It seems like every time I pick up a home and garden type magazine, the cover photo is dotted with flowering orchids and indoor foliage plants that are inevitably in pristine condition. However, years of experience troubleshooting issues with both my own interior plants and those for clients tell a different story. All too often, indoor potted plants languish for years, barely alive, until they finally succumb. I’ve taken several to the plant graveyard just past the edge of the back yard because of this exact scenario. In recent times though, I’ve figured out a way to mostly avoid pitiful looking indoor plants – take them outside in the warm months!
To appreciate the perks of getting your indoor plants outdoors, it’s helpful to first think about why most interior situations aren’t very conducive to plant growth. There are three primary reasons houseplants fail: not enough light, improper watering, and low humidity. Most plant species grown for interiorscapes hail from the tropics where they grow in the understory of large trees, receive bright, filtered sunlight, and experience abundant moisture and humidity. These conditions are VERY hard to mimic in the typical American house unless you huddle all your plants near windows, take steps to increase humidity (which doesn’t play super well with furniture and other household items), and really tune in your watering. Taking indoor plants outside to play in the Panhandle summers just really makes the whole situation much easier!
A Jade Plant that had languished indoors during the winter beginning to perk up outside! Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
Now that you’ve made the decision to move your indoor plants out, figuring out where to site them is the next step. I’ve found that, with few exceptions, houseplants prefer to be in a bright area but away from direct sunlight – under mature trees, on a covered porch, anywhere that doesn’t get direct sunlight will do! It is also a great idea to place plants near a watering source. If a hose doesn’t easily reach the spot or it’s inconvenient to tote a watering can to them, your plants won’t get watered regularly and will suffer. You’ll be surprised how much water plants use when they’re in conditions conducive to growth so be sure to check pots every couple of days to prevent droughty conditions! Once in these new and improved growing conditions, your houseplants will also respond very well to a little extra fertilizer. A good general prescription is a topdressing of a slow-release fertilizer using the recommended label rate as soon as you bring them outside and following that up once each month with a supplemental liquid fertilizer.
Keeping houseplants happy in the Florida summer is easy and begins with getting them outside. Find a spot with bright, indirect light, keep them watered well, add a little fertilizer, and watch them grow like they never have before! For more information on growing houseplants or any other horticultural or agricultural topic, contact your local UF/IFAS County Extension office. Happy gardening!
If you enjoy a walk in some of the Panhandle’s naturally wooded areas you often come across many selections of ferns. One of my favorites to come across is the cinnamon fern, Osmundastrum cinnamomeum.
Green fronds are pinnately compound. Fertile fronds with spores emerge in the center. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
This clumping fern grows to about 2-3 feet in height. It can be larger when there is ample moisture. In the spring, it forms fertile fronds in the center that are reddish-brown in color. The sterile leaves emerge from the base of the plant to form large leaves about 2 feet in length. Leaves will be green most of the year, depending on available moisture, and can offer some fall color as they die back.
A shaded portion of my backyard has four well established cinnamon ferns. I was able to purchase these from a nursery about 20 years ago. Even without moist soils on my property, the ferns do well with average rainfall.
My favorite season for the cinnamon fern is the spring with the contrasting colors of the sterile and fertile leaves. The plants make an attractive display, mixed with ground orchids, toad lily, and the leaf mulch from the live oak tree.
Coarse texture of the ground orchids blend well with the fine textured leaves of the cinnamon fern. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
Plan your area carefully if you want to add cinnamon fern since there will not be foliage present in the winter months. Blending these plants with some evergreens creates a low maintenance spot in a shady portion of your landscape.
Article written by Dr. Gary Knox, North Florida Research & Extension Center – Quincy, FL.
‘Gumpo Pink’ flowers are 3 inches in diameter and are pink with purplish pink dots and occasional white blotches on petals.
Background
In the times before re-blooming azaleas like Encore®, Bloom-A-Thon® and others, Satsuki azaleas were valued for late flowering that extended the azalea “bloom season”. Even with modern re-blooming azaleas, Satsuki azaleas still are appreciated as refined evergreen shrubs for the sophisticated garden or discerning plant collector.
“Satsuki” means “Fifth Month” in Japanese, corresponding to their flowering time in much of Japan. These azaleas were developed hundreds of years ago from their native Rhododendron indicum and R. eriocarpum. The Japanese selected cultivars more for their form and foliage than for flowering. These beloved plants were used in gardens as sheared boxwood-like hedges or pruned into rounded mounds that might resemble rocks or boulders in classical Japanese gardens. Their size and form also made them well adapted for training as bonsai. Most of the Satsuki azaleas in America were introduced in the 1930s by USDA.
Description
Satsuki azaleas are small evergreen shrubs that flower in April and May in north Florida, long after most older type azaleas have finished. Satsuki azaleas also are known for producing large, mostly single flowers up to 5 inches in diameter in colors of white, pink, red, reddish orange and purple. Often the flowers will include stripes, edging, blotches, spots or flecks of contrasting colors (Sometimes all on the same plant!) with more than 20 different color patterns recorded.
Satsuki azaleas have an elegant subtle charm, quite unlike the flashy, over-the-top, heavy blooming all-at-once Southern Indica azaleas like ‘Formosa’ and ‘George L. Taber’. Typically, Satsuki azaleas display a few large blooms at a time, allowing one to better appreciate their size and color patterns as contrasted against their fine-textured, dark green leaves. To make up for a less boisterous display, Satsuki azaleas flower over a longer timeframe, averaging about 8 weeks, with some flowering an amazing 14 weeks. In another contrast, most Satsuki azaleas grow smaller in size, in my experience reaching about 3 feet tall and wide in a five-year timeframe. The rounded to lance-shaped leaves of Satsuki azaleas also are demure, ranging in length from just ½ inch to no more than 2 inches.
Culture
Satsuki azaleas enjoy the same conditions as most other azaleas: light shade and moist, rich, well-drained soil. Mulch regularly to maintain organic matter and help hold moisture. Fertilize lightly and keep the roots evenly moist. Minimal to no pruning is required. Satsuki azaleas also are well adapted to container culture. Their small size and fine textured leaves make these a favorite for bonsai enthusiasts since their small leaves, branching habit and mounded form naturally make them look like miniature mature “trees”.
Sources and Cultivars
Look for Satsuki azaleas in spring at garden centers or year-round at online nurseries. There are hundreds of cultivars but some popular types to look for include:
Gumpo Pink – 3-in. diameter light pink flowers with purplish pink dots and occasional white blotches
Gumpo White – 3-in. diameter white flowers with occasional pink flakes and light green blotches
Gyokushin – 3-in. diameter flowers are predominantly white but with light to dark pink dots and blotches
Higasa – flowers are 4 to 5 inches in diameter and are purplish pink with purple blotches
Shugetsu – also called ‘Autumn Moon’, 3-in. diameter flowers are white with a broad, bright purplish-red border
Tama No Hada – flowers are 4 to 5 inches in diameter and are white to pink with deep pink stripes; usually flowers in fall as well as spring
Wakaebisu – 2.5-in. diameter flowers are “double” (hose-in-hose) and are salmon pink with deep pink dots and blotches; this also flowers in fall as well as spring
References:
Chappell, M. G.M. Weaver, B. Jernigan, and M. McCorkle. 2018. Container trial of 150 azalea (Rhododendron spp.) cultivars to assess insect tolerance and bloom characteristics in a production environment. HortScience 53(9-S): S465.
‘Gumpo Pink’ flowers are 3 inches in diameter and are pink with purplish pink dots and occasional white blotches on petals.
‘Gyokushin’ flowers are white with occasional pink flecks and light green blotches.
‘Shugetsu’ has 3-inch flowers that have bright purplish-red border on edges of petals.
Galle, Fred C. Azaleas. 1985. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon. 486 pp.
Plants with variegated foliage are very popular landscape selections. As flowers fade on other plants, the colors of variegated foliage continue to add interest through multiple seasons.
A very adaptable shrub that has been around for a long time, now has a selection with beautiful variegated foliage. Juliet™ cleyera offers green and white evergreen foliage that can brighten up a garden year around. New foliage adds additional interest with a maroon tinge.
Variegated foliage of Juliet™ cleyera. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County
Like other selections of Cleyera, Juliet™ needs to be matched to an appropriate spot to accommodate its mature size. Shrubs will reach about 8 feet in height with a spread of about 5 feet. Plants may look best when left to grow in a more natural form with light selective pruning. This shrub is probably not suited for planting in front of home windows but used as a specimen or as a nice screen plant.
Once established, cleyera is a low maintenance plant and is adapted to grow well without routine irrigation. My home landscape has very well drained soil and I have not needed to apply supplemental irrigation to two cleyera shrubs in over 20 years. Consider a spot that receives full sun or partial shade for your plants.
An added advantage of cleyera shrubs in general is that bees are attracted to the flowers so it makes an additional nectar source for pollinators in the spring.
Flax lily is a popular perennial that adds interest to garden borders or when planted in mass. Plants can be affected by cold temperatures so a little maintenance as temperatures warm is often necessary. UF IFAS Escambia County Extension shares late winter care of flax lily In the Garden.
The term “ornamental grass” is a catch-all phrase used to describe grasses and “grass-like” plants. Individual species are adapted to a wide variety of landscape sites (i.e., wet or dry, sun or shade, hot or cold climates, and varied salt tolerance). Growth habits range from low ground covers to intermediate shrub-like plants to very tall hedge-like plants. Ornamental grasses are very dynamic; the size, shape, texture, and color of grass changes with every season.
Deciduous Ornamental Grass
Grasses with foliage that dies in the winter and remains dormant until the weather warms in the spring are considered deciduous. The winter character of deciduous ornamental grasses adds tremendous interest to the winter garden when contrasted with evergreen plants or structures such as walls or fences. The dried foliage of deciduous grasses creates sound as it expands and contracts in response to changes in temperature or moisture, while interaction with wind creates movement in the garden. For these reasons, pruning of the dead foliage and inflorescences is not recommended at the time of the first frost.
Pruning of ornamental grasses should be done in late winter or early spring, just prior to new shoot growth. In Northwest Florida, gardeners should target the end of February to prune ornamental grasses. For deciduous grasses, such as Japanese silver grass (Miscanthus sinensis), the old foliage may be completely removed within inches of the soil. Be cautious to not remove the growth point by leaving the grass clump at least 4 inches high. For evergreen grasses, such as muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris), the ragged leaves can be removed to neaten the appearance of the plant without shortening all the way to the ground. So, depending on the damaged portions, the remaining grass clump can be 6-18 inches high after pruning. Grasses recover quickly from a heavier pruning. Within a few months the plant will have completely regrown. If desired, old flower stalks and seed heads may be removed any time they no longer have a neat appearance. For more information on ornamental grass species and growing tips, please visit the EDIS Publication: Considerations for Selection and Use of Ornamental Grasses.
