Home gardeners find that rooting scented-leaved geraniums is not always easy. Often they have a favorite plant they want to propagate and after several attempts meet with failure. Among the many kinds, some root very easily, while others are very tricky.

Of the popular scented-leaved geraniums, the lemon-scented and the rose-scented varieties root easily and quickly under common propagating methods.

The lemon-scented (Pelargonium crispum) is a small stemmed plant, with tiny crinkled leaves, which requires considerably more water than most geraniums. Take cuttings about 3-3/4 inches long and trim off all leaves from the bottom up to 1-1/4 inches. Make a clean cut beneath an eye, dip the end into 3X rooting powder and insert the cuttings in clean sand, deep enough so that the lower leaves do not touch the sand. Shade until signs of growth are evident. Then remove shade and keep plants a little drier.

Oak-leaved varieties (Pelargonium quercifolium) are not too difficult. Take tender cuttings, but if they are hardened, root them under drier conditions. A 1X rooting powder is best. Practically all hardy and easy-to-root as well are the flowering scented varieties, none of which demand anything beyond normal cultural conditions. Here again water well, and allow the sand to become rather dry, but not arid, before watering again.

Lighting for indoor houseplant, what does that mean? In a nutshell, it means that good light – and enough of it – is an important consideration in your plans for lasting effects with indoor plants. If you want to use vines for example on inside walls, away from windows, choose foliage varieties that will tolerate semishade. Or use the vines for temporary rather than permanent or lasting effect.

Sunlight

Daylight is necessary to all plants. Sunlight is another matter. The effect of sunlight – actually falling on a plant, not just near it; in varying strength and of varying durations according to plant varieties – is to stimulate formation of buds and flowers. If you want to decorate with a flowering vine, you can be fairly sure that it should grow where it will receive more than just a touch of sunlight. It can, of course, be grown in any sunny place until it flowers, then brought in for colorful display in any spot.

Some vines and flowering houseplants will flower with less sunlight than others. Duration and intensity of sunlight also varies with the seasons and geographical areas. In a Northern winter, for example, the sun shines weakly and for a short time. At noon in August it is burning hot almost anywhere.

Hollies will grow in full sun or partial shade, but will become spindly in dense shade. In windswept areas hollies should be planted in sheltered locations. Consider location carefully also from the standpoint of space. They grow slowly, and although they are small at first, they eventually become broad specimens. Since they will remain in the same location for many years they will benefit by thorough soil preparation. Heavy clay soil can be improved by the addition of sand and two to three bushels of leaf mold or peat moss, for plants three to four feet tall. Small hollies will not need that much humus immediately; more can be worked into the soil as the plants grow.

Potted or canned hollies may be planted at any time during the growing season. Balled and b u rl a pp ed plants transplant best in March and April, just before the new growth commences, and again in late summer and fall. Careful handling in the planting operation is imperative. A broken root ball may ruin the plant. At the time of planting, a depression should be left around each plant. This should be filled with water after planting, and repeated whenever the soil becomes dry during the first year.

Ideal plants for those value fragrance rather than color, are the scented-leaved geraniums.

These offer a combination of pleasant perfumes and a wide variety of foliage form and texture. Since they are plants that are comparatively easy of culture, maintaining a collection is relatively simple.

Scented geraniums can be grown as house plants, in a greenhouse or as garden subjects left out all year in the more temperate south and southwestern parts of the country. They demand only ordinary care. Give them good garden loam, sunshine, moderate water, a reasonable amount of feeding, as well as occasional pinching, and they will thrive happily.

The scented varieties never become dormant. During dark, winter days, to be sure, they do not grow as fast as in spring and summer, but they always remain in full leaf, their hidden fragrance awaiting the slightest touch. As house plants, they are excellent, where they succeed in any sunny window. They are also not excessively sensitive to house conditions, such as dry atmosphere, high temperatures and the occasional presence of minute amounts of gas.

When to Water

Soil for foliage plants falls into three chief types. Ordinary potting soil should be porous and well drained. It contains approximately equal parts of good topsoil, coarse sand and organic matter (leafmold, humus or peatmoss) with about an eighth part by bulk of dried cow manure and bonemeal – a pint to each bushel of the mixture. Woodsy soils, for plants that need more organic matter, are similar but contain about twice as much leafmold, humus or peat-moss. Very porous soils that are useful for snake plants and other semi-succulent and succulent plants are simply the ordinary soil mixture with the addition of half-inch pieces of broken brick or flower pots equal to the amount of sand used.

Potting and repotting should be done, if needed, at the beginning of the growing season, which is usually late winter or early spring. Many plants need this attention once a year. Large specimens and smaller examples of slow-growing plants may go several years without repotting. In intervening years they are top-dressed by removing as much of the surface soil as can be taken off without damaging the roots and replacing it with a new, rich mixture. Small-sized, young plants of fast-growing kinds may need a second potting in summer, early enough for them to fill their new containers with roots before winter.

Chill November winds spur us on to get things done before the ground freezes in cooler sections of the country. Now is the time to finish cleaning up gardens before the appearance of the first snow or colder weather.

Some General Chores

Continue to rake up fallen leaves, dead annuals and vegetables and to shear perennial tops, placing them on the compost pile. Destroy corn stalks and other vegetables tops which harbor diseases. Sanitation practiced now will do much to prevent pests and disease next year.

For Cleaning Tools

Clean tools to prevent them from rusting. Go over lightly all metal parts with a stiff brush and then rub with light oil. On very rusty tools, use a commercial rust remover and rub down handles with equal parts of linseed oil and turpentine. Sharpen grass clippers and lawn mower blades before putting away and remember to grease and oil metal parts of garden furniture.

To Winter Mulch

Mulch flower beds, perennials and bulbs after the first frosts have frozen the ground. Use only material which will not mat down plants. Cranberry tops, straw or hay, marsh hay or pine needles or boughs are all excellent materials for mulching. Leaves tend to pack too closely and should only be used in a layer of one-half inch thick. Mulching prevents the ground from freezing and thawing, one of the chief reasons for its use.

Walls and fences of all dimensions are erected for any of many reasons – to define property boundaries, to create a center of privacy, to connect two areas or levels, even to break up small areas and make gardens seem larger. Fences can be used in place of trees and shrubs as background for a flower border, with spectacular vines as accent or subdued varieties for subordinate effect. And, of course, there’s nothing like a good-looking fence or wall to obscure unattractive outbuildings, or necessary atrocities like the compost heap.

For fences and walls, again, vines are selected according to available sunlight, moisture, and other cultural considerations – and then according to decorative purpose. If the fence is in itself decorative, the vine should enhance, not smother it. Avoid rampant-growing types and choose, instead, restrained vines with delicacy and charm, and those that can be pruned and trained to shape. For ugly or tottering fences, select a fast, thick covering vine.

Recycling and growing plants is not something new, it has been happening for decades. Here is the story of one such case from 1956.

Glass houses aren’t usually built for $200.00 even in a do-it-yourself project. However Mr Milan, of Tulsa, built one for that amount including benches. His 8 by 20 foot orchid house had walls and ceilings made from spent 48-inch fluorescent light tubes that have weathered four years of Oklahoma’s hailstorms and occasional winter temperatures as low as 10 degrees. He calls it his “spent lighthouse.”

Milan’s idea for the structure came from one he had seen in California. As far as can be learned the Tulsa one was the first one built in Mid-America. Under California conditions orchids had needed shade and under Oklahoma’s sizzling sun their need was greater. Then Mrs. Milan was specializing in raising ferns and they could not survive the usual greenhouse structure. Now the tube is frosted which gives filtered light and it is also vacuum sealed which makes it a good insulating medium; both are qualities that ordinary window pane glass did not have.

Shady locations pose special problems when it comes to furnishing them with plants – problems that are challenging, but surmountable; problems that for happy solutions depend upon the selection of suitable kinds of plants.

Around the home, on porches, patios and terraces and in sunrooms and window gardens there, are likely to be places where light is comparatively poor, but such places really need decorative vegetation to provide a homelike, lived-in atmosphere. Wisely chosen plants provide the answer for successful decoration of such problem spots.

Here, we will take a look into the uses of foliage plants in and about the home, for they offer by far the largest selection of kinds that prefer or endure shade. And, best of all, the kinds will look right in shaded places – they are plants. that belong where light is subdued.

One of the subtleties of successful gardening is to employ plants and flowers where they seem to belong. Shaded places kept aglow with blooming plants call for constant replacements, and that means over-decoration. It is a happier solution to use plants that thrive in shade.

Albert Buell hardly knew a petunia from a pansy. Today, he’s the proud father of the modern gloxinia judged by experts to be among the finest available anywhere in the world.

Albert’s was not trained in the field of horticulture growing gloxinias was a sideline. Albert’s life took a turn when his aunt brought home a blue slipper gloxinia from an old ladies’ home in New Hampshire. The flower color was not clear and the blooms were relatively small. To Albert, this was an entirely new plant exciting his curiosity. Then and there he decided to make a thorough study of all gloxinias to discover how many kinds there were, and what it took to make them grow.

Thus, before World War II cut off all imports of bulbs from Europe, he bought tubers of the named varieties then available. Their performance, though good, left much to be desired in size of flower, variety of color, plant habit and arrangement of the blooms on the plant.

Like all plant collectors, he also began swapping plants. For one of his blue slippers, he got from a Mr. Twiss a plant with bell-shaped blooms having a variegated purple color, which was to figure later in his breeding work.