Gardening

Did a little gardening today, if you can consider a bunch of houseplants a "garden."

Most of the succulents got repotted last week (everything except the Christmas cactus and the jade plant). I'm hoping fresh soil will give my old and very scruffy looking aloe plant a new will to live and grow. Poor thing has actually gotten smaller since I got it.

Today the avocado got some fresh soil, and I finally got the summer-clearance perennials in a big planter with some topsoil. Hopefully I didn't put that off too long, I'd like to manage to overwinter them for our future yard. The Chinese evergreens (aglaonema) also got repotted; one was moved to a smaller pot because it's not doing well, and a lot of dead leaves and failing stems got pruned. I'm actually a little worried; these things are tough, and mine are looking kind of bad. Benign neglect, I guess - I need to remember to water & fertilize more often.

The Christmas cactus also got moved outside. The cooler temperatures & darkness should trigger them to set buds and bloom around Christmas/New Years. If they don't get confused again - one of them got confused and bloomed in the summer not long ago. It was weird, since they usually won't bloom at all unless it's cool and they get about 12 hours of darkness. These were outside in the summer, so "cool" wasn't happening at all.