Fabulous festive house-plants! Gardening tips for December

The mad mayhem of Christmas is nearly upon us now! But try to find time between gift-wrapping and writing grocery lists for a little horticulture.

How about looking after your pot-plants? Or planning your sweet pea campaign? Maybe even planting some blackcurrant bushes…

I’m not much of a house-plant gal as a rule – un-trendy to the last, that’s me!  But there is a particular range of plants that we see everywhere at this festive time of year, bought as decorations for one’s home or given and received as gifts.  Here are a few tips for looking after them – even the plants want to look their best at Christmas!

A general rule first – practically all commonly-grown houseplants HATE standing permanently in water. Dunk the pot in a bucket of water almost up to its rim and leave it until the bubbles stop, let it drain, then stand it on a tray of pebbles until the surface of the compost feels dry again.

Right, now down to specifics:

Hellebores

Beautiful H. niger (Christmas rose) MUST be kept cool and out of direct sunlight.  If you are digging them up from the garden to have inside for a while, it’s imperative that they have some cold temperatures first because that’s what triggers the flower buds.  Otherwise, you’ll just get healthy green foliage 🤨 which rather misses the point.

Poinsettias

Unlike Hellebores, these like things COSY!  In fact, if you are getting them for yourself or as a gift, don’t buy them at all unless they have been grown indoors.  Even getting them home can be tricky – make sure they are wrapped up fully against the cold air.

Position your plant in a warm, light place – no nasty draughts, please, a constant temperature is the key. What look like petals are actually the upper leaves of the plant (bracts), and they will shrivel if the night temperature falls below 10C (50F).

Apply some high potassium fertiliser once a month (tomato fertiliser is fine) and cut the whole plant back to 4 inches in April. To have a chance of colouring up next Christmas, you’ll need to put the pot in total (but not cold) darkness for about 12 hours every day, from the end of October onwards.

Interestingly, you’ll probably end up with a taller plant than it was originally, because commercial growers will often have treated them with growth suppressants to make neat, compact plants for sale.

Indoor azaleas

These need deadheading and keeping cool and moist – the trick here is to use rainwater or cold boiled water from the kettle, because they are acid-lovers. Feed the plant and put it somewhere shady outside in the spring. If you want to bring it inside to flower again next winter, like with Hellebores you must let it have some cold weather first to trigger new flower-buds so bring it in, in late autumn (but before the first frost).

Phalaenopsis

If you are lucky enough to be given a moth orchid (Phalaenopsis), I suggest you keep it on an East- or West-facing window – warm, but not in direct sunlight. When it’s faded, cut the final flowering stem down to just above a healthy-looking joint.

If it seems reluctant to flower again, put it in a slightly cooler place for a few weeks to shake it up a bit! Re-pot it every couple of years into a clear container because rather bizarrely their roots actually like light.

Use bark clippings or orchid compost, but don’t bury the weird roots that are growing into the air outside the pot (I know, I know, it’s most peculiar that a plant with such glamorous flowers has such unsightly appendages….)

Stand the pot in a tray of tepid boiled water from the kettle water about once a week, and let it drain. Give the leaf-undersides a spritz every so often with a foliage feed.

Amaryllis (Hippeastrum)

These rather unusually flower best if they are a bit pot-bound so they should be in a pot only slightly bigger than the bulb. They like a warm bright place, and should be watered only when the compost feels dry, and fed regularly with a balanced fertiliser.

Caroline discovered recently that you can certainly persuade these to flower again, though the exact time can be tricky to arrange! She has ended up with Advent blooms rather than Christmas ones. If yours similarly look like they’re going to bloom too early, move them to a cool place to slow them down for a while.  If you’ve been given a bulb rather than the plant itself, don’t make the rookie mistake of planting it too deeply – they like their head and shoulders above the soil-level – and use a well-drained open compost.

After all the spectacular flowering is over, pick off the blooms as they fade but, if you can bear the ugly look of them, leave on the fat flower stem as well as the developing leaves, because they will continue to feed the bulb.

When the flower-stalk has died back completely, yank it out of the bulb. Keep the plant on a light windowsill in spring, then put the pot outdoors in a sunny place for the summer. Always water an amaryllis quite sparingly and feed it weekly with a tomato fertiliser. When the leaves go yellow in the autumn, bring it in, stop feeding and watering it until it kicks into life again a couple of months later.

Cyclamen

Indoor cyclamen (as in our pretty feature pic this week) like things cool and bright – keep them away from the radiators.  

They are depressingly easy to overwater – Laura has just had the same experience as I have in the past when they go all yellow and then soggy and mouldy.   To lessen this risk, only water when the top of the compost feels dry.  Never water them from the top, only by standing the pot in a tray of water for an hour or so and then taking it out again. Don’t water the corm over the summer when it goes dormant; start again when you see the leaves appearing. 

Christmas cactus

These need things warm and bright but not direct sun and they are also very easy to overwater! Feed and water them over the summer then stop in September until you see flower-buds form.

Gardening shorts

• Have you started planning your sweet pea campaign yet?  Laura is a veritable doyenne on this subject – I hope you caught up with her very popular video on the subject in our YouTube channel.  She has also discovered an amazing new way of growing them successfully using Wool-pots, so click on the link at the bottom to find out more about that method of cultivating these lovely plants.

• If you are planning to plant some blackcurrant bushes this winter, it’s a good tip to plant them 2″ (5cm) lower than the soil mark of where they were growing before, because you are likely to encourage more shoots coming up from the base. They’d appreciate some well-rotted manure around the roots. Take out a third of the old stems on established bushes.

• Do you, like me, enjoy filling the house with evergreen foliage at Christmas? It will last much longer in a centrally-heated home if you condition the cut stems a bit first, before you put them up.  Split the base of the cut stems then plunge them into a deep bucket of warm water. If you have any sachets of cut-flower food, pour one of those into the water too. Leave them there overnight and then re-cut the base of the stems again before using them to decorate your home. The odd fine mist of water will keep your sweet-smelling greenery looking fresh even longer. Pic dec 13, 2019

Here is the link to Laura’s piece about her wonderful new way of growing sweet-peas.

And click on the box below to watch her video

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What an absolute winter star – Chimonanthus praecox.  If it’s taking a while to get going, don’t be impatient. It’s worth the wait as Louise explains here…

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Are you still looking for those last-minute gifts and stocking-fillers? Remember that we’ve got a great stock of garden tools, gifts and lovely Christmas candles: click on the pic below:

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