Comments on: This Started Off a Brief Nothing and Turned into an Epic

By: 2008 in Posts — Here in the Bonny Glen

2008 in Posts — Here in the Bonny Glen — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:26:52 +0000

[...] got very wordy about houseplants. [...]

By: Melissa Wiley

Melissa Wiley — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:22:40 +0000

Joann, that is too cool about the peach tree and the potatoes. I might have to try the potato trick, just to see the foliage and flowers.

I used to have lots of little bitty lemon and orange trees around, grown from seed. This was way back in the NYC days and none of them got bigger than a stick. The children’s book LINNEA’S WINDOWSILL GARDEN was a big influence, too. I never had the luck with impatiens indoors that she did, but my avocado and pineapple plants were cute. Oh, and I did her scarlet runner bean trick one year where you tie strings in the window for them to climb, and that was really pretty.

By: Houseplants, Part Two | Melissa Wiley

Houseplants, Part Two | Melissa Wiley — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:20:10 +0000

[...] block. We even made a field trip to Logee’s Greenhouse, that wonder-of-the-world Becky and I have been discussing in the comments. I remember Scott patiently entertaining a toddling Jane while I explored the rooms [...]

By: Joann

Joann — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:08:40 +0000

Loved all the talk about the plants. My boy-who-can-grow-anything will LOVE the weird plant book! He planted a peach pit when he was 5 and this year the tree is loaded! with peaches.
His purchase of “dead” pointsettias and hydrangeas in mid-January is greening up my front garden. And potato eyes the he “rescued” from the compost heap have sprouted all in my side flower beds. Potatoes make a lovely dark green foilage and cute little flowers as well as the tasty tubers.

By: Melissa Wiley

Melissa Wiley — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:39:26 +0000

Eek! I went! I am drowning in the flood of Logee’s wonders!

(My word have their prices gone up since the mid-90s!)

By: Melissa Wiley

Melissa Wiley — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:28:28 +0000

Becky!! We must have just missed each other! I moved to NYC in May of 93, but didn’t join the GS until 94. I loved those member plant sales & cutting swaps!

Logee’s Greenhouse figures prominently in part two of my plant tale. Actually by 94 I was already siphoning a good bit of my spending money to Logee’s, but when I wrote this post the other day I was almost afraid to mention the name with obligatory link because I haven’t faced that tempting catalog in a long, long time. Oh, the joys of the big cardboard box full of teeny little plantlings wrapped carefully as dynamite!

By: Becky

Becky — Mon, 19 May 2008 04:10:33 +0000

Oh my stars. We must be separated at birth.

Don’t feel bad about the bonsai. I killed a ponytail palm. Nobody kills a ponytail palm.

Were your Gesneriad Society meetings on West 77th Street, just across the street from the Museum of Natural History? I was at some meetings, I think from 1990-93. I lived several doors down, in an apartment with a three-tiered light stand (I saved up so I could get the ballasts with four lights), and you could see an unearthly fluorescent purple glow from under the front door!

I would bring cuttings from my father’s garden in the West Indies, and had a little coffee plant and a tiny lime tree (no limes though). And I spent more than my fair share of my paycheck at Logee’s.

One winter I decided I wanted to force paperwhites and tulips for spring, and since I had read about the ethylene gas, there were no apples or grapes in my fridge for the duration. Sheer nuttiness…

My houseplant days ended when I moved here. There was too much to do with the farm, I started learning about what I could plant outdoors, and then the kids started coming. But the old three-tiered stand is still in the basement!