Dhara...The Earth...An Indian gardening blog

The Lady Palm

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Sun, 04 Jun 2017 15:46:00 +0000

I just adore Lady palms. Their dense, dark green, tropical foliage makes them so strikingly attractive!

The Lady palm (Botanic name-Rhapis Excelsa) is a native of Southern China and is a slow growing palm that can be grown both outdoors and indoors. It is great as a houseplant because it cleans toxins such as carbon dioxide, formaldehyde, xylene and ammonia from its surroundings and is also easy to care for! It is one of the top rated plants for purifying air indoors in a NASA research which studied house plants as a means of providing pure and clean air in space stations!

The Lady Palm forms dense clumps of bamboo-like stalks topped with dark green, glossy, fan-shaped leaves divided into ribbed segments with saw toothed ends. Rhapis leaves commonly have a slightly brown tip fringe. These can be trimmed with a pair of scissors or even just carefully pulled off by hand.
Each stalk or cane of the Rhapis is thick and covered with dark woven palm fibers (picture above). The tip of each of these stems is the growth point and it will stop growing if you remove the tip. You cannot prune a stem and get new growth from the cut stem as you do with some other plants. So you should only cut a stem when most of the leaves have turned yellow or fallen off and then it should be cut as low as you can go, down to the soil level. This will encourage new shoots to grow from the base of the stem. The plant above has four such canes that I need to cut down to the soil level. It is such a dense plant that I am feeling plain lazy!

The Rhapis Palm propagates itself via underground rhizome offshoots which is great because they will slowly fill out a pot beautifully! The Lady palm forms multi-stemmed clumps that can reach enormous width, spreading as wide as its height or more. I have a couple of beautiful specimens in pots that are as wide as they are tall-almost 4 feet and I just love them! The Lady below standing with her pot is taller than me!

A Lady palm should be repotted every couple of years till it is the size you want it to be or is in too big a pot to be repotted. Then you can just top dress it. Remove the top 2-3 inches of soil and replace with fresh soil every couple years. Take care not to harm any roots that may be near the surface.

The best time to divide a Rhapis is during spring when the palms are actively growing. You can easily propagate your plant by gently removing it from the pot and using a sharp, sterile knife to separate a shoot or shoots from the mother plant with some of their own roots already growing. A single cane that you plan to divide should have a few leaves and several roots before being separated. Pot it into a container just slightly larger than the root system filled with loose well-draining soil. Remove several lower leaves on each cane to reduce stress. Place in a humid area or mist daily until the palms resume active growth.

Since my pots are too huge and heavy to divide, I plan to cut off some basal suckers with some roots attached to them and try my luck planting them in a 4 inch pot sizes.

The Rhapis palm prefers filtered light or partial shade. Outdoors, it will thrive under a canopy of tall trees. The Lady Palm leaves are dark green when grown in shade to a light green when grown with more sunlight. Placing it in full sun without protection will cause unattractive yellow-green leaves and slow growth. The palm below is kept in a sunny location and you can see the lighter yellow-green color of the leaves as compared to the beautiful dark green of the one above and the one on top, both of which are under a canopy of trees. Indoors, Rhapis grow best in bright, indirect light near a window or skylight but their growth slows considerably inside.

When kept in bright lighting, the Lady Palm can be kept moderately moist but avoid overwatering them in lower light. The Lady palm should be thoroughly watered by soaking or drenching the entire root system as the roots are very deep at the bottom of pot so even though the soil at top is moist the roots may be dry at the bottom. Do not over water as it is prone to root rot. Do not allow it to wilt as it will not recover well. I lost a beautiful plant almost ten years old as its pot had broken and it was unable to retain adequate moisture and I got careless and did not repot till it was wilting. I was able to save just a single cane in one small pot from a huge dense plant.

Lady Palms are relatively slow-growing plants and need very little fertilizer. Apply only half the fertiliser required by other plants. If the leaves are rich green it indicates that fertilizer levels are okay and you should apply nutrients only when a slight overall yellowish color is detected.

The nastiest pests to attack them are scales which may hide inside the stalk mesh. A systemic insecticide which gets absorbed in the plant system is the best control.

Yucca Elephantipes... Silver Star

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 20 May 2015 09:52:00 +0000

In October, 2009, my garden or rather what used to be my garden was a mass of rubble due to the renovation of my house. All my plants, except for a couple of palm clumps and a few pots of foliage, had been destroyed. I still remember going to a nursery to buy some plants for starting my garden and picking up three Yuccas which looked so striking. The Yucca Elephantipes are beautiful landscape plants which are extremely hardy. I planted them on the edge of my lawn which gets a good deal of sun and other than that they have pretty much looked after themselves.

A couple of years later...

Running a little wild here...

Looking quite stately after being stripped of the bottom leaves..

Self seeding Periwinkle, Portulaca and Celosium

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Mon, 12 May 2014 17:18:00 +0000

Many of the Periwinkle, Celosium and Zinnia seedlings that I had planted this year, died for reasons still unclear to me, as I had mentioned in my last post. Having paid so much for those seedlings when I could have them for free, motivated me to try to collect some seeds for next year.
And while I was on the collection spree I discovered some hidden treasures in the form of seedlings of Periwinkle, Portulaca and Celosium that had self seeded from last year! These I promptly transplanted into pots where they could grow unhindered.
Here are some Portulaca and Periwinkles which have self seeded in the Croton pot.

Lots of little seedlings of Celosia Plume in an empty pot.

Vinca and Portulaca in my Poinsettia pot.

Some Periwinkle seedlings in the Tuberose container which has been lying next to the Periwinkle plant (in the foreground) for many months now.

Some of the little treasures I discovered transplanted into new pots. Here, I have not yet taken out the wilted seedlings hoping against hope that they might still "wake up".

Planting Summer seedlings

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Fri, 02 May 2014 09:16:00 +0000

Well, this past week since I planted the summer seedlings, I have lost 6 of the Orange Celosia and maybe 8 Periwinkles. It is a miserable feeling to see your newly planted seedlings all wilted, shriveled up and ready to give up. A couple of the Zinnias too are looking like they might go either way. One of the reasons I think, might be the summer heat.
Orange Celosia

Periwinkles

We had potted the seedlings on my terrace. That is where my compost bin and storage bin for manure, soil etc is kept. After planting them we kept them in a relatively shaded part of the terrace but the summer heat is still probably to much for the delicate seedlings.
So I visited Master Seeds at Barafkhana to replenish the Celosia and buy some pots.

The gentleman there told me that I was probably killing the seedlings off by watering them twice a day. According to him, the seedlings and in fact all the plants should be watered only in the evenings and not more than twice a week even in the scorching Delhi heat!
As of now, I have shifted most of the pots from the terrace to the garden except the Portulaca, the Kochia grass and some Cosmos which are all still on the terrace. These seem to be the most hardy and unbothered by it all. I have also stopped watering the pots in the mornings. In fact, I plan to water them now only when they start looking distressed. The Zinnias too are doing relatively fine.

But there is a silver lining to the proverbial cloud. Losing all those seedlings gave me the push to collect some seeds for next year. And while I was scouting around for seeds on my terrace, I came across a few treasures. Some Periwinkles from last year that had self seeded and lots of Red Celosia! But thats fodder for another post.

Summer seedlings and plants!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Thu, 01 May 2014 07:14:00 +0000

Let me show you my treasure trove from the nursery, that I got last week! I got seedlings and small plants of Celosia and seedlings of Periwinkle, Portulaca, Zinnia and Cosmos. I also got some Kochia Grass which strangely I cannot spot in the cartons below.I also bought a Coral Jasmine plant, two small Jasmine Sambacs and a Night Blooming Jasmine, all for their lovely fragrance.
I have potted the last of these seedlings today. It was quite an exercise with more than 50 pots to fill and more than a 100 seedlings to plant!

Celosia

Jasmine Sambac or Motia

Ornamental Peppers and Cosmos

Periwinkle in the foreground

Portulaca

And Zinnia

Fragrant flowers of the Night Blooming Jasmine or Raat Ki Rani (Cestrum Nocturnum)

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 08:55:00 +0000

During my visit to the nursery last week to pick up seedlings of summer flowers, I decided to buy some plants with fragrant flowers, for my garden. I have been wanting to do so for some time now. I bought one Raat Ki Rani plant in a small pot, one Har Shingar plant and two Motia plants in small plastic bags.
I wanted to plant the Raat ki Rani at the entrance to my home. So today in the morning, we dug a small hole and planted it there. It is just off the gate of my house, outside the boundary wall of my neighbour!
Raat Ki Rani or Cestrum Nocturnum is also known as Night Blooming Jasmine. It is a woody evergreen shrub which has long vine like stems that can grow quite tall if not trimmed. It's tiny, greenish cream tubular flowers bloom during the summer months, opening after the sun sets and produce a strong sweet smell.

I read online that it is quite easy to root it's stem cuttings in water so I think I will attempt to make some more plants once this plant starts flourishing.

Flowers and Foliage in 2013 - A glimpse

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 18:37:00 +0000

Zooming up close!

And below, a promise of things to come in 2014!

Shared with Floral Friday, Today's Flowers, Saturday Show Off, Pink Saturday, Weekend Reflections, Macro Monday 2, Monday Mellow Yellows, Wordless Wednesday, ABC Wednesday and

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.

Coleus, Portulacas and Spider Lilies

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 09:44:00 +0000

Some images from Year 2013....

Thanks to the team at Wordless Wednesday.

Chrysanthemums in full bloom!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 09:34:00 +0000

Chrysanthemums blooming on my balcony.

Lets get Wordless on ABC Wednesday! and Today's Flowers!

Many thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for GBBD!

Poinsettia delight!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 19:27:00 +0000

Among the many pots on my roof top garden, I had noticed a foliage plant which looked very familiar but one which I couldn't quite place or identify. I didn't remember bringing it home from any nursery. Every time I looked at it I would wonder where it came from. Its the second pot on the left against the wall.

Below is a close up of the leaves.

And then one day recently, I was very pleasantly surprised when I looked at the leaves. They were turning red!! And that is when it registered. It was a Poinsettia!

Every year around November, I buy many beautiful Poinsettia plants because I just love them. They lift my mood instantly!

And by April they all wither and die one by one. I've tried to keep them alive by keeping them in the shade and shielding them from the Delhi heat but not one survived ever. I've tried planting them in the ground hoping they would be able to survive that way. But nothing seemed to help. In the picture below you can see one with most of the leaves gone.

And now it is just great to see that one of them survived, after all! And I have absolutely no clue how it survived our Delhi heat when temperatures go up to 114 degrees fahrenheit!

I am thrilled and it is looking prettier every day.

Thanks to Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

My roof top terrace garden

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 07:24:00 +0000

All I will say is that I am rather pleased with my roof top terrace garden these days!
Lets get Wordless! on ABC Wedesday!

My balcony garden with Poinsettias, Mums and Coleus

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 11:42:00 +0000

My balcony is looking rather dressed these days with Chrysanthemums, Coleus and my favorite Poinsettias. Every year I take a trip to the nursery around November and buy some Poinsettias which I then flaunt on my balcony. The plants this year are rather small and two of them have lost a branch each so they are looking even smaller now. Poinsettia branches sadly are rather brittle!

I grow the Chrysanthemums on my rooftop terrace garden as it gets good sunlight unlike my lawn which is shaded by huge trees growing just outside the boundary wall of my house. Once the buds make an appearance, we take the pots down to the balcony where we can enjoy them even more.

Rows of Chrysanthemum pots on the terrace.

And brought down to the balcony now.

Hibiscus in my balcony garden

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 07:19:00 +0000

Beautiful Dwarf Hibiscus!

Thanks to the team at Wordless Wednesday.

Basil in my rooftop garden

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:51:00 +0000

I needed pots for the Petunia and Dahlia seedlings and I realised that I had lots of pots with Basil growing in them! It seems to have self seeded throughout my roof top terrace garden alongside other plants and into many empty pots. And all these from one small cutting that a friend of mine had given me!

In the Amaryllis pots

In the Bougainvillea planter

Living with the Dracaena

Giving company to the Frangipani

Basil plants ready to be pulled out

Some seeds collected too!

I hated to pull out all the healthy Basil plants but I needed the pots for Petunia and Dahlia seedlings. However, there was a silver lining to this cloud too. I had a whole bunch of beautiful aromatic Basil leaves and so I made Pesto!

I have some empty pots now but I think I'm going to need a whole lot more!

Dahlias!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:35:00 +0000

Shall we let the flowers do all the talking?!

It is time to sow Dahlia seedlings. These are my Dahlias from the Spring of this year. I had added compost to the soil before planting the seedlings and after a few days also added an organic fertilizer made by soaking Mustard oil cakes in water for 15 days. And I have to say the results were amazing!
This year though, I am worried because I yet have to get the Dahlia seedlings!
Thanks to the team at Wordless Wednesday!
And thank you too Mary, at Mosaic Monday!

Planters from sewer pipes!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 09:41:00 +0000

A few years back my house was renovated and I had a few unused clay sewer pipes left over from then. And since then I had been itching to convert them into planters. Finally got around to doing just that and am quite happy with the results! They are all the same length but I placed them at varying depths. They were a dull brown color so had to paint them with terracotta paint first after cleaning and scraping the surface a bit. Filled the bottoms with small thermocol pieces, put soil on top, put in the plants and voila!

Petunias...my very own!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Sun, 21 Jul 2013 04:01:00 +0000

I know this post is extremely delayed but I've been busy with another passion of mine! But more about that later. For now, lets talk about the Petunias that grew from the seeds that I saved from last year's crop. As you can see below, they are quite pretty. I was rather proud because I had gathered the seeds myself!

A couple of observations-There were some new colors this time around. The lighter purple (picture above) was a new development. Also, some flowers had a very faded color, like the pink ones in the picture below. So even though the colors were a little different from last year overall I would say they were beautiful!

Sowing Petunia seeds

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:33:00 +0000

Last year I had bought Petunia seedlings from a nursery. Those seedlings had grown into the most beautiful Petunias. I completely fell in love with them. So I decided to save some of the seeds and try to grow them myself this year.
After the Petunia flower shrivels and dries up one can pull it off easily. That exposes the small, dried, brown seed pods which are full of tiny black seeds. One can pry the pod open easily and shake out the tiny dot like seeds. I managed to save seeds from all the different colored Petunias.

For the sowing medium, I used Soilrite, which is a commercially available multipurpose soilless compost and soil conditioner. I put some of the Soilrite in a bucket and then added water to soak it.

I filled the seed tray and a couple of shallow plastic containers with the moist Soilrite and evened out the surface using my fingers.I sprinkled the Petunis seeds on the surface of the Soilrite and patted the seeds into place with a gentle to and fro motion. Petunia seeds are surface sown as they are very tiny and not able to push through a heavy layer of soil. Finally, I covered the seed tray and containers with a clear plastic film which helps trap the moisture.
The Petunia seeds have begun to sprout in the picture below.

I also sowed Marigold and Pansy seeds in the tray. Once some seedlings began sprouting I propped up the plastic film using toothpicks so that the seedlings did not touch the plastic. And when most of them had sprouted I removed the film completely.

Composting

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 07:53:00 +0000

It amazes me to see how perfectly Nature recycles everything. Anything found in Nature, gets assimilated back into the Earth completely once its life cycle is over. It is only the man made stuff that clutters our earth like plastics, glass, rubber etc. And we realise how true that is when we compost. All the nutrients tied up in organic waste are converted back into a rich compost which can be used to grow new plants, to renew life. A huge pile of garbage gets converted into a small pile of rich compost but a tiny piece of plastic remains untouched even after months!

I started composting about a year ago in a big plastic drum that I had at home. I started putting in all my kitchen scraps, old newspapers (after wetting and tearing them up), dried leaves, tea bags and egg shells sometimes. Once in a while I would stir and shake it up. It is amazing to see how all the waste just keeps getting reduced into a small pile of compost.

I am looking forward to seeing the effects of this compost on my plants. I have combined the compost with cow manure, sand and soil to make the potting mix.

The flower pots are ready and waiting.

While we wait for the winter flowers....

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:46:00 +0000

It seems I go into hibernation in summers. The Delhi heat wilts every plant and the lawn burns. So I just give up trying. But the weather is turning now and the prospect of the coming winters is exciting! There are very few flowers around currently but that should change once winters are here.
These Dianthus are have reseeded in last years pots. Dianthus are also called Carnations and Pinks. Its common name comes not from the pink color of its flowers but from the jagged edge of the flower petals which look as though they have been cut with a pinking shear. It is thought that the color pink may be named after the flower- the verb pink dates from the 14th century and means "to decorate with a perforated or punched pattern".

These shaded pink and white Portulacas are one of my favorites.

When I was growing up I remember seeing the Rosy Periwinkle (below) everywhere. But now there are so many bright and beautiful varieties.

White Carnations on my balcony.

Hibiscus in my garden.

Amaryllis everywhere,,,in my garden!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:11:00 +0000

The Amaryllis are in full bloom and this year almost all my pots are blooming. And the best part is that I have not done anything for them all year except water them. I did not divide the bulbs and put them in new pots so most of them are crowding their pots. The only time I repotted the bulbs was when the pots broke, maybe from the crowding!

All my Amaryllis pots lie on the terrace of my house all the year around. Even when the temperature touches 107-111°F during May and June they remain there under the blazing hot sun without any problem. I find the Amaryllis extremely low maintainence and yet the blooms are so splendid and beautiful.

Around the 17th of last month, I went bud spotting on my terrace and I was delighted to see many of the pots sending up buds.

Soon there were many stalks loaded with buds. The sight above, made me so happy! And now they are blooming in abundance in various nooks and corners of my house.

As you might have guessed already, for me there is no such thing as 'too many' where these lovely blooms are concerned!

Petunias

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:23:00 +0000

My balcony is looking rather pretty these days with beautiful Petunia blooms. I always found Petunias a little plain and boring but last year I noticed that things seems to have changed . Now there are many new cultivars with bright colors and stunning patterns. So November last I planted some petunias I bought from a nursery and now I'm so glad I did!

The Petunia Picotee variety with the contrasting margins are particularly eye catching.

Dahlias in a Springtime garden!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:23:00 +0000

I just love the giant Dahlia in my mother's garden when it is Spring.

For pictures of Dahlia from my garden, last year, please click here.
Wordless Wednesdayhttp://wordlesswednesday.blogspot.in/
Todays Flowers

Floral Cascade

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 01:29:00 +0000

Thanks to the team at Wordless Wedenesday

Orange you glad it is Spring?!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:59:00 +0000

Springtime is just so beautiful....

Thanks to Little Red House for Mosaic Monday.