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This plant roots so easily from cuttings placed in soil or in water. I have left cuttings in water for over a year. They root easily, and stay alive with no problems. Cuttings look really nice in vases for indoor decor during the winter!

I have also noticed that the plant is greener in less light, and gets whiter when it's in very high light.

Rooted plants seem to hate being moved. They will drop their leaves and sulk for a few months before they get used to their new place and new light.

This seems like a very rare fern. I've never seen it sold, but I might have missed something! I love the lacy look! The plant was given to me in a 2 inch pot. It requires a lot of humidity to be happy. No humidity means a brown fern! The Marshall Islands was the perfect place to grow this one. I brought it home to the states, and it promptly died.

This has been an amazing plant! It glows red with the cold, or when it gets lots of sun. It's easy to propagate. I just remove a piece and stick it back in the soil. It roots quickly. This is a perfect plant for sharing with friends, and for using as fillers in pots and in ground places that need a bit more greenery.

The only bad thing about my plant is that indoors it is prone to mealybugs. You have to stop them quickly, or you lose the plant. The mealybugs haven't been a problem with plants grown outdoors.

Episcias are warm climate plants known for their colorful leaves and beautiful blooms. They make wonderful houseplants if you give them some good light and humidity. Never put them into direct sunlight because that will burn them. They should never be totally dry. I keep them slightly moist all of the time. Water from the bottom, and do not mist them. A pebble tray of water is best for increasing humidity. They require more water than their relatives, the African violets. Episcias are happiest with a temperature of about 60 to 70 degrees, although mine have done well up to about 90 degrees. Never let them go lower than 50 degrees or they die.

These plants put out runners so they make beautiful hanging baskets. If you'd like more flowers, cut most of the runners off. They can be propagated to give you more plants, or plants to share with friends.

I feed them every 2 weeks with a balanced fertilizer. Give these wonderful old plants a try! They used to be much more common, but not many know about them now.

I've loved these plants ever since my parents grew them in Arizona when I was a child. They could survive droughts, grew rampantly, responded quickly to hard pruning, and never failed to put on a gorgeous show with the white flowers later turning into the beautiful orange berries. The birds loved those berries! It was funny that when the berries were very old, but still on the plant, they would ferment and must have gotten a bit alcoholic! Birds would eat them and later be acting like they were tipsy. Some would land on the fence, and fall off while others staggered around on the ground. It never seemed to hurt them.

I now grow one here in NM. It is having a hard time because the deer are keeping it pruned way down. They do have hard thorns, but the deer don't seem to mind the thorns. Mine here doesn't flower as much, or get the berries like they did in AZ, but they still make a very nice plant with good winter color.

I recently was gifted a bushel basket of ripe Fuyu Persimmons. They were excellent eaten raw. I later cut them in thin slices and used my dehydrator to make Persimmon chips. They turned out perfectly, and are delicious! I also made a Persimmon Syrup to use for pancakes. That was good, but we still like our old Maple syrup and Coconut syrups the best.

Although this is named Bamboo, the only thing it has in common with Bamboo is the lacy foliage and cane-like growth. It grows well in zones 5 to 10. I've grown it in zones 7b and 9b. It did much better in my zone 7b. In 7b it looked good out in full sun. In 9b it needed some middle of the day shade in order to look its best.

Left alone, it can make a huge bush up to 8 ft tall, but it looks best if kept pruned lower. I liked to remove about a third of the canes down to the ground each year.

The birds love the berries! I loved the colorful foliage.

I found it hard to grow from seed, but softwood cuttings were an easy way to have more plants. This is a tough plant, and will do well with minimal care.

I've found this to be a difficult plant in my zone. It needs more water than most other plants. It is hard to keep nicely shaped. It dies back almost to the ground in our zone 7b. Growth in the Spring is very slow.
Deer and rabbits do leave it alone, which is a plus!

I used to think this was a difficult plant to grow. It's very easy if you give it plenty of water and high humidity. (It loves more water than most other succulents.) I have it growing like a weed now in my greenhouse. The segments are easily detached if you're not super careful. When they do detach, I stick them back in or on the soil, and they root quickly and form new plants. They bloom a lot, but so far mine haven't set seeds. This is a unique little plant that always gets comments when people see my plants.

Feb 17, 2018 8:55 AM MST
This is the first Cryptanthus that has grown well for me. Others have been very slow to grow, or die quickly. This one has grown quickly and put out many pups. It seems to like high humidity and warmer temperatures. It is crowded in with other tropical plants, and seems to love being in that situation. Mine is in a greenhouse. I think if I grew it in the house, it would be a great candidate for a terrarium plant for a larger terrarium.

Ericameria nauseosa is a native plant in my area. It blooms from about September to November in my area of New Mexico. The rubber rabbitbrush is a significant source of food for browsing wildlife on winter ranges.The leaves, flowers and seeds of rubber rabbitbrush are a food source for deer, antelope, elk, small mammals and birds. The plant also provides cover for small mammals and birds such asjackrabbits and sage grouse. Butterflies, bees and moths love it! Whenever the sun is up, this plant is covered with pollinators.

This plant has been one of my best houseplants! It grows easily and quickly, and stem cuttings root very quickly. It's a striking plant that gets noticed immediately whenever I have new people come over. It's fun to just snip off a piece and let them go home happy. The more it is snipped, the bushier it gets. I do mist sometimes, but if you have a very dry atmosphere, it would be good to grow it over a water tray like an orchid.

I have been growing this plant in my greenhouse for 2 years now. This Crossandra is amazingly disease and insect resistant. It has grown quite quickly, and is in bloom all year. I'm going to see if I can grow more of them from seed.

This plant offsets readily and is forming a huge clump. I do have problems with native grasses growing in with them. Hand pulling it is very dangerous. I'm afraid of grass killer products.
Do any of you have experience with using them in cacti and succulents?

This yucca is native to northern Arizona, and New Mexico and southern Utah and Colorado, generally at an elevation of 7500-8500 ft.I'm growing it at 6500 ft. It's cold hardy to -20°.

This has been a wonderful little plant for me. It survived another snowy, cold winter. There was very little to cut off to clean up the plant. It is very drought tolerant, but thrives with a bit of water. Right after I cleaned it up and watered it, it put out a huge flush of green leaves and just a few days later it burst into bloom. It's such a bright, beautiful little plant full of flowers. The best thing is that my resident deer and rabbits are leaving it alone! Now I want more salvias in different colors.

This is quite a plant! Its seedpod shape enables it to be a hitchhiker on the legs of cows or horses or feral pigs. The seeds can be spread over a wide area that way. I had one grab onto my sock once while I was hiking near our property. It grows across the Sonoran desert, California to Texas, and also down into Mexico. It is very hardy as it has a deep taproot, so it can grow with very little water. Another interesting thing is that the leaves are heliotropic. They follow the sun. Keep an eye out for this one if you visit the sonoran desert areas.

I have this plant in my greenhouse, and in a south window in the house. In both places, this plant is growing so quickly! I bought one pot of it, and divided it into 3 pots. Now the 3 pots will need to be divided soon, although I've read that they do like to be underpotted. Each one has bloomed for me with tall, fragrant spikes. It's a fresh, pretty, green, easy-to-care-for plant that I heartily recommend to everyone.

This plant does tend to get woody very quickly. To get around that, instead of just trimming out winter-killed branches, I now trim the whole bush down to about 3 inches from the ground with an electric hedge trimmer. It only takes about a month for it to get back to its normal height of about 2 1/2 ft. I love the smell of this one when I brush against it or my dog jumps in it. It's a nice fresh green that looks good in our semi-desert area. Easy to grow and grows well from cuttings.

When we first moved to our new property I didn't see any Mullein. The next year there were cute little felted rosettes around everywhere, and I didn't worry about them. The following year, the seed stalks came up, and were sculptural and interesting, so I didn't cut them down. Big mistake! From then on I had baby Mullein plants coming up everywhere all over our 10 acres. I now cut the stalks down before they can set their seed, but it's too late. This is one highly invasive plant!