I just adopted some plants. Help me not kill them.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Yesterday, I adopted some plants from my grandparents, who love gardening and have recently moved into a nursing home. I’d really like to keep these plants alive, both because of their special significance to me and because they are cool plants.

Unfortunately, I suck at taking care of plants and I usually end up killing them even when I am trying very hard to love them.

I’ve photographed the eight plants and posted the photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/julianne.stern/Plants
I’ve named them for easier reference. Tell me if more pictures would help you know more about the plant. Most of them seem to be succulents.
(Brenda is actually like 3 different plants in one pot. I’ll post better pictures later.)

They have been living on a relatively shady porch, untended for 3-4 weeks, in the SF Bay Area. We’ve gotten plenty of rain lately and it looks like it will continue to rain every day for at least the next week or so. The daytime temperature is about 50 F. Right now they are outside on a porch that gets some direct midday sun. I haven’t watered them since I brought them over yesterday but their soil seems saturated and it rained heavily last night.

Any and all tips you have for loving these plants would be welcome. Specifically, should I leave them all outside? Could any of them be indoor plants? How often do they need water? Do they need any special nutrients? Do they need to be pruned or weeded? Do they need different pots?

2

Well, Marcela, Skip, and Oliver are jade plants (Crassula ovata) and I think Janet is a spider plant, which should help you start to look for information.

3

I concur with matt_mcl.
It looks like Caroline is a set of bulbs that have flowered and are now in leaf, but won’t make it past the next few months. That’s just wat bulbs do, and to try and keep them over for next year is only for pro’s.

I’d say Frank is a broken off piece that needs to be put in a pot of soil, in order to grow roots. Keep his earth good and wet for the next two monts.

Succulents that have been put in the shade may actually burn their leaves if put out in the too hot a sun for too long. Sun is their natural habitat, but individual plants adjust to the sun they get, and these will need an adjustment period of several weeks, with more and more sun hours per day.

4

One of the most common newbie-plant-owner mistakes to make is overwatering – and since you’ve got several succulents there, it’s especially easy to do.

Water them only when the soil seems really dry. Dig your finger down in the soil and inch or so. If it’s not bone dry, don’t water them.

If you have them in saucers, don’t let them sit in water. Give them a few minutes to drain after watering, then dump out what’s in the saucer.

For non-succulents, water when the top inch or so of the soil is dry. If you dig your finger down into the soil and it feels just slightly damp, you should water it. That being said, Janet, the spider plant, can tolerate a LOT of abuse as far as lack of water goes. If your goal is to produce lots of “spiders,” Janet will do best if she is pot-bound. When she gets like that, she’ll be harder to water, because the water tends to run off rather than flow through.

5

Here is what I can identify:

Frank is in the genus Senecio. There are several with finger-like leaves, so I am not sure of the species. It is a succulent, and many of them will rot if you attempt to root them in water. I agree with Maastricht that it should be rooted in soil, and it will likely do so quickly. However, the soil should be dry, or nearly so. Unrooted succulents rot quickly in wet soil. Give it bright light, but little direct sun until rooted. Do not keep it wet, ever.
Marcela is a Crassula ovata, (Jade Plant) another succulent.
Skip and Brenda, also succulents, are Aeoniums. These are winter growers, usually, and many go semi-dormant in the summer. The heads of the plants will tighten like a rosebud during during dormancy.
Oliver is a Crassula ovata ‘Gollum.’

All of these succulents will adapt well to full sun outdoors(as noted, if they have been in shade, move them into the sun gradually to prevent sunburn.) They hate being soggy, so get them out of the rain and give them a chance to dry out. I have my own versions of Frank, Marcela, and Oliver, and have Aeoniums similar to Skip and Brenda. I keep all of them in clay pots, rather than plastic. Clay is porous and allows water to evaporate from the root zone, keeping the plants drier. The proper way to water succulents: Let them go almost completely dry, then water thoroughly (water comes through the drainage holes in the pot–remove excess.) Do not water again, no matter how tempted you are, until they are almost completely dry again.

I believe Amanda is a Haworthia, (another type of succulent) though is could be an hybrid between a Haworthia and a Gasteria or between an Aloe and Gasteria. It prefers partial sun outdoors.

Janet is a spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum.) Will do well on a porch, or with a half day of sun indoors.

All of these plants can be indoor plants (mine have to be in winter, here in lovely, frozen, Chicagoland, though I put them outside in summer.) The succulents need as much sun as possible indoors (a south window is best) though again, Amanda will do with less.

I don’t recognize Caroline. I’m sorry.

6

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7

Wow, thanks for all the information! I will get them in out of the rain tomorrow morning to give them a chance to dry out.

Thanks especially for the tip on Frank - he is indeed a cutting from Big Daddy Frank, who was much too big for me to adopt. In my opinion he is one of the prettiest, and I would have been bummed if he started rotting in water.

It sounds like, with the possible exception of Janet, it would be better for me to err on the side of less water. KayElCee, thanks for the advice on proper watering technique. Being completely useless with plants, that’s exactly the kind of well-broken-down information that I seek.

Also… is Skip a baby Brenda?

8

I had a thread last year about helping me grow hot peppers and ever since I’ve been bitten by the container gardning bug. Besides the advice I got in that thread I’ve been a regular in my library’s gardening section. There are literally 10 books on whatever plant schemes you might have dreamed up, so give that a shot. It really helps when it comes to watering, fertilizing, etc. I’ve not killed anything yet, and I am a total novice.

9

Caroline looks like bloomed-out amaryllis to me.

10

I got a little meter (that is it’s about one foot long) called a moisture tester
$6.99 at Ace Hardware Luster Leaf Analog Soil Moisture Probe 1 pk - Ace Hardware
They also sell a pH tester by the same company.

11

I’m glad I could be a bit of help shimmery. Just in case I wasn’t clear in my post above, when I said “remove excess” after watering, I meant to get rid of any water that might remain in a plant’s drip saucer after watering.

On the plant forums I visit, many people have complained that moisture meters tend to be quite unreliable. I’ve never used one, so I have no first hand experience with them.

Plants really aren’t as difficult as people make them out to be. I’m actually kind of neglectful, but I have a house full of plants that do pretty well. (I have 300 or so.) If I could condense my advice into one sentence it would be: Most common houseplants need more light and less water than people typically give them.

(Caroline doesn’t look like an Amaryllis to me. The growth habit of the leaves doesn’t look quite right. But I can’t say she isn’t one with 100% certainty, despite having 20 Amaryllises of my own. Obsessed? Compulsive? Who me? :wink: )

12

If you find yourself starting to feel violent just stop and count to ten. Leave the room. If you have to, call somebody and keep talking until you’ve calmed down.

ETA: Reading the other responses, I see I misunderstood the question. So I’m changing my advice is good soil and regular watering.

13

That Oliver is a beautiful interesting specimen, and it almost looks like someone was training it for bonsai. Nice thick trunk

You might want to talk to a local bonsai artist about possibilities of putting it in a nice container, and some pruning options.

Might have a future in the windswept style.

14

Master Gardener here. The advice you’ve been given is so good. I’m glad to see so many excellent plant people are here. In general any plants which are relocated need to be put in a shadier location than the one they will eventually live in, and given a bit of a rest. I’d do as other have suggested, let them dry out in a moderate light situation with no or little wind, and see how they do. Don’t be surprised if you see some of the “leaves” of the succulents drop off since they’ve been overwatered in the past. Just give them peace and quiet and let them dry out a bit before watering again - maybe a week’s worth of dryness.

15

Hah! This thread title is the story of my life.

I have nothing to offer. Every plant I’ve adopted or in any way been responsible for has gone to the big compost heap in the sky. Best of luck to you.

16

Revision of my ID for Amanda. I now believe that the plant is a grouping of Aloe aristata.

As such, it would like more sun than a Haworthia, but the other care instructions are the same.

17

I’m not real experienced with amaryllis, but I do have two blooming right now, and now that I look at the picture, I think you’re right. I’m wrong. The amaryllis leaves don’t seem to go all around like that–they’re more like all “stacked” together going the same way.

18

Only lost one or two plants over the years to overwatering. I think I’ve lost more to putting them in an out of the way spot and forgetting to water them.

Once or twice a year I do a complete soaking. Fill a 5-gallon bucket about 2/3 of the way full and drop the entire pot in. Push or hold down, give it 10 minutes or so for all the bubbles to come out. Heck, with larger pots you can have air bubbles coming out for more than 10 minutes! Really opens the eyes to the amount of ‘dry pockets’ in the root mass. Don’t water for at least a week or more after doing this.

Every 5 years or so, I repot and/or refresh older plants. Pull them out, hack off a large part of the tangled mass of self-strangling roots and either return to the same pot with a lot of new potting soil, or put in a larger pot with new soil. Then do the complete submerging soak routine again to make sure the soil fills in and doesn’t leave large air pockets.