Big Houseplant collection

[Charlie]

Charlie
In your reply #15 you mention a hibiscus houseplant collection of a hundred or so. How do you and Cindy manage such a large number of plants in the house and could you give some idea of the range of container and plants sizes you have? My collection is approaching 40 plants and most of my containers are 8 and 10 inch with exception of the new purchases this year in 4 and 6 inch pots. I figure this winter some windows will be 3 or 4 deep with hibiscus.

dave

Hi Dave,

I'm going to move this to the houseplant section of the forum and reply there. Hibiscus as houseplants is a topic that should interest lots of people since almost everyone has to protect their tropical hibiscus in winter.

Charlie

[Charlie]

Charlie
In your reply #15 you mention a hibiscus houseplant collection of a hundred or so. How do you and Cindy manage such a large number of plants in the house and could you give some idea of the range of container and plants sizes you have? My collection is approaching 40 plants and most of my containers are 8 and 10 inch with exception of the new purchases this year in 4 and 6 inch pots. I figure this winter some windows will be 3 or 4 deep with hibiscus.

dave

Hi Dave,

Cindy should give some input but I can't get her out of the HVH web site. She sure has polished and improved it since she started working on it 3 years ago!

Anyway, what we did was set up our house so that the furniture did not block the sunny windows. There are many windows on all sides of the house and most but not all of them get direct sun shining through during some part of the day. In the office we placed low tables and storage chests right under the windows while in the living room we avoided placing anything up against the windows so the floor space is available for plants. The low tables in the office serve as plant stands under the windows which face in 3 directions from southeast to northwest. The living room windows face east and westnorthwest and the kitchen windows face west. Those are the 3 rooms that are most suitable for hibiscus because the windows in those rooms get at least some direct sun on most days.

The kitchen has a ledge above the sink which can only fit 4 inch pots. We put these in oversized coffee cups that Cindy found somewhere and that serve as saucers to keep the water from running everywhere out of the pots. The kitchen also has a wider countertop surface that is not used too much and on that we place 6 inch pots in clear plastic saucers. Functional saucers are critical for growing hibiscus in the house. The plants need plenty of water so the saucers must be able to handle the overflow. You can find prettier ones, but we just use the clear plastic ones sold in many garden centers and even grocery stores around here. Between the 4" and the 6" pots we have about 20 hibiscus in the kitchen.

In the living room we use the floor in front of the tall windows for the hibiscus. With plenty of height available this space can accommodate larger hibiscus. We have placed everything from 1 gallon to 5 gallon pots in this space. We use a few decorative planters but mostly just pots and saucers. This space will hold about 25 plants if we put them 2 deep.

In the office we use everything from 6 inch pots to 5 gallon pots. Most are on low tables but we have floor space for a couple of the larger ones. The hibiscus function as curtains in this overly bright and sunny room, and absorb a huge amount of heat that would otherwise cause this room to get unbearably hot in the afternoons. We've had up to 50 plants of all sizes in this space.

Besides enjoying the indoor flowers and the green effect and the air cleaning, oxygen enriching ability of the hibiscus indoors, I also use our indoor hibiscus for hybridizing. It allows me to hybridize year-round rather than only in the cool season, and is a handy place to have the plants for checking on pods (at this very moment I see a Moonstruck pod turning brown and cracking open meaning the seeds are ripe) and making the crosses while the flowers are fresh and most likely to set seed. This means that I move different varieties in and out regularly, something that Cindy is not too happy about but she lives with the "loss" of her babies that she often gets attached to. She's still after me to move an 'In The Mood' plant back that was in the office last year. I will, when I can find it in the greenhouse........

Hibiscus that don't get enough sunlight can still be grown as attractive green plants. Once they get enough sunlight they bloom, and different spots in our house have plants that bloom very well at certain times of the year and less well at others. You have to experiment and find which areas work for you in your living space. I've found that indoor hibiscus are easy to care for, needing less water and experiencing less stress than outdoor hibiscus.

Charlie

[helixturnhelix]

Hi Charlie,

This gives me some ideas when I get my own place.  Do you mind posting some pictures of your set up?  I am thinking of doing something similar to what you described in your office, so I would really like to see what that looks like.  As usual very through and interesting information.

-Chris

[roadrunner]

Thanks Charlie,

That is great and very detailed information. I envy you having all those wonderful windows.  I agree with Chris that some pictures would be great if possible.

My collection is a seasonal inside/outside setup. They are houseplants for the winter, which is the only time I have any direct sun coming inside thru 3 south facing windows. Those windows will be incredibly crowded this winter since many of last years plants have gotten much larger and I've added to the collection as well. You have given me a few new ideas to try and improve on last year's setup.

Here are a couple pictures from the past winter. I had many single stalk plants because I didn't pinch them early.

dave

[roadrunner]

Here are a couple more pictures from last winter. I'll have space for a few more hibiscus in the room of that first photo if I can find another place for the African violets.  LOL

I nearly forgot that I also have the south facing front door available to move a few hibiscus to during the day. This is Erin Rachael which bloomed very well most of the winter and a few of the blooms reached just under 6 inches which surprised me. This is one of my favorites in spite of the mini size blooms. The color is so vivid regardless of the season.

dave

[Cindy]

Hi guys,

You can actually see most of our houseplant set-up on the Houseplant page in the care section of our website. All those pics are from our house. 

This is our living room:

Charlie hybridizes with these plants, but I also get attached to them, so we have big negotiations when he wants to take one back to the greenhouse and replace it with a different plant. We kind of consider them "ours."

This is my kitchen window:

These are actually "my" baby plants that Charlie can't touch, move, and I barely let him water them. I keep them squeaky clean and pristine, and I use them and others like them for many of our HVH houseplant experiments. The plants you see here have been on the houseplant formula for 2 years now and have been kept in 4" pots for that long too. They're bigger and bushier now - this was about a year ago. The experiment was to see how long I could keep them in these tiny pots and still keep them healthy. Here was a good bloom day:


This is our office on a good bloom day, and we typically do have multiple flowers blooming on any given day:

These are "Charlie's" plants, and I don't get attached. These are his main hybridizing plants, and he moves plants in and out from the greenhouse to the office.  He tends to hybridize in waves, so right now most of the plants in the office are covered with seed pods and we're getting fewer flowers - only 4 today. Once he harvests all these pods, he'll move these plants out and start over with a new batch, so we'll have all new plants in a month or two.

Here's another office pic. You can see Cosmic Gold covered with Charlie's hybridizing tags. You can also see a teeny bit of my kitty Ghost asleep in her basket in the sunny window. While she was still alive, Ghost was the only one who could steal any hybridizing space away from Charlie! :-)


Here's another pic that shows how we cram hibiscus everywhere!  The fax machine and my stereo speakers only get the non-sunny corner. Hibs get every bit of sun, and we put pots 2-3-4 deep in every window of the office. Our office has windows on 3 sides, like a sun room, and it faces south. So it works really well.


We even have a plant hospital in our house - in a sunny window in the laundry room!  I don't have pics of that, but I'll try to take some. We have the seed incubator in our guest room in a shady window. So it's pretty wild at our house.

Cindy

[roadrunner]

Cindy, those are incredible. Thank you so much for posting them.

dave

[helixturnhelix]

Cindy and Dave,

Thank you for posting pictures!  I will be moving into my own 1x1 next month, and it is supposed to have a western exposure, so I will be setting up a set up similar to what you have.  I wasn't very interested in cosmic gold because it seemed like it was just another yellow flower, but it looks like it blooms really well in the house.  I know that under your houseplant care guide you state any variety will bloom if brought in the house and the care instructions followed.  But Ive been reading that some do better than others, so I composed a list of the better ones stated on your website and with my own experience.  Let me know if I am missing any

Love Story
Sleeping Beauty
Blue Ballerina
Erin Rachel
Simple Pleasures
Belle du Jour
Delicia Amoris
H. rosa sinesis
El Captilo
Apricot Butter

In my limited experience I found Blue Ballerina and Belle du Jour to do well in the house.  If anyone has other varieties they want to list I think it might help some people who are looking for some more "shade tolerant" varieties.