Kokedama - Must be willing to make a little bit of a mess...

Kokedama - Must be willing to make a little bit of a mess...

houseplants indoor gardening

Kokedama with ivy

I just finished cleaning up the sunroom after making my first kokedama.

Kokedama is a Japanese word that translates into English as "moss balls" though all the auto-correct editors want to translate it into chokedamp.

The idea is to mix a combination of peat and clay soil, generally a 70-30 ratio, so you can form the soil into a ball and it stays as a ball. Then you plant

The Tale of the Amaryllis and Other Bulbs to Force in the Wintertime

The Tale of the Amaryllis and Other Bulbs to Force in the Wintertime

bulbs indoor gardening

Miniature Amaryllis

My amaryllis bulbs, including the miniature amaryllis bulbs,  are all up and in various stages of bud and bloom.

The miniature amaryllis is pretty but isn't the variety I ordered. So I wrote the company this morning to see what they can do. My first choice is to get the variety I ordered, but it is sold out.

But I've ordered from this company for years with great success

Miniature Amaryllis

Miniature Amaryllis

bulbs indoor gardening

Amaryllis bulb, just planted.

You know how amaryllis can get really tall and floppy and sometimes requiring elaborate staking to keep them from toppling over, no matter how heavy their pot is?

And the elaborate staking, with only the depth of a pot to anchor the actual stakes, can look like something Gilligan himself tried to put together using sticks and vines he found on an uncharted,