Let’s start this post like I started my day. With Louie’s disapproving look.
He just sat like this and stared at us while we chatted in bed before getting up. This was not the pose of him being disrupted or in movement. He’s chillin’ and appauled. He hates when I don’t get up right away. Which is always.
He doesn’t want pets — no. In fact, if I pet him, he will move further away. He wants me to get up. I need to put food in his bowl that he’s not gonna eat right now cause he’s too spoiled with his evening half a can of wet food. Then we have to go outside. He might have to come in early to poop. Otherwise, he want’s to nom some grass and barf. Then I can do my thing while he does his thing in the vicinity. As long as I’m not in bed.
Currently I’m on the laptop on the couch and he’s like just sleeping in the middle of the carpet over there. This is why he wants me out of bed.
I know everyone says get him a friend. But like, I don’t think he’d like a friend at this point. He’s a ham and demands to be the center of attention. Like if you come over to visit my house, he wants to be loved. You’re his new best friend. Because everyone must worship his soft belly. But if you visit too much, or live here, he’ll be over somewhere about 10 feet away. Another cat would probably bother him. And take away the valuable spotlight. Also, he wouldn’t be getting that expensive ass food if I had two cats. I can’t afford to worship two cats. I can lavish one cat.
Look at this adorable acorn I found!
Isn’t it cute and tiny? I haven’t found a random acorn in ages. I loved finding these when I was little. I’m gonna plant it by the giant tree stump in our front yard.
Halloween is the DEVIL
Facebook advertised these super religious trunk-or-treat decorations to me. “Ain’t no ghost but the HOLY GHOST!” That ghost one cracks me up. But hey, at least these people want to still let the kids have fun in costumes and get candy. So props. Like, I guess getting candy from strangers cars instead of houses is less Satanesque.
After typing that sentence though, isn’t this the PERFECT trap? Like a venus fly trap? Like “hey kids — we have candy — it’s Halloween, we’re just religious. Here take a full sized candy ba… **SHOVES KID IN AND CLOSES THE HATCH**
Yall don’t read that if you’re the scared that Halloween will kill your children type. Come on, at least give them this.
And if you’re the type of mom I’d be — give them this until sundown when they can hit up the neighborhoods. That’s right, rake it in, my little pumpkin. Let’s go to the rich neighborhood next. Of course you don’t have to go to school tomorrow. You’re probably gonna be barfing because you ate half that shit. Fuck what your teacher says. THIS IS HALLOWEEN, DAMMIT. It’s one goddamn day. Oh hey, do you need me to tape that back on your costume? Come here, I’ve got tape and we can plug in the glue gun if we need to. I’ve got some trim we can cover that up with. Is my hat on straight? Awesome. Yeah, I know — dads lame. Next year we’ll have to blackmail him. Maybe we could all be Marvel characters! I got him to be Tony Stark once. You gotta start working him in like August.
And here’s my Monstera!
I got it a fucking grade A grow light handing from the second floor. It’s very happy. It’s my favorite. Don’t tell the others. Like the prayer plant is my second favorite. But of course I love you too, my sweet jungle cacti! String of Bananas, we’re working on our relationship. I know, you’re doing fucking amazing. But like, you need something on top. I might get you like a topiary ball frame or something to wrap around before you trail down. I’m working on it.
I know, a lot of plant posts. But, I can’t believe I haven’t posted about my Monstera! I told you about the Great Lemon Grass Experiment (they’re in rehab right now), the Great Pumpkin Experiment (we have some flowers coming back in!). Now we have the Great Monstera Experiment. And I do mean Great. Like GREAT BIG.
Back in June, we went to the plant swap. And holy shit, I won the door prize! There was a lot of stuff with the door prize (K, have you used that book giftcard?). The best part: A Monstera! Before this, I really only knew about Monsteras from them being my favorite plant in Animal Crossing. Now I HAVE one. So I had a lot to learn. I got into Monstera groups on Facebook and Reddit, followed plant people on youtube. Did I want to pole it? Whats the best pole to use? So much info.
However, June was also the month of the Washing Machine Incident. So it was July before I could actually do anything with this plant. Even re-potting it. And believe me, it needed a repot. The roots were growing through the holes in the bottom so much they blocked the drainage. I went and bought a really nice concrete planter for this baby. I wanted to upsize the pot, but not by much. And I needed the weight.
I decided I wanted to go with moss poles. Specifically: Easy D-Shaped poles. Upon inspection, I found that my Monstera actually had two plants in it (later found to be three). And those two plants were straight up facing each other. Fuck me. This sucks because it meant that to repot it with a pole, I had to separate the plants. Ugh. Here it is before the great repot. At this time, I had had it for about a month.
So I ordered some nice transparent and extendable D poles. I found the widest ones I could (I think they are five inches?), but I wasn’t sure I could get both plants on one pole. I ordered an eight pack though so I figured I would figure it out when the time came. Good thing I did that, because they needed two. Which kinda meant the plant actually got no new room since the poles took up too much space in the pot. Whatever. The good news is, I still have enough of the poles to extend three times (two foot each, but a few inches of overlap required).
I even bought the insanely expensive ethically sourced and harvested sphagnum moss straight from New Zealand. Yeah, it was fucking expensive. This free plant started costing a lot. But really, the environmental harm from sphagnum moss harvesting is devastating. Get that shit ethically, yall. They don’t HAVE to destroy the environment to harvest it. It can be done in a way that preserves the ecosystem. It’s just harder, produces less (but better quality), and therefore it’s a lot more expensive. Luckily that shit expands like crazy so I barely used any of it in this phase.
So after the insanely stressful surgery to separate the plants and tie them to the poles and do everything by the book — it looked like SHIT.
This was the trust the process part. It has to get worse before it gets better.
So, my Monstera was a mess. It had been completely turned around and the petioles were just all over the place. So I bought the Velcro plant ties. Name brand — they were WAY BETTER than the cheap shit that came with the poles. The Velcro brand plant ties are amazing — so soft against the plant. Love them. So yeah, my actual Stems are only about 5 inches at this point so there’s only so much anchoring I can do to the pole. But it is also already very thick and woody.
So.
I had to train the leaves. I did this very slowly. For each petiole, I wanted to move, I made a thick padding of paper towels folded over each other. I wrapped that loosely around the petiole and used the velcro ties to tie it to the pole. Not a lot! It was a slow process. You can’t just jerk them back. So over weeks, I’d shorten the velcro length to get them more upright.
At this point, after 2 months, I am proud to say, only one petiole is actually being supported. In fact, I can probably remove that now. It’s pretty solid. Here’s a picture from this morning:
I have not and do not plan to remove any damaged leaves. As you can tell from the picture where I brought it home (and the fact that two plants were potted facing each other), it didn’t have the best care. This wasn’t intended to be someones love project. They expected someone to take this home and slowly kill it. So the leaves are very wonky and curled in all kind of ways. One of the leaves is only a fraction of a leaf. But fuck you, I’m gonna make the most beautiful Monstera your ass has ever seen.
It’s already looking 1,000% better than it did. This month, it already spit out three new leaves! Yeah three! Turns out, there’s a tiny baby vine in there. The new leaf is only its third one. You can’t even see it in these photos. The aerial roots are taking to the moss extremely well. So glad I went with the D poles. They don’t dry out very fast. I’m sure that will change in winter — but they stay moist well over a week because they’re only exposed at the front by the plant.
Also, having used two side-by-side, they really strengthen each other as I have the zip-tied together in a few places. As it gets taller, I might need a board or metal bar on the back to keep it study and straight. But I honestly think I can get to 5 feet before I need extra support. Right now, I’m not even using a foot of the pole (well, above soil, I should say — its obviously buried in the pot). Also, I’ll have enough room for my third vine growing up!
So here, my friends, is my grand plan:
Yes! I plan to grow this motherfucker all the way up to the second story railing. I can’t go higher that that because, how would I possibly water the moss pole after it passes the second story? And eventually, it will get there. I’ve already picked out the perfect grow light and hanging bracket. I’m hoping it will go on sale for Black Friday. It’s the one that the youtuber KillThisPlant uses on his GIGANTIC indoor Monstera. (He’s who shared the Velcro tape too). It’s actually a really beautiful pendant light that I will be hanging from above. I can easily raise it but pulling in the cable length as the plant grows taller. That’s what I drew in the blue so badly on that photo mark-up. Though I acknowledge that halfway up, I might need to get a second pendant. We shall cross that bridge we we come to it. For right now, we’re using the ugly grow light I purchased to overwinter my plants last year. I measured it with a light meter and it’s putting out well over what I need to get this thing big and healthy.
Then when it gets too tall, I’ll be able to chop and prop and keep the top 8ish feet of pole and move the mother plant and keep extending. I’ve seen a lot of tutorials on how to do this and they all use moss poles. If you get enough roots in the actual pole, the plant can survive a repot with minimal stress after being cut from the mother plant. And then repeat forever.
Most of the plant youtubers don’t have the space for the giant Monstera leaves as they grow indoors and that’s what hampers them. They just can’t let them get so huge indoors. BUT I CAN! I got space. This is going to be the centerpiece of my house. My pièce de résistance. When you enter through the beautiful doors you will see Sir Bastian and this TWO STORY MONSTERA. And you will be amazed.
Shout out to the youtubers who have taught me far more than I even thought I’d want to know about Monsteras:
So an update on my Fishbone Cactus. I posted about it earlier this week. It had a lot of damage, but I was also so in love with it that I didn’t want to cut it. I loved the long stems! But the damage was pretty bad. I wanted to watch a plant that I love grow. Not worry about needing to clean it up every time I watered it.
Well, I gave it a hair cut…
Now I have a healthy plant though. Look at how much damage I had to cut off!
I did salvage the tips of the damaged stems. I’m rooting them. Maybe I can sell the rooted bits at the next plant swap. Or just hoard it as a new plant…
Back in June (three months ago), I went to the local Plant & Book Swap. I bought some miniature sunflowers, left a ton of books on the free table, and grabbed a cutting from the free table. I have no idea why I didn’t take a picture, but it was about a foot long cutting of a fishbone cactus (see title for many names if can go by). I used google image search to find this out right there at the free table. Technology is fucking AMAZING.
Well, I was quickly enamored with this alien plant thing. WTF is this shit? I can root stuff. FREE PLANT! So I took it home. It was pretty rough with scabbed over areas all over it which is obviously why its owner trimmed it off. I watched a ton of youtube videos and cut it into five cuttings. This was during the great washing machine incident when everything was in the garage and we had a chipmunk problem so one cutting disappeared while callusing over. I followed the rooting instructions to a T. I let it callus for a few days, I put it in a well draining cactus mix. Here’s what they looked like when I moved them inside:
And after three months under my watchful eye, here’s what they look like now:
Yeah. It’s just plumped back up and it’s much brighter green with LESS THAN A CENTIMETER OF A NUB ON ONE SINGLE CUTTING (see blue arrow).
So.
Here is what it looks like next to the fishbone cactus I ordered online that arrived yesterday:
A few things:
Clearly they are different species. The original has much larger gaps in the leaf spurs(?) that are also much sharper. I know multiple different plants fall under this name.
The new plant clearly has a lot of damage. As you can see in the light, some of the stems are soft/mushy in some areas (more transparent — looks yellow in the photo because of the sunlight shining through). I’m not complaining or returning it though. Even if I mercilessly hacked off every damaged stem, it’s still much larger than what I was promised or shown in photos. So I’m cool with that. There are almost double the stems than the photo had and much longer too. And the majority of the stems have new pinkish growth on the ends. So if I didn’t have those damaged stems at all, I’d be thrilled with it. I actually think this is probably just a damaged much larger plant than what I ordered. I don’t mind plant rehab.
It needs to unfurl and relax into place but I’m too impatient and I want to show you my alien plant NOW dammit. I literally transplanted this last night before bed. It’s a little jet lagged and who knows how long it’s been wrapped up tight in that paper wrap.
Isn’t it AMAZING? Like what the fuck is this plant? Apparently it grows in forests in Mexico! I love it! I hope the cuttings grow.
Any advice on the cuttings? Should I nip off the brown bits and hope to spur new growth on the three cuttings that haven’t done shit? They aren’t DEAD, they’re bright plump green. But not a sign of growth in THREE MONTHS on those three. I think I’ll nip one of the three losers and see what that does.
