Consistency with Clivia: Uniform potting makes care easier...

A new clivia made it into the collection this week. A friend in the city had a plant that wasn't making them happy any more; a good sized specimen in a good sized clay pot. While clivia flowers are wonderful when they deign to appear, I love them for their outstanding foliage, architectural, clean, and in variegated specimens, colorful. This one was a bit floppy, and too rangy for my friend's space, but held all the promise a clivia can. Thus it is the newest adoptee.

The rest of my clivia (nearly a half a bench full) are in plastic containers of roughly the same size. As a result, care is simplified since the pots dry out at just about the same time. They are relatively young in comparison to the new plant, and doing well.

Part of my "low-maintenance" plan is to eliminate as many variables as possible in different parts of the collection. For clivias, this means keeping pot type and size consistent and allowing specimens to develop at about the same pace.

I've chosen plastic in this "growth" stage, since the thick, thirsty roots of clivias demand plenty of water when the plant is in growth. Plastic slows the drying of the potting medium so that water is available to the roots for a longer period of time.

The size has been kept consistent so that the water is used up at roughly the same time. This reduces the number of times the group has to be checked for moisture and helps with the coordination of repotting--the entire group moving up in pot size at the same time.

Granted, when they reach specimen size and are staged for display, pot size may vary; but for the time being this new plant was not "with the program."

My solution: unpot it (always good to repot new arrivals anyway), whack it into four plants, and get it on the same page as the rest of the gang.

You can do this with any plant that is part of a collection of like individuals. Consistency breeds efficiency. Now the new kid is on the schedule, and, happy in its (their...) new home, they can grow away.

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