You never dissapoint! Love the succulent pot!

Tiffany, what is the taller vaiegated plant with the narrow leaves?

Thanks, Rhamel! :+)

Barb, in the 1st pic? It's Dracaena 'Rikki/Riki.' That's the stump, cut about 2 yrs ago. The top is in this mixed Drac pot. These silly Dracs just aren't very photogenic, or it was too harsh light. They look so much better in person.

"Dancing on the pole" (its' tribal name) is a variegated lucky bamboo (D. braunii/sanderiana.) I've been winding it around that pole and securing it with the ribbon. The hope is that in a few yrs, I'll remove the ribbon & pole and the stem will have a cool spiral shape.

I really like that Rikki Rikki. I have never seen it before, but I will keep a lookout for it. Thanks for enabling me Tiffany!

TY, I love it too! I found it at WM about 4-5 yrs ago, a little thing in a 6" pot. The variegation wasn't noticeable at all, that took a few yrs to develop.

Very nice. How do you determine who would make good bedfellows with each other?

I wouldn't say the only one, there have been a few here on GW with the same talent, unfortunately they have moved on to other forums.

I've got a few plants that missed the memo about winter being "quiet time":

The young staghorn fern (Platycerium grande) decided in early December it was time to start another frond, so it's gone from no action to a new frond (looks like it will be a shield frond) that's about 3-4 inches at its widest point:

Its orchid neighbor (Schoenorchis gemmata) also decided now was the time to put on some new growth - it hasn't grown at all since I got it last April, but now it has a tiny new leaf starting, which is very exciting!

The fittonia also has been putting on a growth spurt, along several stems - several inches on its two busiest stems. All the really bright red foliage is new in the last 6-8 weeks. I started this plant about 2 years ago in a 2-inch pot, it had about 3 leaves then. So a lot - about half, I think - of the foliage hanging out of the pot is new.

Other plants doing stuff: My pilea (aluminum plant) was quiet all fall, but it's recently started steadily putting on new leaves. And the spider plants keep adding leaves - and I have a tiny spider plant seedling that came up in the last couple weeks! When I watered them a few weeks back, I noticed that some of the flowers from early in the year had gone to seed, so I tossed the seeds back in the pot, and one of them's sprouted and about an inch tall now. The ficus benjamina skipped her traditional November leaf drop, but she's been slowly steadily adding new leaves anyway. And finally, the little schefflera seems to just keep growing at a steady rate no matter what the season is.

Not much to share but, here's a few.

I have both berries, new growth, and blooms on my Lepismeum. houlettiana The only place I have for it to hang is right above my kitchen sink. It loves it there.

All of my Schlumbergeras are growing new pads. I have them in three different rooms and all 40 or so of them are showing new growth. All of my NOIds are going to be consolidated into two or three pots this spring so I can manage them better.

I bought a couple of avocados a few weeks back and somebody put them right next to the coffee maker, the next day they were mush. I took one of the pits because it was huge and decided to start it. I just noticed its root has started growing. It's grown about half an inch since last night.

My pregnant onion stopped blooming a couple of weeks ago and has since started growing more babies.

TY, Rhamel.

J Feather & Mentha, TY for the interesting posts!

Mentha, there's not usually much thought involved in most combo pots that are only intended to last over winter, I just put plants in same pots that would have been next to each other anyway, in a same window (and were probably next to each other in the ground outside.) ...and then I stick more stuff in, especially cuttings, of Coleus or other stuff that will be lost to frost, until there's not any more space (either at the soil surface, or up in the air-space.)

Pots that will be more long-term are based mostly on light preferences too since everything else is going to be the same, same soil, same weather, watered when dry.

My house reached its' limit of number of pots, but I refuse to leave any space unused in them! I started making combo pots a few yrs ago by first squeezing so tightly that small pots were sitting on the soil surface of bigger pots. Then I thought it would just be easier to put the little plants in the pots with the big ones.

What really amuses me about plants is observing what they do in the situations in which I put them. I got bored with just looking at 'em, and any plant at my house is usually subjected to weird manipulations, constant propagation, light & hardiness experiments, and the past few yrs, generally trying to make a huge excess of as much stuff as possible to use as landscaping during the good part of the year, then I give away all that folks will take in the fall. Some have been given the task of growing really big leaves, some unusually small ones, some are going to bloom soon so I can sniff the awesome fragrance, some are acting as curtains while inside, some are in therapy for suicidal tendencies, some will eventually do something which can be tied to their ID...

Looking at a "mini jungle in a pot" helps soothe the tropical wannabe in
me, especially on a cold day like today. I have developed a dislike of
being able to see the fugly plastic pots so many of my plants are
forced to call home, and last, but definitely not least, the sight of a
space in the "dirt" where I could stick some kind of cutting is like a
siren's call to my scissors...

Probably more than you wanted to know, and I reject calling any of this a talent, just me amusing myself with the aid of plants.

Very interesting Tiffany, I used to experiment with some plants too then I was told many of them wouldn't grow well together although I had had them together for years. Some people can be spoiled sports. I have since taken on an opposite approach, nothing goes together unless they are double potted. I like switching out my plants on a whim it's just easier to move a potted plant out of another pot than trying to dig it out. There are a few plant I will not grow with others like mint or named Schlumbergera but that's only because so many of them look alike.

J Feathersmith, just curious what is the media you use on your boards? How do you make them? I'm thinking that would be perfect for all my small epiphytes. I could hang them on the wall instead of leaving them on shelves taking up space.

I bought the orchid already mounted. I think it's just plain sphagnum moss, held on with fishing line, to a piece of cork (at least I think it's cork).

The fern I bought the mount for - the local nursery was selling them for orchids, as a board with a sort of "cup" made out of plastic netting stapled to it. But I took a staghorn fern class a year earlier that mounted the staghorns the same way, and I wanted to get my fern out of the plastic pot, so I bought one. (I originally had a fern from that class, but it succumbed to a fungal problem :< )The instructor raises staghorn ferns and mounts his this way; I don't recall why he preferred this to using fishing line over the moss, etc. He also said that when you drill the hole for the hanger, you should drill it large enough that you can stick a piece of plastic tubing inside the hole, and the plastic lining the hole means the hanger won't eventually break the wood. I think it's only a concern over the long term, or when the fern gets really big.

It's a cedar board, you place the fern along with some potting soil on the board, 'cause they like having soil over their roots, then cover it with sphagnum moss, and then a piece of plastic netting, which is held on the board using a staple gun. I think the plastic netting is a kind you can buy at nursery/plant supply places, but I'm not sure what it's called. I pulled the netting off the purchased mount so I could place the fern, soil, and moss well, and then pulled the netting pretty tight across the whole bundle and restapled it. We were also shown in the class that when you place the netting, you have to note where the top edge comes near the fern, and cut a shallow curve into the top, so it's no longer straight across, but dips some, to not cut into the fern but still come up close to all the leaves and hold the moss in place.

I've started stacking small pots of plants inside the bigger pots. Space has gotten tight here. >.< And I like to tell myself "they like the company" and it might help keep (very local) humidity up.

I can see where you would need cedar or another hardwood to fasten onto. It looks like bird netting stapled to the board. I may have to try it. How long is the cedar supposed to last before you have to replace it? Staghorns can get huge, I've seen ones that were over 7 ft tall and 3 ft wide.

Cedar is really rot-resistant, so that's why he recommended using that - and he said that when the ferns start to outgrow the original board, you can just nail it to another, bigger one, and let them start spreading across that. The board I have is only about 9x12 inches; here are a couple pictures from the class - he brought in several of his ferns, including one with a 2nd board attached behind a smaller one. He said he had bigger ones in his greenhouse, but they were too big to move. I imagine once they start getting too enormous, you've got to suspend them with chains.

The local orchid society has a show/sale here, and among the display last year was also a large staghorn fern, but I couldn't see what it was mounted on originally, maybe a plant pot, but the leaves had totally wrapped around it, so the whole thing was just set directly on the floor. It looked really neat.

Ok this is something I have to try. Thanks for the pics! I think I'll start with some orchids that I have and maybe a small fern or two once I get the concept down. I'm pretty sure my walls would not hold up a staghorn of any size, ( we live in an old mobile home ) so I'll have to try other plants. My husband works in a cabinet shop so he may be able to get me some scraps of cedar.

Cedar will last longer than most wood it is quite rot resistant. I have a cedar planter that's lived outside through rain and snow for 5 years - it's now starting to show its age, but mainly due to warping (any wood subject to such humidity/temp extremes will do the same) and not rotting. I also made a small cedar bench that lives in the shower - no signs of rot after 2 years so far.

White oak is another less commonly known (but still commonly available) wood choice for rot resistance - patio furniture is sometimes made of it. It's much heavier and harder than cedar as well - whether thats good or bad or inconsequential depends on your situation but it's nice to have another choice between cedar and the exotic hardwoods like ipe, teak, mahogany...

Daniel

My mom always mounted her plants on her cypress knee. She had that thing for at least 20 years before we lost our house in a fire. It still looked like it did when I was a child. It outlived many of her plants.

An update on Bromeliad pups.

IDK why it looks like there's 2 diff kinds of "dirt" in the pot, there's not. When I potted these up (from being in ground for summer,) I rinsed them thoroughly, on both the inside (spiders! Yikes!) and out (dirt/sand all over the backs of the leaves.)

This Kalanchoe stem is really going for it (K. x houghtonii.)