Christmas Plants Around Pets & Small Children

1 December, 2011 Reply

During the holidays we enjoy having all kinds of beautiful wreaths, flower arrangements, swags, and other living decorations. However, if you have pets or small children joining you for the holidays, you need to be aware of plants that can pose a hazard to them. Most plants are not out and out killers, but they can cause a lot of discomfort and possible trips to the hospital.

First off, know your animal. Some animals are totally uninterested in new plants, others have to chew everything. If you plan a new baby pet to be given to someone in the family this Christmas, better to stay away from any, even the mildly toxic, plants. You don’t want to end up in the emergency room with a sick puppy or kitten. Worse yet would be to lose the pet altogether.

Know your children, too. The younger they are the more you have to watch out for ingestion. An infant that is crawling will want to put everything it finds in its mouth. A toddler may be responsive enough to understand when you say no.

Of course being safe is the most important thing. Here are some of the plants frequently used in holiday decorating that can be toxic to pets and/or children.

Once thought highly toxic, poinsettias have been bred to be only mildly irritating.

Poinsettia – It is mainly seen as a non-toxic plant anymore. Breeding has lowered the toxic substances found in them. However, small animals can still have some discomfort if they ingest a lot of the leaves.

Mistletoe – The berries are highly toxic. You should remove the berries and discard them in a safe place if you have critters or children that may munch them.

Holly – I think most people know that the red berries are poisonous, so nix the berries if munchers abound.

Four lesser known, but still highly toxic plants are, bittersweet, boxwood, pine, and Jerusalem cherry (also called winter cherry). Jerusalem cherry is quite toxic and can cause a coma. Pine is toxic in large amounts. Small amounts can be irritating, but if they eat a few pine needles you don’t need to panic.

You might decide to forego live decorations for a few years when you have youngsters, be the human or furry, in your house during the holidays. After they’ve outgrown munching everything in site, you can start using live decorations again.

Caring For A Cut Christmas Tree

24 November, 2011 Reply

There's nothing like the smell of a fresh cut Christmas tree.

I haven’t been able to give up my cut tree, yet. Even though I know that growing Christmas trees is a highly toxic industry, I still want that fresh cut smell in the house, and I’ve not found an artificial tree that looks anything like a real one. So, until I’m able to give up this vice, I try to make sure the tree stays as green and safe as possible.

I went straight to the expert’s site, the National Christmas Tree Association to check and see if there was anything I should know that I didn’t already. Actually I was doing everything right, except I put warm water in the base when I bring it in because I was told it will make the cells in the tree swell more and take up more water, but they say that it doesn’t matter. Second, I didn’t know you shouldn’t burn any part of a Christmas tree. I’ve often burned the piece I cut from the bottom and sometimes a couple of the branches we’ve removed. They don’t say why, but I’ll heed that this year.

Really the most important thing you can do is keep them dry, cool, and watered. Avoid putting worn lights on them, unless you want the possibility of burning your house down, and try to keep pets and small children away from them. I recently read about a woman who was trying to keep her cat from climbing the tree and sleeping in it! Now that’s a unique, but hazardous decoration. The tree had toppled a number of times last Christmas and she’s trying to figure out what she can do this year to keep it up for the season.

So, if you’re like me, and still love to have a cut tree to decorate, just follow the tips in the above link for a safe holiday season. Live trees are another story. I’ll cover them next time.

Focus Plant: Amaryllis

21 November, 2011 Reply

My beautiful amaryllis, posing for a portrait.

This is the time of year when you see all the special packages of Christmas bulbs to force into bloom. The all-time favorite is the amaryllis. When I grew my first amaryllis the only color you could get was bright red. Now you can get red, white, pink, and bi-color. There are even specialty colors available from online sources.

Watching an amaryllis grow is something everyone loves. You open the box, start watering, and within a few days a tiny sprout shows up. However, the next morning when you get up that tiny sprout is now 6” tall, by the next day there are two leaves over a foot tall. You can almost stand there and watch it grow. We used to tape a ruler to the side of the pot to keep track of how fast it was growing. This is a great idea for anyone with children. Not only is it a lot of fun, but an opportunity to talk a about plants, flowers, and nature in general.

Once the blooms are gone though, most people just throw the plant out. What a shame as the bulb will continue to grow and produce flowers every year, with just a little care. I’ve read a bunch of sites about how to care for your plant; all of them involve multiple steps, and way more attention to the plant than I give mine.

What I’ve found works the best is this. Once the plant has stopped flowering, cut the stem about 2” above the bulb. Then set it in a sunny window and water is like you would any other houseplant. In the summer I set mine outside on our front porch, which gets some afternoon sun. I water it with all the other outdoor potted plants and just let it do what it wants. Then in the fall I bring it in before the first frost and put it back in the window and care for it like my other houseplants. Usually around April almost all the leaves will suddenly die back, but before I can do all the fancy stuff like put it in the dark for 6 weeks, etc., it starts to grow again and this time a blossom comes up. I’ve never done any of the recommendations, no darkness, no lying it on its side, no stop watering, nothing, and it has bloomed for me without fail every year.

As a matter of fact, when I got the bulb it only put on three flowers, instead of the usual four. Once I started caring for it like I am now it blooms with the four blossoms and they are bigger and brighter red than before. So, no need for any special care. Just treat it like a houseplant that likes to be outside in the summer and you’ll more than likely be treated to huge blossoms every year, just not at Christmas, as they are forced to grow then. That’s not their usual bloom time. I don’t mind having an amazing beautiful flower in the spring!