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 Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 5:27 pm
edit: I killed my plant. crying Both my sensitive plants are dead. The other plants are doing fine cause I gave em to my mom. I love nature but I am completely lacking in the green thumb gene which has skipped a generation apparently. No, my brother got it. WTF!
I just bought my first plant, I've always been bad at gardening.
I now have a baby Mimosa pudica (Sensitive Plant or Touch Me Not)
which I have decided to name rofl So it's name is Bashful.
Anyway, I don't know ANYTHING about plants, and I don't want to kill my new baby so... tips, advice?
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Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:13 pm
Every plant has different soil, light, and water (moisture) preferences. So doing basic research would help you care for your plant. Quote: Culture: Mimosa pudica need full sun to partial shade, with a rich moist soil. We use a soil mix consisting of 2 parts peat moss to 2 parts loam to 1 part sand or perlite. The soil should be kept evenly moist but not saturated. During the growing season, the plant are fertilized on a weekly basis with a balanced fertilizer diluted to ½ the strength recommended on the label. During the winter months, fertilize on a monthly basis. Winter temperatures should not fall below 65° F; if they do get chilled, then the plant suffers with yellowing of leaves and stems. http://www.plantoftheweek.org/week147.shtmlFull sun to part shade, means you'll most likely want the plant near a south facing window where it can get plenty of light. If that's not possible, then have the plant in an area that receives the most light in your home. For the watering, you can can tell when potting soil is drying out by the changes in the soil color. Lighter for dry soil. Depending on the depth of the container, the top could look dry but the middle could still be moist. So it's best to stick a finger into the pot. If it feels dry to the touch one inch down, it is time to water. Water your plant every couple of days and it should do fine. I personally never bother with fertilizers. I just keep my plants in sunny spots and water them as needed. Oh, if your Mimosa is just a small baby plant, then you might want to save yourself some trouble and grab a bigger container to transplant it into. Inevitably plants grow and need to be transferred into bigger containers now and then. Not all do, but it is common. When a potted plant starts to deteriorate and it can't be explained by pests or disease, often the plant has become rootbound (the roots have no room to expand as the plant grows so they become tangled into a big mess).
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Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:29 pm
onicoe Every plant has different soil, light, and water (moisture) preferences. So doing basic research would help you care for your plant. Quote: Culture: Mimosa pudica need full sun to partial shade, with a rich moist soil. We use a soil mix consisting of 2 parts peat moss to 2 parts loam to 1 part sand or perlite. The soil should be kept evenly moist but not saturated. During the growing season, the plant are fertilized on a weekly basis with a balanced fertilizer diluted to ½ the strength recommended on the label. During the winter months, fertilize on a monthly basis. Winter temperatures should not fall below 65° F; if they do get chilled, then the plant suffers with yellowing of leaves and stems. http://www.plantoftheweek.org/week147.shtmlFull sun to part shade, means you'll most likely want the plant near a south facing window where it can get plenty of light. If that's not possible, then have the plant in an area that receives the most light in your home. For the watering, you can can tell when potting soil is drying out by the changes in the soil color. Lighter for dry soil. Depending on the depth of the container, the top could look dry but the middle could still be moist. So it's best to stick a finger into the pot. If it feels dry to the touch one inch down, it is time to water. Water your plant every couple of days and it should do fine. I personally never bother with fertilizers. I just keep my plants in sunny spots and water them as needed. Oh, if your Mimosa is just a small baby plant, then you might want to save yourself some trouble and grab a bigger container to transplant it into. Inevitably plants grow and need to be transferred into bigger containers now and then. Not all do, but it is common. When a potted plant starts to deteriorate and it can't be explained by pests or disease, often the plant has become rootbound (the roots have no room to expand as the plant grows so they become tangled into a big mess). wow, thanks for the info. I'm having fun reading up about the plant but hadn't found info about light or watering. I don't know how old the plant is, but it's a couple inches tall, it looks pretty fragile, and it doesn't have many leaves yet. I was told it would need to be transplanted eventually but I don't know how long I'm suppose to wait. edit: what you said about the 1inch down thing I wish I knew before. I decided to take the popcicle stick used to label my plant and mesured 1inch so I can put it in the soil and see if the soil is moist by where the soil sticks to the stick. xd I also decided to take some pics and measure my plant ( xd I'm worse than my mother now! I use to make fun of her, we have these home videos, of us as kids playing, and all of a sudden the camera would turn and film the plants gonk ) Here's my plant, sleeping as I call it lol. All the leaves are folded cause it's night time.  My plant measures about 4 1/2 inches here  I'm going to measure it again in the morning.
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Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 3:40 am
awh you got little plant babies!! [:
Yeah, I would split the two up into bigger pots. (at least a 6" pot) That's just a small seedling container they are in. Bags of potting soil are cheap. Make sure you get pots that have at least one drainage hole in the bottom.
You can line the bottom with gravel or small rocks to help drainage. Then fill the pot with the soil. Some people like to mix a small portion with dirt from their backyard and use that mixed soil as the next layer (after the gravel) before topping it off with plain potting soil.
When you stick the plants into their new home, take care to plant them at the same depth they were in the little green pot.
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Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:54 am
onicoe awh you got little plant babies!! [: Yeah, I would split the two up into bigger pots. (at least a 6" pot) That's just a small seedling container they are in. Bags of potting soil are cheap. Make sure you get pots that have at least one drainage hole in the bottom. You can line the bottom with gravel or small rocks to help drainage. Then fill the pot with the soil. Some people like to mix a small portion with dirt from their backyard and use that mixed soil as the next layer (after the gravel) before topping it off with plain potting soil. When you stick the plants into their new home, take care to plant them at the same depth they were in the little green pot. thanks for all the help. Do you think it'll be okay in the small pot for another week, I'm just so overloaded with school work right now. (but I should be graduating college in 2 weeks so yay!) I took some morning shots, so I can compare, and it only occurred to me now I should be measuring from the soil up, not from the bottom of the pot lol. morning:  night:
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Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 10:58 am
Oh definitely, there's no rush to transplant them.
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Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 5:24 am
So I was just researching my plant a bit more and found out it's a "Annual Plant" so I looked up Annual Plant to find out what that meant and found this:
"Botanically, an annual plant is a plant that usually germinates, flowers and dies in one year. "
crying
"True annuals will only live longer than a year if they are prevented from setting seed."
ok, so, wait, let me get this straight. If I keep it indoors, and it doesn't get polinated, it wont set seed and die. If I plant it outside, it'll set seed and die, but then I'll have seeds to make more baby planties?
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Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 7:04 am
You got it! If you want to try growing them from seed, though, check on how long it takes the seed to germinate and what conditions it requires. Some things are very difficult to germinate, or to grow past the "seed leaf" stage.
Another thing you want to consider is whether or not you have the proper growing conditions for the plant outside. You wouldn't want to cook your baby!
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Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 7:18 am
sunsetsmile You got it! If you want to try growing them from seed, though, check on how long it takes the seed to germinate and what conditions it requires. Some things are very difficult to germinate, or to grow past the "seed leaf" stage. Another thing you want to consider is whether or not you have the proper growing conditions for the plant outside. You wouldn't want to cook your baby! I think I'll be keeping it indoors. First of all, I'd have to to keep moving it around all the time, bringing it in during the winter cause it would never survive. secondly, it'd have to be in the backyard where likely my dog would trample it. But most importantly, there's no way I could grow a plant from seed, and I think this one is one of the more difficult ones. The reason I ended up with it is cause they were a project for biology students at my college.(My college is like THE college you go to if you live near Montreal and you want to go into agriculture, my friends who go to college downtown nicknamed it THE FARM, cause the campus is basically a farm, it's this cute piece of undeveloped land in Montreal.) so I don't think they would have given them this plant as a project if it was easy.
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Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 10:35 am
I bet you can grow lettuce! It's really easy, either in a pot or in the ground, likes it cool---and you can eat it! Yea, You!! You can grow stuff from seed, just give it a try. Everything WANTS to grow, it just needs dirt and moisture and the right temp and light. Lettuce is not fussy, unless you live where it gets really hot really fast, like I do, and I can still grow it, just not all summer.
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Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 8:09 pm
I've heard that most lettuces will bolt (go to seed) when the temps stay at a constant between 75-80 degrees.
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Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 6:21 pm
um, my plantie isn't doing so good, the leaves look kinda dried up, like they're yellowy brown. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I don't want to kill my baby!
On a second note, tomorrow there is another plant sale. They are sold out of Lavender sad but they have lots of other stuff I have no idea what most of it is. I want to get something for my mum for mother's day, and maybe a couple somethings for me. A couple names I remember are:
impatients
tomato plants
mint
chives
tobasco
Basil
eggplant
herbs
geraniums
cosmos
and spanish moss.
I'd like to get my mom something she can put in her Garden that looks prettty or smells pretty xd I don't know how she feels about growing herbs and edible stuff. They are all organic though, so I'm considering getting some for me, but I'm not good at growing stuff.
It's probably worth mentioning I live in Qc, Canada, where the summers are approx 70-85 F and humid but winters are pretty cold and snowy so not much survives outdoors over the winter.
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Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 8:59 pm
I prefer impatients. They have smaller flowers but produce more for a fuller look than geraniums.
As for the leaves turning yellow. Are you keeping the soil moist? If you are, it might be too moist, so try cutting back a little on the watering. You could also try moving the plant to a different lighting spot. It might be getting too much or too little sun.
It might also need a warmer place, if it's near a drafty spot. Most plants like a temperature range between 60-70 degrees.
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Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 10:50 pm
Stick your finger in the potting soil to see if the entire root ball is getting wet. Sometimes a peat-heavy potting mix (from your picture, it looks like it may be) will dry out totally in spots. When it does that, the only way that I have ever found to totally moisten the rootball again is to immerse the pot in warm water---you may have to poke a few holes in the dry spots--and when it is wet, pull it out and let it sit until it stops dripping. Then place your pot on a saucer filled with pebbles. Any additional runoff will end up in the saucer, and humidify the air around the plant.
The air may be too dry where it is sitting, or there may be a draft--crispy leaves!
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Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 3:16 pm
Ok so I bought 2 cosmos, cause I googled em and their flowers are really pretty, plus they looked a lot healthier than the impatients and that they were selling. I also got 2 geraniums of different leaf types. They smell sweet! um, I got some spanish moss, cause, they're just cool and I bought a Tomato plant xd oh ya, and some more sensitives!
I think the sensitive is going to be the hardest to keep alive, cause my first isn't doing so great crying I'll try to get some pics on here so maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the Tomato plant. It'll be kinda random, the only veggie in a property full of non-edible plants. Plus I got to protect it from rabbits and other animals. I'm gonna give my mom the geraniums and a Cosmo and maybe some spanish moss and the tomato plant if she wants, for mothers day. Oh and I got her a rock from a fair trade store that's from india and has Love engraved on it. I put it with one of her plants (I think it's bamboo, it's in a pot with a bunch of other rocks) so I'm just waiting for her to notice it rather than wrap it or something. They had some cool stuff at that store, like, bags and random stuff made from recycled newspaper. (I got a notebook for my friend) So um, now I have more plants to try to keep alive and my first baby isn't doing too good, so um, again, please help me not kill them.
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