Wednesday, November 5, 2008

The Pee-Wee Effect

I have been hesitant to write on my plant blog about my bad experiences or flat out failures in raising plants.  I felt that someone who has a plant blog needs to appear to know what they are doing.  But I guess we are all experimenting and I don’t think PETP (People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants) will come after me if I share some of my more trying moments with my friend, Kingdom Plantae.

I live in zone 7A.  This region can get pretty cold during the winter – dropping to around 0 degrees Fahrenheit on occasion.  Needless to say, tropical plants must be brought indoors.  Unfortunately, I don’t (yet) have a greenhouse and my house is not well-suited to keeping hoards of plants over the winter.  My window space is limited and I have some beautiful large trees in my yard which pretty effectively scatter a lot of sunlight before it can make it in the window.  So, I’m limited on where I can put plants in the house over the winter.  It’s a bit of a struggle to keep everything alive until it gets warm again and I can put all my plants back out for some fresh air, circulation, real rain and warm sunshine.  I really should experiment with artificial lighting, but I only this year put most of my plants in one concentrated place where this would be effective.

Anyway, in this little house of mine, live myself, my wife, 2 aquariums with plants and fish, approximately a hundred plants – and 2 dogs.  Those last 2 inhabitants add yet another restriction to where I can place my plants indoors (and outside as well).

I was reading a blog post about Zamioculcas zamiifolia today at Plants are the Strangest People.  [PATSP is an excellent and entertaining blog, so you should check it out.]  In the post, the writer says that ‘ZZ plants’ rarely do anything and they don’t require any grooming since dead leaves are so rare.  I was just thinking about how this plant is nearly indestructible – and yet, I have a couple of dead leaves on my plant.  I felt kind of embarrassed at first, thinking I might be the only person in history who has had trouble keeping a ‘ZZ plant’ – although I’m sure that’s not true.  Then I remembered why my ‘ZZ plant’ has its brown leaves.

And that, my friends, leads us to “the Pee-Wee effect.”  My two canine daughters are a 70ish pound Boxer named Pippa and a 15ish pound Boston Terrier named Pee-Wee.

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Pippa and Pee-Wee playing when Pee-Wee was a newborn puppy
Both of our pups been known to chomp a leaf from time to time, but Pippa is usually more trust-worthy than the younger, hyper and erratic Pee-Wee.  My wife and I affectionately refer to Pee-Wee as “the pig” [really it is affection], because of her little round, pink belly and her common snorting noises.  Most of Pippa’s attacks came when she was younger and less mature.

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My ZZ plant’s browning leaves were most likely brought on by an assault by Pee-Wee.  There are some little perforations in the affected leaves that could only have been made by the little pig.  If it had been Pippa, there wouldn’t be a plant left.  She destroys all evidence.

Anyway, the “effect” of Pee-Wee’s random plant chewing is almost always that I lose the affected leaves.  I usually don’t do anything after she has messed with one of my plants, hoping that the plant will remain healthy and just have some new features.  I probably should just immediately snip off the affected leaves, though.

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Pippa in front of the Christmas tree

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Pee-Wee driving the boat

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Pee-Wee pretending to be incapable of any wrongdoing


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Other plants that Pee-Wee has attacked include my Aglaonema ‘Maria’, a bromeliad, a pineapple plant (also a bromeliad), a coconut palm, and a gerbera daisy.  She actually managed to eat the bromeliad and pineapple plant, but she only damaged a couple of leaves on the other plants.  This summer, the pig ripped a leaf (with attached stem) off of my Monstera deliciosa 'Borsigiana' and left it lying on the back porch.  I stuck the leaf in water (about 4 inches across with a 10 inch stem) and was surprised to see two fleshy roots appear within a week or so.  So, in one case (and one case only) Pee-Wee has actually helped me propagate a plant.

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This year, I have managed to move all plants out of their reach.  I built a small shelf in the extra bathroom in the house where some more plants can get some bright, indirect light.  And I bought a shelf to put in the laundry room, loaded it down with plants and put a baby gate in front of everything on the floor.  The main bathroom in the house, however, has a number of reachable plants on the floor.  So I have to make sure to keep that door closed whenever I leave the house.  Otherwise, I will be sure to come home to some disappointment.

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