Adventures in Gardening

I used to say that I had a black thumb and I wasn't just joking.

When I moved into my first apartment, my mother gave me pieces of several of her plants and I promptly killed them all. (I still don't know what happened, I watered them.) So I bought a few more at Target. One died within a month, the other, some sort of fern, held on for a couple, then turned yellow and wilted.

Not one to give up easily, I bought an outdoor planter and a package of wildflower seeds. For several months I had beautifully colored weed-looking things growing within my vicinity. Ah, success at last.

Fast forward several years when I bought a house and decided I really would like to have some house plants. This time, I consulted my wise mother (she can make anything grow). She said her secret was to mix a little Peter's Plant Food in the water every couple of months.

I went searching for Peter's Plant Food. I didn't find it, but what I did find changed my relationship with plants forever! I bought a few more plants, used my new find and amazing things happened:

• One litte plant grew too large for it's pot in just weeks.


• Another had to be repotted twice in a three month period.


• And a ficus that was about 6 inches high when I bought it is now almost 6 FEET tall
  

What is the magic potion I found?

Miracle Grow.

Aptly named, stick one spike of this stuff in a plant and you can almost watch the thing get bigger. Of course, I've never been one for moderation. I stuck four spikes in the ficus. heehee

The problem is I now have this huge, gorgeous ficus plant that I need to leave in Maryland since I don't think it would survive the six to seven days it would spend in a hot moving truck to bring it to CA.

Anyone interested in giving a fabulous ficus a home?

By the way, the plant's name is Frank. He drinks about a pitcher of water a week and enjoys sun. He prefers to be the only plant in a room and instead of being dusted with a cloth, he likes to be lightly misted. He is very well-behaved and if you rotate his pot around, he will grow even on all the sides.