Bright colours of spring

Sunny days, singing birds, spring-time flowers... Sharing impressions of seen in March and April ...

 bay tree

 almost seeds

...just the road ship :)

 

Trailing african violets (saintpaulias)

Trailing violets grow longer stems and form many side shoots mostly.  Depending on the nature of the certain variety these plants can be grown as a group of stems: several plants together, or when intentionally removing growing-point, and keeping several side shoots to grow different directions. Some varieties tend to grow up at first, like Dancin’ Trail, others tend to hang down from the pot straightway, like Rob’s Vanilla Trail.

             I collect mini and semi-mini  trailing African violets. These are my own pictures of my favourite varieties from my and my mum’s collections.

 

 

 

Tillandsia – air plant

Very unusual and comfortable houseplant. It doesn’t need compost. It grows roots to fix to the whatever  base only. More than that, plants can be left for couple weeks not watered, if you need to go on holidays for example.

I have these plants for more than 1 year.  These are like pets, you can take them into your hands if you do not fix plants on branches, stones or other interior things.  

 

I spray them with room temperature or couple degrees warmer water once or 2 times a week so that plants become completely wet. Occasionally adding plant food of low concentration (approx. 1-2 times a month).  After spraying it’s important to get water out from inside of such varieties like t. seleriana or t. caput medusae, keeping upside down, while water runs out. This prevents rotting from inside. Naturally winds help ventilating plants, at home we have to help a bit, also with keeping a higher humidity level – I’ve located plants on special tray, where I can add water in the bowl.

My green “tower” for attaching plants is … the plastic bird feeder (without  cover) from Poundland.  

 

Now my plants are located on the south direction windowsill, however after the sun started to rise higher, there is no more straight sunlight shining on the plants, because of the loggia outside, but plants liked sun very much earlier and started growing flower-stacks. I wait t.fuchsii, t.caput medusa and one more to open their buds. But t.bulbosa already has already shown her blooming in January.