Ok, so I've recently posted about some plant troubles. One thread gave some helpful advice, and the other ... well, made me feel silly.

But I am all for learning from mistakes, so I have decided I'm going to try to learn more about plants and home growing.

I did a lot of research and figured out some things that were wrong with my plant set-up. I went to walmart today and bought a better pot for my sick plant. The problem was two-fold: 1- The pot was not allowing water to drain, so the roots were drowning in a puddle of yucky, smelly, old water. 2- The plant had bugs in it.

So I sprayed Sevin dust for the bugs, and moved the plant into a smaller, clay pot, which will allow for better drainage and is a much better size for the plant.
Here's an old picture, and an update. The flowers are behind the plant, not part of it.


And the new set-up:

You can already see where the water is starting to drain out the bottom.

I also trimmed back an older, happy plant. I'd been letting it run rampant and decided it was time to get it into a nice shape.
Here's the before:


And the after:

I took off more than I left on! But it will be better in the long run. Kind of a life lesson, huh? Sometimes you gotta trim off some bad stuff to let the plant grow better.

I also found two new additions to my plant family. 98 cents each - can't beat that with a stick.




We'll see how they do. If anyone can ID that second plant, I'd be grateful. The tag only labels it as "assorted foliage".

Sorry for the long post, guys. I'm just very proud of myself for getting things set right. Plus, there's just something about plants. I love it. I love being able to go to the store and purchase such a wide variety of beautiful plants for next to nothing. Its this living, "breathing" thing that helps to clean your air and make your corner of the world a better place.

Now I just have to keep them alive...
They're a lot like snakes, actually. If the enclosure is too big (not secure enough) they won't thrive, and if you feed it too much or keep it too wet, it gets sick. Only difference is that these don't strike at you when they're in shed.



*EDIT: I forgot to include a dial-up warning in the thread title. If a mod could handle that for me, please, I'd be very thankful. ^_^