Indoor Gardening and Houseplants: Your favorites?, 1 by stellapathic

stellapathic wrote:
Joan, the pot is McCoy, circa I think 1938 or so. It's on the original pedestal and much coveted in the pottery collecting circles. I actually bought it on one of my antique-buying trips while in Ohio - uh, let me think about this - south of Dayton, what's the name of that town? Totally antiques and with a great little vintage pottery shop. I'll post it if I can remember. Rtdr, my method is once weekly, weakly for food - and water in the crown, slowly, 'til it seeps from the bottom of the pot. I've had a few that have developed scale problems, but knowing that I watch and attack before they can get hold. About every six weeks I use a 'tea' from coffee grounds. Not the actual grounds, just the water left after soaking the grounds for a day. My birds seem to like that a lot. They like light too, just not direct. You know how plants are though. Some like you and some don't. For instance, I'm a terrible mother to African violets. We just plain don't understand each other. I also have a ficus that is threatening to take over the house. That poor plant has taken the worst abuse at times. While I was in England last summer the girl that was watching the plants never watered it once. She thought it was fake! That's how perfect it is. And it only lost maybe five leaves. I'm sorry I don't know the botanical name for it or I would have mentioned it earlier. They sell it mainly for lizard people. Lizards apparently love living in them. The leaves look more like eucalyptus or bamboo than ficus, long and thin. Here's a mediocre shot of it. I'll see if I can get a better one and do some research and find the name of it tomorrow. This is one that I've seen growing very well in a relatively dark corner in Ohio also, which may be a consideration. I mean I know that things tend to go crazy here in California that are hard to maintain elsewhere. Both of these are doable.