Check The Roots

Ever buy a melon and it was unripe inside? The problem with the melon is always discovered because you cut it open.

That's not so with a potted plant that isn't fully rooted. I recently bought some 8" pot size Sansevierias. This is what I discovered.

Click to enlarge The plant weighed 4 pounds 7 ounces.

Click to enlarge Almost half of it (by weight) was "dead soil" with no roots. Someone obviously used poor judgement in shipping these plants.

By the way, the visible foliage is of a size to justify the 8" pot price. The hidden problem, however, is all that dead soil.

More than likely, unwitting buyers are going to over water these plants and blame themselves when the plants die. Sansevierias use very little water, particularly in the low light environments where they are commonly located.

I unpot all plants when prepping them for sub-irrigation. They are then planted in clear plastic containers. My advice to consumers is to do the same.

Always unpot the plant and inspect the roots. If they're underdeveloped, take it back and get a refund. If you get a replacement, insist that it be unpotted so that you can inspect it before you take it home.

Automated Plant Care

We came across this article in Environmental Design + Constuction magazine. While we have no experience with this system we believe it deserves professional consideration.

"Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls,"

This looks like an interesting book. Scroll down.

Click to enlarge. This house in downtown San Diego was ahead of its time with its living wall. Do you recognize the "house plant"?

Sub-irrigation—No Muss, No Fuss

There is no need for tips like this with sub-irrigation. In addition to horticultural benefits, there is no water drainage, soil leakage or exposure to water spillage.

Interior plant care practiced well isn't really "gardening" indoors.

Photographic Meters To Measure Plant Light

There is much advice about using a photographic meter to measure plant light on extension/master gardener websites and in houseplant books. They typically provide a method to convert f-stops to foot-candles since the majority of photographic meters don’t read out in foot-candles.

This is a poor substitute for using a foot-candle or lux meter.

Photographic meters and those built into cameras are reflective meters. They measure the light that reflects from the object or subject (in this case plants). That is not what we are interested in.

We want to know how much light the plant is receiving rather than reflecting. That’s what foot-candle or lux meters measure. They are called incident meters and measure the light falling on the subject. Your plants will love you for using one.

Wild(e)!

Rentokil Initial in the news again.

Take A Holiday From Plant Watering

Here's yet another gardening column with a "solution" to houseplant watering while on vacation.

Sub-irrigated houseplants can easily go a month between waterings with no need to move them from their normal locations...or need for a plant sitter.

Article Excerpt: Watering: make life easier for those left in charge by grouping houseplants together in the bath or by the kitchen sink. Separate out the succulents and any that can cope for the duration without water and put them elsewhere, or they may drown.

Outside, move smaller pots into the shade - even real sun-lovers will be fine for a couple of weeks. Soak any vulnerable, newly planted treasures deeply before you go and just keep your fingers crossed - you can't really expect anyone to water your borders. Remember that no one knows or cares about your garden as you do. Holidays are much easier in February.

O Say Can You See?

Do you have a digital foot-candle or lux light meter so you can see if your plants can "see"?

With the coming of the digital age, meters for precision measurement of inside plant light have never been as affordable and feature rich. I believe from long experience that a foot-candle/lux light meter is the most important investment anyone caring for inside plants can make, either on the job or at home.

Following are recommendations based on a study of the current market. To my surprise, I found some very good values on eBay. These digital light meters now cost less than most kitchen gadgets.

Buy a digital meter reading either foot-candles or lux or switchable to display either. Other desirable features are a protective carrying case and a hold button.

I would not recommend an analog foot-candle meter. This is obsolete technology. There is an analog meter in the $25-30 range widely available on the web. I have one and would not recommend it.

I also do not endorse the G.E. analog meter that many interior plantscapers still recommend. We used them in the '70s when I was in the interior plantscaping business. One significant bump and these meters were kaput.

We then bought a professional quality Spectra f.c. meter for about $150. It measures up to 30,000 f.c. and is housed in a durable protective case. I still have it but don't use it because a digital meter is much easier to use. It's replacement cost would be over $300.

For inside plant purposes I find more value in this meter I bought on eBay.

Best features, Best buy – C.E.M. DT-1301 – Features:
Switchable to read out in either Foot-candles or Lux
Hold button
Automatic shut-off
Built-in low battery indicator
Reads up to 50,000 lux
Padded carrying case with wrist strap
Snap-on light sensor cover
$49 + shipping

The same meter with lux readout only and no hold button is about $10 less.

I have also seen a digital lux meter on eBay for about $25.

If you’re not familiar, lux is the metric equivalent for foot-candles. One lux = 0.09290304 foot-candles. That’s close enough for our purposes to say 10 lux = 1 footcandle. When reading a lux meter all you have to do is move one decimal point to the left to convert to foot-candles. When you read 500 lux it is approximately 50 foot-candles.

It appears that all of the economical digital lux and foot-candles meters are Asian imports. I bought an Extech 401027 Pocket Foot-candle meter for $69 without a protective case. I inspected it and found that it was made in Taiwan by Lutron.

The Plants-In-Buildings website recommends using a light meter. This is an informative, well-written document (PDF file) worth reading and printing out.

Excerpt: The only way to accurately measure light is to use a light meter. NEVER rely on your eyes and your judgement about the light levels in a room, because your eyes adapt very quickly. No matter how much experience you have in specifying plants, you can never trust your eyes alone when making a decision about light levels.

I found the same Lux meter shown on the Plants-In-Buildings website online at FamilyDefense.com for $46.95 with a carrying case. It too is made by Lutron.

One Man’s Opinion

For Rentokil Initial watchers. The mahout pays close attention when the elephant is moving.

A New Meaning For The Word Shade

This chart (click on it twice for a readable copy) shows a comparison of outdoor, production and typical indoor ambient lighting. It puts in perspective how inappropriate the word "shade" is when applied to inside plant lighting. Outdoor gardening terms are simply inappropriate when applied to inside plant care.

Adequate light is the most critical requirement for inside plant health and longevity. Many plants die because of inadequate light and the caretaker erroneously places blame on watering practices.

New affordable digital foot-candle light meters will pay for themselves many times over in inside plant replacement costs over the life of the meter.

Securing Your PC is as Important as Locking Your Front Door

The above is the title of Dell's new security website. We totally agree.

Spam is bad enough without the recent invasion of spyware, trashware and Trojan horses. Our Norton virus checker has zapped four copies of e-mails from "Vietnamvet" containing the W32Beagle worm just in the past two days.

We've recently received fraudulent e-mails from senders using Citibank and eBay logos attempting to get us to verify personal information. Identity theft is a very nasty business and a real threat to watch for.

We check for updates to our Norton AntiVirus Virus Definitions on a daily basis. Our computer is also protected by a ZoneAlarm Security Suite/Firewall. No broadband connection should be without one.

We also just downloaded a 10 day trial copy of PestPatrol which was linked to the Dell site. We were amazed how much trashware and how many tracking cookies it found. We already use AdAware and Spybot. We will buy PestPatrol.

There are some evil people out there. Lock your door!

From the Dell website: Viruses. Spam. Hackers. Spyware. Identity theft. Worms. As the volume of threats to your PC rise, it becomes increasingly important to get protected and stay that way. A study conducted by AOL revealed that 62% of broadband computer users did not have current antivirus software. And over 90% of users had spyware installed on their systems.

Kuching Fest Promises To Be Grander

Stop in if you're going to be in the area.

We bring you inside plants news from wherever we can find it.

This year’s Garden Show will specially showcase horticulture plants, variety of plants ranging from trees, palms, orchids, and indoor plants incorporated into garden displays. There will be landscape stalls selling pots, landscaping materials, plants and orchids.

The Secret Soaker - Look Familiar?

This photo of the "secret soaker" has a striking similarity to the photo of a modified Planterra Ariana planter.

We were pleasantly surprised to find the complete line of Mona Plant System (MPS) components available at retail. The St George Company is in Ontario, Canada.

Back in the '70s, MPS was one of the first sub-irrigation systems we used in our interior plantscaping business. We installed the MPS tanks inside watertight planters just as shown on The St. George Company website. They worked very well.

There were no U.S. products at that time. It was prior to the advent of Planter Technology Natural Spring planters. We learned that the Europeans were far ahead of us in their use of sub-irrigation. We have a tendency in the U.S. to think we lead in all areas of technology. That is not true when it comes to horticulture.

The Nation’s Retail Power Players 2004

Stores magazine has the Triversity, Inc. sponsored list of the top 100 retailers. The article has some interesting commentary.

Since Wal-Mart sells almost everything, everyone competes with The World’s Largest Retailer. Those merchants who have figured out who they are and conveyed that discovery to the consumer have found a place in the Middle World, below Wal-Mart, but above the chains struggling with their identities and market share.

Home Depot and Lowe’s in the home improvement arena; Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons in groceries; Walgreens in drugs and sundries, and Sears, Target and Costco in mass marketing distinguish themselves as household names. Not surprisingly, they also rest at the top of STORES Magazine’s 2004 edition of the Top 100 Retailers.

Wal-Mart was once revered as the closest thing to perfection that could be found in retailing. Ruthless efficiency in support systems, particularly in the supply chain, was coupled with innovative aggressiveness in employing and upgrading technology throughout the organization. Wal-Mart re-invented, or at least redefined, the vendor/retailer relationship, with unprecedented information sharing and shifting of responsibility for getting merchandise to store shelves and keeping those shelves filled.

Broadband - Dial-up Close To 50-50

Internet Retailer says that Nielsen/NetRatings reports broadband and dial-up are now close to 50-50. We try to minimize the time for site loading through the use of thumbnails, but this is without question a visual subject.

We will be posting more and more photos in our photoblog in the future. If you're dial-up connected we hope there's broadband in your near future. There's no going back once you experience it.

More Light Please…And Hold The Water, Thank you.

Popular opinion is that overwatering is the primary reason for poor indoor plant health. Many years of problem diagnosis coupled with experiments in my inside plants lab, however reveal the “back story”.

Behind the watering problem is usually a light shortage problem. Most often, the shortage is unrecognized because of the primitive means used to measure it.

Would you see a doctor who doesn’t use a stethoscope to check your heart or cuff to check your blood pressure? Would you take your dog or cat to a vet who doesn’t have an ophthalmoscope or otoscope? Would you check your sick baby’s temperature with your finger? Do you cook without measuring cups and spoons? Hopefully the answers are no.

Why then do houseplant books and indoor plant care websites advise readers to gauge light by window direction? How primitive is that? Why do they use vague immeasureable terms such as diffused, indirect, bright, shady, filtered, intense and reflected to describe it?

This is the digital age of the 21st century. It baffles us that houseplant book authors and website writers are still so techno apathetic or technophobic that they don’t advise buying a foot-candle light meter.

You can do the same searches I do and you’ll read the same pathetic advice. “Oh well, my doctor doesn’t have a stethoscope. Too bad, I’ll just suffer and die.”

Use of digital foot-candle light meters would save the lives of an untold number of houseplants. If houseplants could talk, there would be a nationwide houseplants rights movement screaming with indignation about the poor treatment of its members.

Look for the next peaceful demonstration in your town.

What Sub-irrigation Systems Do The Pros Use?

For good reasons, the front-runner is the Controllled Watering Insert (CWI) from Planter Technology. The vacuum sensor technique has been in use for over 30 years and has proven its worth. It is the most foolproof way to water inside plants.

The only caveat is that the system requires the maintenance of a vacuum inside the planter so you need to be sure the stopper and fill hole are clean. It is a simple matter, however, to swipe-clean them with your fingers or a towel.

Just one particle of soil on the stopper can break the vacuum and the planter will malfunction. With that caveat aside, this is as automatic as inside plant watering is likely to get.

The Mona Plant System (MPS) has been in use the longest. It is a Swedish invention. The MPS is an excellent system but not particularly user-friendly for the consumer market. Primescape Products, a subsidiary of Initial Tropical Plants (Rentokil Initial) is the U.S. distributor. Primescape Products also sells the Planter Technology line of Controlled Watering (CW) planters.

The MPS includes both tank reservoirs and link reservoirs. The tanks can be installed in any watertight planter. The links are for large tree and planter bed installations.

The Jardinier system now emulates the MPS. Their original product was a patented standalone planter. It appears that Jardinier has dropped the standalone planter in favor of their new Alternative Sub-Irrigation System (ASIS). This is clearly a commercial irrigation system for professional installation.

Digital Scale

We've been asked about the source of the digital scale shown in the RSSi-No Wick post of July 8.

There is a good selection of digital scales available on eBay. All of them are Asian imports. Search on "digital postal scale".

We bought the Ultra 50 pound capacity. There are also 30-pound versions of this scale and other brands. There is also a “new” 75-pound capacity Ultra.

We believe these are essential features:

Tare feature – This makes it easy to deduct the weight of the container.
Step 1 – Weigh the plant
Step 2 – Weigh the empty container and depress the Tare button. This restores the scale to zero. You will now measure the water only.

Hold feature – This makes it easy to weigh a large item. We use it for weighing floor standing specimen plants.

AC adapter – We use battery power only when an electric outlet is not available.

Important - Add this feature yourself: Do not measure water (or any other liquid) without a cover over the control buttons. We made a “button cover” from a clear plastic food container, easily cut with scissors. We attached it with clear packaging tape. You do not want water to drip down into the scale.

IKEA Mania

We would vote IKEA the most pleasant place to shop for indoor plants in our city. They have an interesting assortment of planters integrated with the plants on display. Their presentation is excellent and the plant quality is generally good. We've seen a so-called "self-watering" planter on display just once.

Article Quote: What differentiates Ikea from most retailers is how it showcases and sells its vast array of ready-to-assemble furniture and home accessories. For example, the store devotes an entire floor to 57 model rooms and five complete homes to show off merchandise such as sofas, bookcases, beds, dishes, desks, floor lamps and indoor plants.

Avoid Being Mosquito Bait

Breeding mosquitoes under your houseplants?.

You would have to be really negligent to breed mosquitoes in the saucers under houseplants even if you’re using the poke and pour top watering method.

However, it is not even an issue with measured sub-irrigation (MSi) because there is no standing water. There just isn’t any messy drainage. It is essentially a closed system.

Mosquitoes and fungus gnats cannot breed and there is no exposure to toxic mold generation. There is also little or no exposure to furniture damage from water overflow. These are just some of the benefits of measured sub-irrigation (MSi).

Houseplant books and Master Gardener extension service websites, however, continue to preach the misguided mantra of “drench and drain”.

It's going to take some time to overcome the massive amount of mis-information about houseplant care and "poke and pour" watering. It is, without doubt, the worst way to water containerized plants.

Professional plant maintainers know about the benefits of sub-irrigation but, unfortunately, the wrong people are talking to houseplant consumers. Or, to put it another way, houseplant consumers are listening to the wrong "teachers".

Our advice is to "vet" your information sources. Look for professional work experience in the field of inside plant maintenance rather than anecdotal home gardening experience. Anyone can write a book. And, they do.

Vet us. It surprises us that not everyone clicks on our “About” link (top left) to see who we are. You should check us out and challenge us with questions if you have them. We invite and encourage you to do that.

Article Quote: She also advised them to keep standing water out of their yards and houses by checking for puddles and emptying water out of saucers on which they keep house plants.

Van Gordon said about 20 percent of people who get the disease, which is passed on by biting mosquitoes, actually experience symptoms, such as achy joints and a fever.

About one person in 150 who catch the virus gets very ill. The virus attacks the nervous system and can cause death or severe nerve damage, such as paralyzed limbs, she said.

Can You Spell Sansevieria?

Cool! Way cool! Good work kids. Let us know how we can help.

Planterra Ariana Availability

We believe an Ariana planter with a user-supplied fill-tube addition is the best sub-irrigation planter widely available at retail. Once a user understands the concept of "measured sub-irrigation" (MSi) they are a supurb product. We also believe they have the best design profile of all the inexpensive plastic planters we've seen at retail.

We have been buying these planters at Home Depot for a number of years. Now, they've disappeared in our area. We were disappointed to find that our local Home Depots now carry Planterra TerraPots only. These have no drainage platform and are difficult to make watertight because of 6 bottom drain holes. We see no houseplant application for them.

We called Home Leisure Products in Apopka, FL and were told that they have a special order 800 number. We haven't tried it yet but supposedly a HD store manager can/will call for a special order of Ariana planters. Well try it and let you know what happens. Film at eleven!

Please let us know about Planterra Ariana availablity in your area. Thanks.

Moblogging

No that's not more blogging, it's moblogging as in mobile phone. Some sharp interior plantscaper might jump on this and create a real competitive edge.

Sub-irrigation At Retail

Sub-irrigation, inappropriately called “self-watering”, is in a sorry state in the consumer houseplant world. There are even fewer products available than the last time we surveyed the field. Further, the mis-information provided by sellers of the few products available is monumental.

The Bemis line of sub-irrigation planters has disappeared. They were available in Lowe’s home improvement stores and online at Gardener’s Supply among others. Gardener’s Supply carries a potpourri of self-watering planters all inadequately explained. The assumption is that the buyer knows how to use the product. Bad assumption.

Wal-Mart sells Misco planters. There are two versions of these “self-watering” planters – ribbed and scalloped (click on "Planters" left menu). There is no product description on their website or even a hint that they are so-called self-watering planters. We searched the Wal-Mart website and found no planters of any kind.

Neither Home Depot or Lowe's carries any type of sub-irrigation that we know of.

Question: Do you know of any other consumer product as poorly supported as houseplants?

Drainage Planter Converts Easily To Sub-irrigation

There are plastic planters with bottom drainage platforms available at retail. One of them is the Planterra — Ariana series from Home Leisure Products, a Fiskars company. They call it a "root management system" which they evidently sell separately. We have always bought them as part of the Ariana planter.

Really Simple Sub-irrigation - Just add a fill-tube and—voila!—a sub-irrigation planter!

There is a "higher and better" use for planters with built-in drainage. The drainage platform can be easily converted for sub-irrigation by simply inserting a fill tube. We use clear flexible plastic tubing readily available at home supply and hardware stores.

It's definitley RSSi - really simple sub-irrigation.

Remove the platform from the bottom. It takes some effort to unsnap it from the 2 anchor pegs molded into the planter bottom. Notice that there are four funnel shaped “feet” on the platform. Pick one of them to be the receptacle for the fill tube. Fold a piece of duct tape over this hole. Now cut two slits across the hole in a cross pattern. Reinstall the platform. Push the tubing through the duct tape into the bottom of this hole. The purpose of the duct tape is to prevent soil from clogging the fill tube hole.

The remaining 3 holes become wicks by filling each of them with perlite to enhance the capillary action. That’s all there is to it. The planter is now ready for planting.

Follow the same instructions as for RSSi Recipe - No Wick sub-irrigation. Weigh the plant, weigh the water. Or, test the soil with a soil probe and measure the water with a measuring vessel.

However you do it, test and measure just the way you follow a recipe in the kitchen. Remember, if water rises to the surface, you have added too much water. Properly sub-irrigated, the top surface remains dry at all times. There is then no exposre to fungus gnat propagation or toxic mold generation.

Current photo of a Ficus benjamina that's been in the lab for 3 yrs, 10 mos. It was a 6" pot size plant at purchase. Water usage has been 1.3 oz/day. Photo on right taken March 6, 2002.

More plant photos follow...

Plumeria grown from cuttings started December 17, 1998.

Bambusa vulgaris cv Vittata, "Painted Bamboo". The original, purchased in Oct. 1995 is now four plants like these. All are sub-irrigated.

A Green Gardener Room

This seems like a good opportunity to demonstrate green interior plantscaping.

Article Quote: It's designed as three buildings connected by breezeways. There would be exhibit space, classrooms, a multipurpose auditorium, administrative offices and features like the "Green Gardener Room," with information and advice from staff members on gardening.

Building A Green Business Future

CNN says green buildings are in.

Question: Can a green building have interior plants, along with splash and dash watering? We think not, but you already knew that.

Add-on Wicks

There are a number of ways to add a wick to a common grow pot. You can push fabric wicking material up through the drain holes. Here is material and a tool to insert it.

This is a system called Aqua-Well (scroll down) that includes wicking material, insertion tool and coiled plastic to elevate the plant and create a reservoir.

We believe porous plastic is the ideal way to add wicks to a plant pot. It is stable, durable and easy to install. Here is a product called Sippers.

Primescape Products notes Sippers as patent pending. We believe it has been issued. We’re curious about this note: Sippers are intended for commercial use only and not for resale.

It appears that Sippers are what Decorative Plant Service, San Francisco, uses to create what they call The Wicking Well™ System.

We all should be able to buy a bag full of porous plastic wicks at our local garden center or big box store. Our lay opinion is that this patent would be difficult to defend. We wonder what the patent office was thinking when they issued it. Porous plastic is in common use for wicking applications.

Question: Why aren't add-on wick products like these available at retail for houseplant caretakers?

RSSi Recipe - No Wick

What is RSSi? We borrowed part of an acronym from the blogosphere. RSS means Really Simple Syndication. We like the “really simple” part so RSSi means Really Simple Sub-irrigation.

Notice we titled this a recipe. We firmly believe that modern inside plant care is much more like cooking than outdoor gardening. Outdoor gardening is dirt, shovels, rakes, hoses, watering cans and lots of sunlight. Houseplant care is none of these. The environment inside a building and inside a container is entirely different.

What follows is a wickless method. A wick and reservoir are arguably good features but this method does work as you can see by the health of the plants. The keys to success are measured water and adequate light.

Other RSSi recipes will appear in future posts. If you follow along you’ll be sub-irrigating your houseplants one way or another. We're sure you’ll discover its benefits over top watering. Your inside plants will too.

The tree-form plant is a 2 year old Ficus benjamina. We favor this particular form of Weeping Fig but do not know the cultivar name. It is ideally suited for small tree grooming. The leaves are small and the branch structure is easy to prune.

Note that all of the thumbnail photos are enlargeable. Just click on them.

The striped leaf plant is the every popular “Lucky Bamboo” or Dracaena sanderiana variegated. Those with a “soluble salts fetish” should note the lack of leaf tipping.

This is an ordinary ceramic pot with no drainage holes. We poured a small amount of plaster of paris to create a flat bottom inside the pot. This is important.

This is a common 6” grow pot. Notice there is no wick. With this method we’re relying on flat contact between the grow pot bottom and the water tight planter bottom. Water will rise by capillary action through the drain holes. The soil itself is a natural wick. The small amount of “un-capillaried” water remaining due to the thickness of the grow pot bottom will evaporate. We use Supersoil available only in the western states. We favor commercial mixes such as those produced by Sungro (Sunshine brand) and Fafard.

A scale is a fool-proof method for determining soil moisture. There’s no need for finger probing. The appropriate weight of the plant including the grow-pot and soil is determinable. With a little experience you’ll know the weight of an evenly moist plant and a plant needing water. The scale doesn’t lie. Note that we clear taped a piece of clear plastic over the control key area to prevent water damage to the scale.

It is important to note that water should never rise to the surface using any sub-irrigation method. The top layer of soil remains dry at all times. Thus, there is no habitat for fungus gnat larval reproduction. We never have fungus gnats in the plant lab. They can not breed.

We used an analog kitchen scale for a number of years. The digital scale we now use has a capacity of 50 pounds. It has a tare and hold feature and measures in pounds, and tenths of an ounce. It is a precision instrument used by many who sell on eBay.

It is an easy matter to record the date, pre-watering weight and the amount of water added. A ruled index card is attached with clear packaging tape and marked with a permanent marker. This creates a permanent history showing the variation of water usage with the changing seasons and light levels. It’s quite educational and informative. The results will likely surprise you if you’ve been top-watering.

The most accurate method for measuring water is with a scale. As the saying goes water weighs “a pint a pound, the world around” except in most of the world on the metric system. A measuring cup, or pitcher, will of course work almost as well. The scale, however, is quicker and more accurate.

The result of this RSSi method is soil like a perfectly “baked cake” each and every time. Soil moisture is in the ideal “evenly moist” condition the majority of the time between waterings. Those who practice top-watering know that uneven soil moisture and compaction are everyday realities.

Regardless of the sub-irrigation method used, all plants in our lab are watered on a fixed schedule. Currently it is twice monthly and could easily be a longer interval for 6” pot size plants and above.

A Green, Green Building

The new Genzyme HQ building (with 18 indoor gardens) in Cambridge, MA has generated much publicity. A recent PAW newsletter linked to this article with a video clip worth viewing. Check it out. How would you like to work in an environment like this?

Hail Caesar…And Thank You John

Without realizing the connection at the time, we have two recent posts about Caesar Pelli designed buildings. Both the Pacific Design Center known as the “Blue Whale” and the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center hold warm memories for us.

We posted John Mini’s photo but failed to note that he’s standing in the Winter Garden at the WTC site. When the 16 Washingtonia palms were installed back in 1988, it created quite a stir in the interior plantscaping community. It was a bold move to plant these queens of the desert 3,000 miles away in a building by the Hudson. Most thought they would fail.

They were still there, however, on September 11, 2001 when tragedy struck from above and the palms were victims along with almost 3,000 irreplaceable human lives. We can replace plants, however, and a year later there were 16 new palms installed by John Mini Indoor Landscapes.

We know it was more than just another high profile project for John. We thank him for his efforts to restore a fond memory. We've spent many hours people watching while sitting under these palms. It is truly an awe inspiring space, even more so now. If you haven’t been there, go and reflect.

From The Mundane To The Magnificent

We were surprised to find this soil probe demo at Southeast Growers, Inc. in Florida. Obviously it's a probe for big plants and trees. We wonder why we can’t find smaller houseplant soil probes at the big box stores. Everyone who cares for houseplants should have one.

While here we went from the mundane to the magnificent by visiting their projects page. Southeast Growers supplied plants for the Masoala rain forest project at the Zurich Zoo. All we can say is wow!

Here are nine spectacular panoramas linked on the left menu.

What’s In A Name?

Someone must have heard our lament about a lack of inside plants industry buzz and this article about
John Mini appeared on The Journal News.com - Westchester,NY website.

We’ve known of John Mini since the ‘70s. However, we never knew his name was really Minutaglio. But then again he’s a New Yorker and anything is possible when it comes to New York family names. Few know that our family name of Ellis Island Finnish immigrants who settled in Finntown, Brooklyn is really Hyvärinen.

We were also soon going to post this “2002 Pro of the Year: A Mini Adventure” article from Interior Business. John is yet another well-respected interior horticulturist who discovered the benefits of sub-irrigation.

Article Quote: He is an admirer of good business and a risk taker. He isn’t afraid of trying something new, from indoor waterfalls to new plants to computerized watering systems. "We have always jumped into the next big thing, whether it was a new type of project or new things people were talking about, such as black olive trees and bamboo," Mini pointed out. "Then we moved into subirrigation when that came around. That caught my fancy and then I think of how it has evolved. A major part of the big project work we do now is irrigation systems. In fact, we’ve done a lot of applications of systems exclusively designed for exterior but used for interior. Our big projects have led us to apply more materials and systems out there like these."

Where’s The Buzz?

This abs-cbnNEWS article from the Philippines got our attention. We’re not sure exactly what “bioponic” technology is but it is subirrigation that Designer Plant Rentals uses.

They’re a company in the Philippines that has seen beyond unnecessary weekly watering known in the trade as “splash and dash”. They also see the light using a foot-candle meter rather than eyeball guesstimates. We salute their use of modern technology.

This article also got us thinking about the lack of buzz about interior plantscaping and inside plants in general. We wondered why we don’t see more news about the top U.S. interior plantscaping companies. Why don’t we see more articles about modern technology such as sub-irrigation and digital foot-candle light meters?

We assure you we use all the search methods we know of to find news and information. There are many hours of research behind the few words posted on this weblog.

For example, we tried to find the Decorative Plant Service story (posted yesterday) elsewhere on the web. It appears that Interior Business was the only one to publish it. IB is a fine trade periodical but it’s reach is limited primarily to the trade.

We believe the story merited wider distribution. It has an inner city angle of interest to urban readers. Perhaps an unfair comparison but we feel it has more human interest potential than the Designer Plant Rentals story.

The current Plants At Work (PAW) marketing campaign has much merit but we suggest that more would be gained if individual companies invested to a greater extent in their own publicity programs. We’d have a lot more industry buzz if they did.

Teach The Children...Hopefully About Sub-irrigation Too

Here’s a neat story posted by Ali Cybulski on the Interior Business website. Three cheers for Decorative Plant Service, San Francisco. They hosted 180 local fourth and fifth graders at their facility to learn about interior plantscaping, horticulture and plant science.

The "career day" included a tour with an interactive demonstration in which children received a small grow pot filled with soil and seeds to plant, as well as growing instructions. Students also took home creative project ideas, like charting their plants growth, making a storyboard on plants and flowers and writing a song about plants.

We know that Decorative Plant Service features sub-irrigation using their “Wicking Well ™” technique. We wonder if the children were given “Wicking Wells” to teach them about sub-irrigation or common grow pots to top water.

A More Friendly Blue Whale

This story from the NY Times brought back some good memories. Our interior plantscaping company had a showroom in the Pacific Design Center, known as the "blue whale", back in the late '70s. We also maintained the interior plants. It was the most talked about new building in Los Angeles at the time and an exciting place to be.

We'll stroll down memory lane in the near future and check out the interior plants. We hope the newly remodeled green building is green in every sense of the word. The PDC should certainly be a showcase for the latest interior plantscaping technology.