plants in living room

[Warren Lake]

a few years back tried to grow kale in the living room south facing then fine when the big maple front lawn drops all its leaves. Waste of time kale hung on to the next year to be planted in the spring then grew well. Last winter had two grow lights only one on and only the red for the most part. Brought stuff in and kept it growing all winter then into the garden. There were four holly hocks three bloomed one other as well but in a not cared for area needed attention.

pretty nice that you can plant a seed and end up here. simple things are the best.

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[Jim Becker]

I'm tickled that a tree that I planted from a seed collected from a tree at our old property not only came up in a pot and grew to about a foot and a half over two years on the three season porch, but since I physically planted it outside this past spring, it's now...9' tall. It's a mountain ash and filled a perfect spot for a new tree to replace one we took down that was in a not-so-good spot.

[Bill Dufour]

My grandmother dug up and planted a small redwood tree around 1925. It grew to over six stories tall in Berkeley California in ideal conditions. Survived the house being torn down and an apartment buidling being built in 1960. Someone cut it down around 2010.
Bill D

[Stan Calow]

I planted the top crown of a pineapple in a pot, brought inside over the winter with a grow light. It might be another year or two before it produces a fruit but I am impressed with its desire to live.

[Dave Zellers]

Twisting off the top of a pineapple and rooting it in a pot or in ground is fun. In northern climes, very tricky to get it to flower. It does take at least two years so it requires wintering over. I'm 0 for 2 on the flowering but I did successfully get one to winter over, and grow beautifully the next season, but no bloom. But still, it's a fun thing for kids to be a part of.

For those who might want to try- twist off the top, and pull off maybe 3-4 levels of lower leaves. The dark spots on the stem are future roots. Pop it into a pot or the ground.

[Mel Fulks]

Trees are the Ambassadors that teach us to love the earth we walk on . It’s what keeps us from moving on to another planet .
Those who are selling a house can’t help worrying about the possibility that the new owners won’t realize how beautiful the trees that
live there really are.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I moved a red oak tree in 2006 to replace a huge maple that blew down in front of the farmhouse. When we left last year it was taller than the house, and had filled out nicely. It was 9 feet tall when I moved it there but very spindly, and the leaves were tiny the first couple of years because of the roots having been cut.

[Tom M King]

This has progressed past seeds planted, but this is a White Oak I moved with a mini excavator a bit less than 20 years ago. We had a small sink hole between the house and the barn. I packed some of our compost in it the best I could with the excavator, and moved a little White Oak sapling that we needed to get rid of where it was, and set it in the hole. I packed the rest of the hole with more compost.

That was one spot that leaves our house out of shade from the later morning Sun in the mornings. It's now providing some of that shade and in years to come should take care of it completely.

It's the White Oak to the right and behind the Red Cedar in this picture. It's the healthiest young Oak tree I know of. Our barn is 75 feet from the house, and that tree makes it a more pleasant walk every time. It's something over 40 feet tall now.

[Steve Demuth]

We used to grow a small greenhouse worth of plants in the big South facing windows of our little cottage (our house was originally a one room schoolhouse, without electricity, so the entire South wall was giant double hung windows, in order to provide adequate light for study). Worked great. When we replaced the windows with modern, low-E, high R-value windows 15 years ago, all that came to an end. Even though they let plent of light through for purposes of lighting the house, they are actually blocking over half of the Sun's radiation, and it's like trying to grow garden plants in deep shade their now. Philodendrons and money plants do fine. You can grow a coleus for color, but anything that actually requires sun is out of the question. We overwinter potted rosemary plants in front of the windows, but they basically go dormant and barely make it through the three months we don't operate our actual greenhouse (which we built after we realized the house was no longer going to serve for starting garden plants).