Plants

Gardening

I love gardening so much, I may become a truck farmer someday. (I would have to move for that to happen). For now I am content with my cucumber trellis, a few bell pepper bushes, a few strawberry vines, cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, a peppermint patch and a sage and rosemary bush.

I believe that we should conserve old fashioned, open-pollinated, (i.e. unhybridized) vegetables.  I discuss this a little more on my "Crop Production" page.

Horticulture

I have an Associate in Horticulture from Reinhardt College and some experience as a part-time landscaper. It is fun to take a yard and gradually replace the boring green stuff with flowering shrubs and perennial bulbs that will brighten the neighborhood. The trick is to plant for year-round bloom. This is not a hard thing to do in Georgia; just break away from what most commercial landscapers try to stick you with, (pun intended).

I now intend to make a career out of my computer skills, but at one time I considered running a commercial greenhouse. I had a stint working for a wholesale grower of bedding plants. I worked for a season under a greenhouse manager along with one other grower, running an operation with 22 greenhouses. It can be a profitable venture, but worrying about the risks associated with raising bedding plants can keep you up at night.

Landscape plants are not risk-free, but as a less labor-intensive potential second income, they have more appeal to me than bedding plants.

My interest in landscape plants ties in with a fascination with native plants. In Georgia, the Georgia Botanical Society leads the way into the woods and meadows on field trips to enjoy and study our native plants.

In Florida and California the climate is mild enough that a lucky few can grow cacti and/or tropical plants. Georgia nurserymen cannot compete with their neighbors to the south. Even if you could get your heating costs to zero, you still have to pay for the structure to hold in the heat. In central Florida, the structures are minimal.  I am not willing to move further south, and I don't want to return to raising bedding plants, so my greenhouse skills will probably only serve my plant hobby, not pay the bills.

Houseplants

I got into raising desert cacti through the late Harvey O'Quinn, a long-time family friend, and a de facto grandpa to me. About 1967 or so he built a small glasshouse in his backyard and ordered quite a few plants from the Johnson Cactus Company (now defunct) of Paramount California. Harvey gave me a few of his plants to get started. I put them on a window ledge and learned how to care for them. Most of the plants did not survive many years, but the aloe vera I started with has multiplied a hundred fold. From this one plant came offspring that probably grow in many homes around Atlanta. I don't have a good wintering place for these denizens of the desert. I need a greenhouse.

In college I learned about epiphytes; these are plants (of many species) that happen to make their homes in trees rather than on the ground. Among the cactus family are some species that are epiphytic. The best known genus of epiphytic cactus is Epiphyllum. What many people call the "night blooming cereus" is not in the genus Cereus at all. Instead, its true Latin name is: Epiphyllum oxypetalum. For several years I was a member of the Epiphyllum Society of America. My interest in these plants is so keen that ten years ago I intended graduate study on the ecology of the epiphytic cactus. Graduate school no longer seems practical to me, but I pursue my interest in these plants on my own. The San Diego Epiphyllum Society has a great Web site, so I offer a link to their pages from here. Rainbow Gardens Nursery and Bookshop will sell you epiphyllums by mail order and they have a great selection of books as well.