Celebrate a Gardener’s Holiday

Amaryllis (Hippeastrum sp.) is a pleasure to watch unfold.

Celebrate your green thumb this holiday season with everything from décor to gifts.

Bring the garden indoors with plants, plants, and more plants. Start some amaryllis bulbs or paperwhites. Bank poinsettias in a bay window. 

Top a delicate cyclamen with a gardening cloche or delight in the blooms of a Christmas cactus or orchid. These plants will add beauty and satisfy your need to play in the dirt.

Moth orchid (Phalaenopsis sp.). Photo: Pixabay

To keep your plants lush and lovely throughout the holiday season, check out the care tips in our Home and Garden Information Center fact sheets. Here are a few to get you started:

Go natural for decorations. Snip some holly or evergreen boughs and stuff them in baskets and pots. Add some winterberry or curly willow branches for flair. Fill a pottery bowl with pinecones.  

Native winterberry jazzes up holiday arrangements.
Photo: M. Talabac

Jazz up outside containers with evergreens and colorful branches for some welcoming eye candy.  

Weave yarrow, baby’s breath, statice, hydrangea blossoms, and other dried flowers into wreaths, swags, and arrangements. Stuff an antique pitcher with an armful of Lunaria’s silvery seed pods.  

Take a walk through a meadow with your clippers and a big basket and discover an abundance of interesting grasses, seed pods, and natural forms to enhance your holiday decorating.  

Leave them natural or dust them lightly with a bit of gold or silver spray paint for a bit of holiday sparkle.  

Next, add a few purchased decorations that mirror your passion for gardening. Tie tiny copper watering can ornaments onto your tree. Use zinc or copper plant markers as gift tags.  

And just for fun, decorate a child’s holiday tree with brightly colored kids’ gardening gloves and tools you can later donate to a school garden.

Gifts for gardeners are a breeze. Give hand-softening soaps and lotions. Wrap a bunch of fresh holly in festive tissue. Pot an amaryllis bulb or other plant in a handsome pot.  

Look for classic garden jewelry with blossoms cast in silver or gold. Or give a gift from your garden such as homemade pesto, a rooted houseplant cutting, or seeds collected from a favorite plant.   

Are you crafty? Indulge your artistic side to create homemade gifts with a gardener’s touch. 

Lavender sachets made from homegrown lavender make lovely gifts. 

I give friends tins filled with lavender cookies made with lavender from my garden. I delight in friends’ gifts of hand-stitched sachets, dried flower bunches, and potted herbs.  

I can hear the guys out there saying, “Enough with the girly stuff, whatcha got for me?” Tools, dudes.  And yes, we gals like tools, too. 

Check out your local garden centers, then hit the catalogs. Two of my favorites are Lee Valley and Gardener’s Supply. Both have quality tools and other garden gear.  

And in my book, you simply cannot go wrong with a gardening book. New or used, your favorite reads and references will help to grow your gardening friends’ libraries and know-how. 

Whether yours is a homemade or store-bought holiday, make your home and gifts a beautiful reflection of your passion for gardening.  

By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension.

This article was previously published by Herald-Mail Media. Read more by Annette.

Fine-tuning your indoor plant lighting choices

This is the final article in our four-part series about indoor plant lighting. You can also read the first, second, and third articles.

You may see two other details provided in lamp specifications aside from the terms introduced in my last installment. They are not critical factors but can influence your satisfaction with how the lights look by themselves, and how plants, decorative pots, and other objects look underneath them.

The appearance of plants under the lights is not only important for aesthetics, like seeing the true colors of blooms, but also for detecting leaf discoloration, which can be a key symptom of malnutrition, light stress, or pest or disease damage.

Color Rendering Index (CRI)

While this doesn’t affect actual light intensity, it does impact our perception of how colors will look under a light and is a matter of personal preference.

On a scale of 0 to 100, the higher the CRI value a lamp has, the more accurate the colors will look compared to viewing in natural light. At the low end of the scale, colors are lackluster (desaturated) and less distinguishable from each other. Since incandescent, fluorescent, and LED lights all produce light by different means, they have different CRI ranges, though improvements in technology are closing this gap. Ideal ratings are in the 80s and above, with the 90s considered “high CRI.”

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Indoor lighting options: terms, types, and measurements

terrarium plants under LED lights
Terrarium under LED lights. Photo: M. Talabac

This is the third in our four-part series of articles about indoor lighting for plants. You can also read the first, second, and fourth articles.

Artificial light sources come in several forms, all relatively easy to acquire. Costs can vary wildly, and some are more electrically efficient than others. The variety of available options allows you to customize setups to your needs and the preferences of your plants. Before you dive into an overwhelming list of web search results, here are traits of the basic categories:

Light-Emitting Diode (LED)

  • best energy-efficiency in terms of light produced per watt consumed (especially if the light has the ideal spectrum)
  • coolest to the touch except for high-powered units, which usually have small built-in cooling fans
  • can be expensive for high-quality fixtures, though costs are decreasing
  • light output does not dim significantly over time, though diodes do have a finite lifespan
  • reach full brightness immediately or very quickly when turned on
  • diodes can either be exposed or under a frosted or textured cover to help diffuse the light
  • diodes are directional, meaning they don’t emit light in every direction the way a fluorescent tube does, so reflectors aren’t usually needed
  • more even light output from one edge of the fixture to the other
  • can be round like a spotlight (with a cluster of diodes) or straight strips (or strips inside a tube) with one or more rows of diodes
  • some replacement “tubes” can be used in place of fluorescent tubes in a fluorescent fixture, but you must check with the fixture’s manufacturer for compatibility as mixing components is a matter of electrical safety
terrarium LED spotlights
Terrarium LED spotlights. Photo: M. Talabac
LED panel lights
LED panel. Photo: M. Talabac

Houseplants – The Garden Thyme Podcast

two houseplants on a windowsill

Happy New Year! It is hard to believe that we are already in a new year. We are kicking off our third season by sitting down with Extension Educator Ginny Rosenkranz. Like many of you, during the pandemic our acquisition of houseplants increased exponentially. Ginny guides us on caring for all of our botanical beauties.

We also have our: 

  • Native Plant of the Month, Musclewood, Ironwood (Carpinus caroliniana) at ~24:55
  • Bug of the Month, Ice crawlers or ice bug family Grylloblattidea at ~29:05
  • Garden Tips of the Month at ~31:50

To listen to the podcast visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/687509.

podcast sound wave image

We hope you enjoy this month’s episode and tune in next month for more garden tips.

  1. If you have any garden related questions please email us at UMEGardenPodcast@gmail.com
    or look us up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcast.
  2. For more information about University of Maryland Extension and these topics, please check out the UME Home and Garden Information Center website at https://extension.umd.edu/hgic.

The Garden Thyme Podcast is a monthly podcast brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Senior Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes- Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne’s County), and Emily Zobel- Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County). Theme Song:  By Jason Inc.

Why light levels are important for indoor plant growth

plants growing under artificial light indoors
Photo: Miri Talabac

This is the second article in our four-part series about indoor plant lighting. You can also read the firstthird, and fourth articles.

Typically, insufficient lighting is the limiting factor for indoor plant growth and flowering, plus the reason for spindly seedlings. Most light fixtures in our homes and offices – especially those still using incandescent bulbs or those with energy-saving bulbs that mimic incandescents – don’t give off enough energy for plants to survive or thrive on long-term. In addition, windows block a surprising amount of sunlight intensity compared with the same spot just outside the glass. Insect screening outside a window reduces intensity even more.

Artificial lighting can either supplement natural light or be the sole light source for plants. Plants tolerate levels of light outside of their preferred range, but sensitivities vary from species to species. Over time, the consequences of inappropriate light levels may impact a plant’s health and alter its appearance, even if it isn’t immediately noticeable.

The importance of light to plants

For plants, light is food. We think of fertilizer as plant “food,” but in reality, it is more akin to a multivitamin than it is a meal – it supports how they use their food (carbohydrates from photosynthesis) and helps build tissues, pigments, hormones, defensive chemicals, and so forth – but it’s not providing the calories they need to survive and grow. They certainly can “fast,” so to speak, such as spending a few days in a box in transit or remaining semi-dormant in winter, but prolonged light deprivation from insufficient lighting will have negative impacts on plant health akin to slow starvation.

Plants may lack eyes, but they can still “see” light by detecting its colors, intensity, and duration. Coupled with temperature or precipitation, it can tell them what season it is for the purposes of growth and reproduction (flowering). Weather can fluctuate from year to year, but the patterns of daylength and general light intensity remain the same and are the most reliable environmental cues for the plant.

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Norfolk pine is a charming Christmas tree

branches of Norfolk Island pine trees
Norfolk Island Pine

Uh oh. You need a last-minute gift or a tiny tree to brighten a corner of your holiday home. Here comes a Norfolk pine to the rescue. Whew. That was close.

Looking like miniature Christmas trees, Norfolk pines pop up at garden centers and other stores over the holidays. Bedecked with bows and balls, they’re festive and cute as can be.

With a graceful, pyramidal shape and tiers of gently arched branches, they are loaded with appeal. They look delicate but are actually tough, long-lasting little trees.  

Technically a Norfolk Island pine, this pint-sized evergreen is native to – you guessed it – a place called Norfolk Island, just east of Australia. Captain James Cook discovered this tree on his second expedition to the South Pacific in 1774.

Norfolk pines are subtropical, hardy in zones 9 to 11. So they can’t handle our winters but are happy to summer outside and hang out with us indoors when the mercury drops. 

They are fairly carefree houseplants. Put them in a bright spot with some direct light. Water them when the top inch of soil feels dry. 

Norfolk pines love humidity, so mist them or group them with other plants. Fertilize them every week to two from spring to fall.

Transition them to outdoor living in the summer by putting them in the shade for a few days, then introducing them to bright light. Just remember to keep them watered and bring them in before the first frost hits.

Norfolk pines’ roots resent disturbance, so repot them only every few years. Once they get three feet tall, replace only the top few inches of soil instead of repotting the whole plant. 

They are slow growers. Norfolk pines generally top out at three to six feet indoors, but they take their sweet time getting there. In their native climes, they can top out at 200 feet.

Oh, and did I mention that a Norfolk pine is not a true pine? Technically Araucaria heterophylla, is part of a genus of 19 species of pine-like conifers. 

But let’s not split botanical hairs. 

The Norfolk pine is an appealing tree. For those with small spaces, it’s an ideal Christmas tree. For the rest of us, it is just a tiny charmer, a sweet little elf of a tree.    

Big or small, I hope your holiday tree is the center of a warm and blessed holiday season spent with family and friends.

By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension. This article was previously published by Herald-Mail Media. Read more by Annette.

An introduction to gardening under lights

This is the first article in a four-part series about the ins and outs of gardening under lights, both for newcomers curious about a different way to grow plants and for more experienced growers who want to build on their understanding of lighting options. Read on for the second, third, and fourth parts of the series.

plants growing under an LED light indoors
A variety of plants growing under an LED light indoors. Photo: Miri Talabac

Why use lights for plants?

It’s sensible to think, “why provide artificial light for indoor plants? Isn’t natural window light enough?” After all, natural light is certainly what the plants get when growing outside. If you’re fortunate and have sun-soaked windows in your home, you may have little need for artificial lighting. Anyone who has insufficient window light or who otherwise can’t utilize their windows for growing plants, though, would benefit from giving their plants brighter conditions.

We’ll address this in more detail in upcoming posts, but light levels play a significant role in keeping plants healthy, vigorous, and looking their best. Plant lights give you more control over this aspect of plant care.

Who benefits from using plant lights?

Anyone who doesn’t have ideal natural-light conditions for their plants would benefit from using plant lights (also called “grow lights”). You don’t have to be a tropical plant aficionado to make use of them, and anyone with an available power outlet can try it. Setups can be as simple or as complex as you’d like. Seed-starting enthusiasts can produce more robust seedlings, and anyone trying to overwinter a lemon tree, some herbs, an aloe, or patio tropicals could have more vigorous plants if their winter slog could be brightened with some extra light.

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