Airplants and Admin Woes

Thankfully I have calmed down after last week’s rant about labelling different gardening styles. After writing I felt a wave of calmness come over me and I was at peace with the world again. 

Apparently it’s not healthy to moan as your brain starts thinking it’s the norm, gets used to it and then finds other people to moan to perpetuating the cycle.

I realized where the problem lay.  As much as I am enjoying the Raised Vegetable Beds Facebook page which now has over 20,000 members, I was finding, as the only administrator that I was caught up in a type of “Groundhog Day” scenario. Answering posts was a bit like running a training course every day of the week. The course is attended by people who don’t want to be there and won’t listen, then make way for new people the next day.  

The favourite topics are about chemicals in car tyres leaching into the soil, using Epsom Salts and Bicarbonate of soda, how to ‘get rid’ of pests in the garden . The favourite by far though is from people asking how to keep cats, moles and deer off the garden (A big problem in the US)  I realised that we are all right. The only rule in gardening is that there are no rules. I’m happy that people are contributing and although I don’t agree with everything that’s posted, it’s all learning, questioning and solving issues that invariably crop up when we try to tame nature.

Air Plants

I thought I needed a distraction from the group and as there is no help (as yet) for people addicted to Facebook posting (when there is it’ll be called FBA Facebook Anonymous), I thought I would try something new - and that comes in the form or Air Plants. 

I’ve cared for succulents, cosseted cacti and entertained a lot of plants in the house but never ones without roots before.  Tillandsia as they are known have over 700 different species and native to the forests, mountains and deserts of Central and South America, the southern United States and the West Indies. I thought I might put a few in our bathroom as it always seems to be really warm and high in humidity with all the showers and baths. 

I didn’t do things by half either. I ordered sixty of them from a grower in the Netherlands along with some lovely Spanish Moss (T. Usneoides) which is the grey green dangling plants you see in tropical forests.  My initial plan was to resell most of them and keep a few, but I just can’t part with any of them.  

As Air Plants have no roots I thought I could stick some of them onto plastic suckers with a hot glue gun and then onto the bathroom tiles. This didn’t work so I have rigged up some thin wire for them to rest on in vertical strips. 

Following the instructions I was dunking the plants in a bowl of water once a week and spraying with rain water every other day. I think that might be fine for hotter, sunnier climates, but I found a couple of them were going mouldy with the damp. I’m just spraying them now so we’ll see if that keeps them fresh.

The air plants absorb moisture and nutrients gathered from the air (dust, decaying leaves and insect matter) through structures on the leaves called trichomes. It’s all very clever and the main reason any roots do show is for support as they grab onto trees.  I’m hoping that after a few months these plants will reward me with ‘pups’, this is the term used for small offset plants that appear from the base of the parent plant. After reaching about a third of the size of the larger plant they can be picked off and grown on. It’ll be those that I will be selling – unless I find somewhere else for them to live, I have one growing happily on a Victorian piece of hardwood flooring covered in bitumen and there is a bit of a gap in the hallway where I think they would thrive as they like a semi shaded spot, so I’m only limited by my imagination..

Although not normally cultivated for their flowers, some Tillandsia will bloom on a regular basis. I have one in flower at the moment.  It is quite common for some species to take on a different leaf colour (usually changing from green to red), called "blushing", when about to flower. This is an indication that the plant is monocarpic (flowers once before dying) but offsets around the flowering plant will continue to thrive. 

Hopefully mine will survive the ordeal and produce a few pups. I’ll resist the urge to post the images of the little babies on Facebook.