Has anybody ever "rescued" a plant?

[Salty Thumb]

[e-mail] (paghat) wrote in news:paghat- [e-mail]:

this year, over 100 tomato seedlings damped off. in the same week I inadvertently flipped over 2 trays of marigolds, chamomile, lavender, beans and more tomatoes. Some of the beans managed to escape, though.

last year I had a pepper plant in a pot and left it out to freeze. plus about 3 rosemary cuttings died of neglect. tried to root some hybrid tea roses, ended up with several brown sticks.

prior to that, put a peace lily (?) out in the sun whereupon it turned half brown (but it survived and had children). dug up some coleus to transplant, but ended up knocking them over with a lawn mower instead.

In college, got a gift of a small jade plant, thought it would be good to put it out in the sun, whereupon it was promptly pecked to death by a bird or flying squirrel.

I cut down an annoying tree (silver maple?) in my wayward youth.

In France I am also known as the Butcher of Dande Lyons. Mwuahaha

- Salty Thumb of Death

[Starlord]

Back in the 1950's in Los Angeles when they where buldozing homes for the I-10 freeway, My dad would take me and we've drive the area, when a house had a red tag, meaning that was it's last night standing, we'de get out and walk around the place, this is how we ended up with over 100 Roses, and all the rest of the plants we had around our place at that time.

[e-mail] [e-mail]

-- "In this universe the night was falling,the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered: and along the path he once had followed, man would one day go again."

Arthur C. Clarke, The City & The Stars

[jammer]

Killed yes, murdered no. I brought in my aloe plants last winter and watered the crap out of them. They turned to mush and i threw them out with the garbage.

[Zemedelec]

Quite frequently. My first rescued flower was a catteleya (sp?) which a greenhouse had thrown on its trash heap, and my best friend's family let me keep it in their greenhouse. Now I keep a sharp lookout for sales at local supermarkets--what often happens is a plant that is sold for a special holiday or just for its blooming stage is let wither after its "due date," and if I can catch it before it, too, goes into the trash and the price is right, into my garden it goes. I'm getting brasher and brasher about stopping my car or steps when I see someone uprooting a lot of plants bulldozer-style, and asking him/her, "Are you throwing those out or just replanting?" Usually I get a couple, even if they are replanting. The good thing about this sort of find is that these tend to be passalong plants--plants that have a long history of healthy adaption to local conditions and hence grow like weeds. zemedelec

[Cereoid-UR12-]

Yeah, I've murdered quite a few plants in my time but every one of them was bad and deserved to die, those damn dirty weeds.

Of course, things were different back then, with America being at war and all.

Nobody likes committing herbicide but its something that has to be done sometimes.

[Persephone]

I just took it to the nabe nursery to be ID'd. It's a Ti Plant (Hawaiian tropical). Cordyline Terminalis. Purple-edged leaves.

I asked if it was OK to put it in the ground but the Japanese-American head honcho was kinda iffy about winter, even though this is So.Calif coastal.

So I guess I'll leave it as a patio plant, and if we have much "winter" will bring it inside. We don't heat, so it wouldn't be bothered by that.

Nursery guy said it needed a lot of light, but WGB says "tolerates low light intensity. ?? WGB says it can reach 6-8 feet in "in special frost-free locations where it receives regular water and soil stays warm." Would be kinda fun to grow it that tall!

Well, we *are* frost free, and I can make sure it receives regular water, but I don't think soil stays exactly "warm" all year; never occurred to me to measure temp; I just grow different veggies in the "winter" than in the summer.

An interesting challenge.

Input from anyone who has grown a Ti plant (outside of real tropical areas like Hawaii) would be welcome.

[Persephone]

[paghat]

AHA! Now everything's beginning to make sense!

-paghat the ratgirl

[Salty Thumb]

Tracey wrote in news: [e-mail]:

haha, now if I could only get my hands on some cat, skunk, squirrel, rabbit, or raccoon indicator/symbol plants, I'd be rich. :-)

[Starlord]

While I have not grown it, it does grow wild over there, and it does love the heat, as Hawaii never goes under 70F even at night and it's humid there too. The local people there use the leaves for all kinds of things too.

-- "In this universe the night was falling,the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered: and along the path he once had followed, man would one day go again."

Arthur C. Clarke, The City & The Stars

[Tracey]

Would be nice, wouldn't it?

Tracey

[Zemedelec]

No--just plantslaughter. Mainly through overwatering. "For each man kills the thing he loves"(Oscar Wilde, "Ballad of Redding Gaol". zemedelec