April Houseplant Headaches

Winter never gives up without a fight in the Ozarks. Spring and winter vie for supremacy the month of April giving me houseplant headaches.

All winter my few houseplants have patiently waited. The grow light is never bright enough. Water is either too much or too little. They hunker down and endure.

Freezing temperatures will kill my houseplants. Warm temperatures will make them grow into beautiful plants once again.

weather houseplant headaches
When the days are warm, I carry the houseplants out to the plant bench behind an old shed. There are seven pots to haul out. African violets stay in the house all year. If it’s not supposed to rain, but might lightly frost, I toss a blanket over them rather than haul the pots back inside for a day or two.

Spring blows in with warm temperatures. The houseplants move outside. The fern puts up new fiddleheads.

Winter tromps in with freezing temperatures. The houseplants move inside drooping under the grow light once more.

Spring returns. The houseplants move out again.

Houseplant headaches come in the form of poring over the weather forecasts. Will the temperatures stay warm for several days?

fig tree houseplant headaches
Some fig trees do very well in pots. The pot is one cattle protein licks came in with five or six half inch holes in the bottom. A layer of gravel is next. Then comes a mixture of compost and soil. The stand is simple and set up so a small tractor can pick it up with it’s carry all tines. The heated room is a converted, insulated garage kept at forty degrees over the winter.

More houseplant headaches come as heavy pots are carted out and the watch begins. Weather forecasts are notoriously inaccurate in this frost pocket. Most accurate is the feel of the air when I go out to milk. Ice in the air means racing back to cart those pots inside for the night.

Winter is sneaky. The air can feel warm in the evening. The wind can shift blowing in freezing temperatures by morning. Such a set up turned all my plants black a few years ago. Most of them did sprout back up in a week or two.

Many of my houseplants are gone now, given away. April houseplant headaches following the struggles of keeping the plants alive over the winter became too much of a hassle.

developing figs
Figs are an interesting fruit. The flowers are inside a fig-like capsule that comes straight out of the branches. The fig develops from there. Different figs are different colors when they are ripe. They do soften. They taste radically different from the commercially available dried figs.

Now there is a new source of houseplant headaches: fig trees. These are not the hardy figs. These are the tropical figs grown for their delicious fruits. They reside in large tubs.

All winter these trees lived in an insulated, heated room. Now the tractor comes over to move them out for warm spring days and returns to put them back in their room when winter returns.

Unlike my houseplants that are strictly to look at, the figs repay us for the trouble with fresh figs. The trees are already putting on a crop.