the points restated helpful at times.  I can't quite decide how I feel about his arguments.  The one that we don't fully understand nutrition and won't for a very long time is probably true, and the idea that we should be eating real, whole foods instead of processed gunk follows easily from that.  I'm not sure whether I buy his argument that the epidemic of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc are all due to diet, but this may be because I like seeing studies and numbers to convince me.  I also felt his repeated discussion of omega-3 fats was a bit faddish.

 I filled another entire yard waste bag with chopped pieces of rosebush this morning.  Chopping roses is an interestingly mixed activity.  The crocuses are starting to bloom, and the tulips are coming up.  Every little green shoot is exciting this time of year.

Comments

[kvarko.livejournal.com]

I've never taken care of plants before. I mean, besides watering.

But I've noticed that the plants in my house are having issues:

* One plant is just growing too large and I need to re-pot it. I figure that should be easy: I buy a pot (actually, two, because I think the two upshoots are two separate plants, but I don't know how entangled the roots are) and some soil. Currently, I have the plant resting on a ledge, otherwise, I think the part outside the pot weighs much more than the roots and the whole plant would topple itself out of the pot.

* Also, it'd never occurred to me that maybe I need to change soil occasionally, or at least add some fertilizer to add more nutrients to the soil. So I have some plants which are dying, and I suspect that replacing the soil will help. One is a cactus, and the top segments are sprouting little roots -- so I'm thinking I might break a segment off and try to replant it. (The first plant that I mentioned also is sprouting little roots from segments above the soil.)

* And I have forced-heat in my apartment, so it gets *really* dry, so I worry that I haven't been watering my plants enough. Also, I need to find a good table to put them on near the window, to get sun. Right now, I have a few chairs sitting by the window, since I don't have a good piece of furniture to place them on.

* I have one of those plants that ... what to do you call it ... that just keeps growing longer and longer, and people like to make cutting and give them away -- tear-shaped green/white leaves, one every 2 inches along a green vine. Anyway, due to abuse, mine is now one long (well a foot or two?) vine with *one* remaining leaf at the end -- the other leaves along the way have died and fallen off. But the base, in the soil, has started a fresh offshoot, so I'm hopeful there. I think the pot it's in should be OK, if I just re-soil it and make sure to water enough. (But the poor cactus is all droopy :( I'm afraid it can't be saved.)

[kareid.livejournal.com]

Cactuses are strange plants, they actually like a sandy soil that isn't too rich and low humidity. It's similar to the environment they evolved in.

All plants that I know of do like getting fresh soil occasionally. I try to mix compost, fresh soil or organic fertilizer into my outdoor pots about once a year. I don't get to the indoor plants as often. You can get liquid fertilizer to water plants with, but I don't have a great idea of how that works in comparison.

[jenny-sellinger.livejournal.com]

Cacti need to get totally dry and then be completely soaked. Each time you water, which should only be like every 2-3 weeks if that, you should be putting a relatively huge amount of water in the pot. Totally saturate the soil when you do water--and all in one go, not carefully getting it moister as you might with other plants, just put it in the sink and dump in as much water as possible. The soil should be totally dry for awhile (even a week) before you water again. Forgetting about a cactus is better than watering too much.

And full sun, of course. =D

[kvarko.livejournal.com]

But "cactus" is a very general term. Does this apply to *all* things under that heading -- I don't even know enough to be sure that what I have is a cactus :) It's the variety of small flat rectangular segments, very glossy and bright green, but flat. And no spines to really speak of. (But I guess it's a cactus?) The segments have now shriveled up and the whole thing has gone limp :( I don't know if there's any hope for it.

[jenny-sellinger.livejournal.com]

Hmm, well, succulents are all pretty much the same way. But really, all I know of cacti comes from seeing a set of 6 of them survive and having read a couple articles in passing. So I know about people killing them with over-frequent watering, but not what that actually looks like.

[vfish.livejournal.com]

My mom once transplanted cacti in New Mexico from the side of a hill to level terrain. They did fine at first, but they ended up perishing due to ponding from the summer monsoonal rains.