'Double Tulips 'Double Romance' planted
By balcony
8 comments
Double Tulips ‘Double Romance’ planted.
These my wife saw a few weeks ago in a shop in town when I wanted to buy some more Mini-Daffs to put in the pots on the balcony railings. She liked them very much & asked me if we could grow them at home, “Of course we can”, I said, “but they will have to stay outside on the balcony till the buds come out in the spring.”
She likes to see flowers but she has no idea how to grow them! Occasionally she will say “I like those flowers, can we grow them and put them on the bedroom windowsill?” Often I have to tell that no, we can’t, they are too big or they are not suited to growing indoors, for one reason or another.
For example we bought a box of Violas in the market square in town, in early June:
She wanted me to plant them in bigger pots & put them on the bedroom windowsill, even though I tried to dissuade her she insisted & I did as she asked.
Yes, for a few weeks they looked fabulous, but then we went away for 3 weeks leaving our son, who has even less idea of growing plants, to look after them till our return.
To make it easier for him I put them all together in a corner of the kitchen in front of the window:
When we returned home I saw they had grown VERY TALL & thin & some looked very unhealthy indeed:
I discovered the reason was they had been overwatered & had started to rot. My wife was very disappointed but if they had been outside on the balcony that probably wouldn’t have happened!
We lost them all in a few more days:
As she wanted some flowering plants on the bedroom windowsill I took the Busy Lizzies (Impatiens) out of the baskets on the balcony & put them on the bedroom windowsill:
As well as the ones in the tub of the floor & put them in the windows of both bedrooms & the kitchen.
I don’t have a photo of the ones on the kitchen windowsill, probably because it is very difficult to take photos from the inside as I have to lift up several curtains as well as the net curtains!
From the outside most of the time only part of the interior of the windowsill is visible & there tends to be a reflection of what’s behind me in the windows making it almost impossible to try & get a half decent photo!
She asked me what they were & I told her they were Busy Lizzies. They had few flowers, as lots had fallen off in the last week of cold, windy weather & my transplanting them. I said in a few days they will pick up & start flowering again but she said she wanted Carnations! I told her that they only flower in the summer & she couldn’t have any now. (Though I do have a couple of them growing on the balcony but if I bring them in for the winter, as she would perhaps insist if she knew, then they would probably die).
26 Oct, 2016
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Comments
pretty tulips, love the pink double it is so pretty, hope you have success with them all. Maybe get your wife some indoor hyacinths for her windowsill - she can watch them grow and flower and she will love the perfume from them.
26 Oct, 2016
Nice choices Balcony, maybe you can get your wife a couple of the indoor African Violets, for her window ledges, there are some really pretty ones about at the moment, deadhead regularly and they'll flower all winter for her, you can keep them going for years...
26 Oct, 2016
The Tulips are beautiful. I hope they give your wife a good show :)
She obviously likes flowers. Maybe some flowering houseplants would be nice for her :)
26 Oct, 2016
Had to laugh Balcony - you are a patient man.
sounds th eplant for her would be something like beautiflora plastica though I hardly dare suggest it on here...
26 Oct, 2016
Thank you all for your comments & for reading my blog. :-))
Amy, she wants the impossible at times but as she doesn't understand much about plants it frustrates her a little. Our bedroom windows face South East & our living room & kitchen South West so during the summer months we get all the sunshine that going - you can imagine therefore that not even Hywel's cacti would be very happy with the amount of sunshine & heat that gets trapped between the curtains & the window! I assure you it's NOT a place you would like to be after a few minutes! I've leant over the years we have lived in this flat that the windowsills are better empty for 3 months rather than subject plants to that sort of torture!
I used to wonder why my plants had big white areas on their leaves that would go brown & shrivel up &, if I hadn't removed the plants, they died. I can't really vouch for cacti as I don't grow them, but even they would be stressed by such high levels of light & heat I imagine but perhaps Hywel could enlighten us on this point.
27 Oct, 2016
I agree that the Tulips look very nice & I have NO objection at all in growing them for her - only it's difficult to make her realise they first need at six months in which to grow, & a colder environment than we would be comfortable in before she will see any flowers!
We both like Hyacinths & have grown them in the house before & their perfume is FAR, FAR better than any air sprays you can buy! We don't have any this year but even if we did they still need 3 months of darkness & cool conditions - something they most definitely WON'T find on a bedroom windowsill!!!
As for African Violets we have had a few plants at least for practically all the years (now 15 since we entered this weekend!) we have lived here. I used to have them in the bedroom windows but the sunlight &heat was too much for them during the summer & they inevitably died on the side facing the windows! The leaves would go white & then turn brown & brittle before shrivelling up!
I also grew Christmas & Easter Cactus plants, especially in the kitchen, during the summer but they also would go brown & shrivel. This year for the first time in the last 15 they have grown in the inside of the curtains, which are very light, so they have had plenty of light without getting strong sunlight or extreme heat. Therefore they are looking much healthy than they have in many a year! In fact they are coming into bloom right now!
27 Oct, 2016
You are right about cacti. Most would find it too extreme.
27 Oct, 2016
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The Tulips are so pretty David ,your wife knows what she likes even if she can't always have it, ... A shame about the Viola maybe she'll listen to you in future ..or NOT !! Lol ...
26 Oct, 2016