Ken, How much sun do you give Ginger? Or does it vary significantly by species/type? I have a White that gets real upset with me when I give it much sun. Leaf burn.

You guys should try canna omega if tall ones impress you!
I've seen them at or over 20' here in zone 6, no doubt they can't get bigger.
They end up looking more like a banana than musafolia does, atleast to my eyes anyway...

I find myself dreading the change of the seasons already!
Maybe soon I can excuse myself from this thread and just grow tropicals, not tropicals in the north!

Thinking of a more Southern location? I was looking at my big plants and thinking in another month and it will all need to go to the GH. Not looking forward to moving it all back inside.

HollyAnnS said: I was looking at my big plants and thinking in another month and it will all need to go to the GH. Not looking forward to moving it all back inside.

GH?


Try Living Room - hey = growing tropicals is "living".
Dining Room - I do grow a lot of edible tropicals Avocado, Lemon, Pineapple, Clementine, Meyer Lemon
Kitchen - Of course!! Just the place for my Caper, Bay, etc FRESH....
My Bedroom - FULL - 2 fold up tables
Guest Bedroom - Fuller
3rd BR - off limits. That belongs to DW
Basement - FULL and will be fuller when I start 15 - 20 72 cell seed starting trays in January (note to self - start Luffa before Christmas. And keep the extra space for the Artichokes.)

I'm always thinking of a warmer place, that's easy!
Making it reality is not!

@David. It sounds like my house. The only off limits is my daughter's room. I did talk her into accepting 2 snake plants. I told her it would clean the air in her room.

I simply have too much invested in my outside gardens to move - I have an exceptional Viburnum collection and many specimen trees; Stewartia and Franklinia for example.

I accept that. I also have the attitude that if I want to try something - I do (screw zones) by buying the plant and/or growing from seed. I am now fond of plumeria - so I ordered 50 + seeds - 7 varieties that will be started in the basement in January. I will worry what to do with that many plants later. Perhaps keep one of each and trade or sell the rest.

Well we start filling the GH then start moving them into the Living area. Worst case is they have to go to the second floor (room of doom) Where they end up over crowded and not well cared for. It is a last result.

moving it all to move myself...bet in the next year orso I too will be warm all year long... what will i miss most here.. it would have to be living in a virtually mosquito free place... I've seen maybe 6 of them all summer.. mostly late at night as I'm on the computer...doors and windows open...

Holy cow. Mosquito-free living. What a dream!

From what I hear, there's plenty of mosquito free areas down south... Gmo seed has lead to the reclaiming of lots of graze land, which is bombarded by spray planes, dumping tons of herbicide and pesticide on the land, which leads to lots of drift and overspray... Pretty scary to hear that in 3 years time, mosquito populations have gone from intolerable to non existent.

I know it sounds nice... But they are a key link in the food chain.

We have a pretty serious drought here now, but earlier we had the wettest, least sunny 3 weeks I've ever seen, which led to more skeeters than I've ever seen!
You could kill 5 in one swat, in 18 hours, I was bit by 3 species that I'd never even seen before! Everyone who came by concurred that my backyard was ground zero for skeeters, we couldn't even take the kids out!
I'm not a big fan of them, but id rather have Mosquitos, and the wildlife that depend on them, than live somewhere devoid of that wildlife.

Gordon, Have you ever been to Vancouver? They have these amazing roof top gardens. Large ponds and full sized trees. There are a lot of them all over the city. I thought of you while we were there. This garden was on a 3rd fl roof. You could see the full sized trees on the tops of many of the highrises.

Gordon you have the Mosquito-free zone because you are up high right? It is the same position I am in on my patio. My patio is an extension of the house on a 3rd floor level. It would be the same as being on top of a 3rd floor roof. Some reason the mosquitos seem to stay close to the ground and not up that high. I even have a water garden on the patio and do not get any mosquito lava. The water stays crystal clear.

Sounds like a lovely spot.

yes Cinta... my lack of mosquitoes is due to being up in the air...a bit windier..most prey for them is at ground level..they like the shady cool dark places I was at a backyard garden maybe 20 blocks from here ... they had them full force all day long.. then I went and checked out the pond next door to them.. covered in plants and the water almost solid with larvae ... seems they were breeding for the county..a few mosquito dunks I think took care of it..
Nice photos Holly.. yes some pretty big trees here too.. I built a 4' x 4' planter for a friends white pine.. it still gets blown over.. but it is so big it is easy to stand back up again ..using it's self as a long lever.. one day i saw a crane lifting real big trees up to the 20th floor garden

DavidLMO said:

GH?


Try Living Room - hey = growing tropicals is "living".
Dining Room - I do grow a lot of edible tropicals Avocado, Lemon, Pineapple, Clementine, Meyer Lemon
Kitchen - Of course!! Just the place for my Caper, Bay, etc FRESH....
My Bedroom - FULL - 2 fold up tables
Guest Bedroom - Fuller
3rd BR - off limits. That belongs to DW
Basement - FULL and will be fuller when I start 15 - 20 72 cell seed starting trays in January (note to self - start Luffa before Christmas. And keep the extra space for the Artichokes.)

David, you're living MY dream with that!
Now to learn how to keep them alive in all the rooms.....

crittergarden said:

David, you're living MY dream with that!
Now to learn how to keep them alive in all the rooms.....

@crittergarden - I lost very few plants last winter indoors - maybe 2 or 3. The hardest problem is separating plants. The 2 BRs have very low humidity. Including everything, I over winter hundreds of plants. The things that require higher humidity, I place in the basement where I can control it.

Helpful, David, thank you.
A lot of my stuff goes in the basement because there's just not much room anywhere else.
The house is small, the rooms are small, the windows are 3x3', and I have cats who want to share the windows with the plants!
I'll GET there. Slowly, but I'll get there.

I'd like to cram a lot of greenery into the house.
And I'm looking forward to growing kaffir lime and other FOOD plants in 2016.

I have the same issue Critter, small house and 3 cats. But instead of wanting to also share the window sil, they want to use the larger pots of a bathroom. That is when I put foil around the plant so they cant get to the dirt and the sound is not to their liking..lol
I rearrange the living room so I have space in front of the window and that is where I put the larger pots.

crittergarden said:
I'd like to cram a lot of greenery into the house.
And I'm looking forward to growing kaffir lime and other FOOD plants in 2016.

But of course! I can tell the difference in the air when I have all the plants inside - remember plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. Keep in mind though, if you get too many plants in a confined area, this can lead to carbon dioxide deprivation. It is very hard to identify, but one sign is that the plants just do not look right. (Heh - ) If that is the case, there are several products that "give off" carbon dioxide - even some big mechanical/electrical products sometimes used in greenhouses.



WRT growing the lime or other citrus - you can start them pretty much anytime. Indoors, they like to be near a window to get a lot of light. On Dec. 23, 2014 I started common Lemon and Clementine and they are outside now and ~ 10 inches tall. Some of my after dinner plants Wife was using them in a recipe.

Don't forget: pineapple (top or seed), mango, avocado, star fruit, etc.