About To Take a Sledgehammer to the South Wing

My name is Kyna. And I'm a failure at indoor gardening.

Whew. I admitted it. :) They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem :D

But in my own defense, I think that most of my problem is the lack of light in my house. The front of my house faces east, so is dark for most of the day. Captain Obvious says that the back of my house faces west. Gets quite a bit of bright afternoon sunlight. There are a few windows and a french door. However, this door leads to a covered, screened in porch, and the roof overhang shields most of the light away from the windows.

The only window that gets any amount of decent, plant growing sunlight is the window over my kitchen sink. And this windowsill already has two plants sitting on it. As you can see, I have a thing for bees. But that's a blog for another day:


The one on the left is a Jade plant, and the one on the right is a mystery plant ( I'll look up the name one of these days). Both plants are succulents, which means that they hold a lot of water in their leaves, stems and roots. They don't have to be watered very often at all, and just need a sunny window. I recommend the jade plant to anyone that doesn't have a green thumb.

I did almost kill the mystery plant when I first got it. It came in this crummy little plastic pot, and when I repotted it, it just fell apart in my hands. You should have seen the look on my face.


I hastily stuck all the stems back into the potting mix, and it looked terrible for about 3 months. Then, it started perking back up, and growing new leaves and stems.

The jade plant definitely needs to be repotted soon, but then it won't fit on the windowsill. I don't know where I could put it without it dying on me...

The south and north ends of my house have absolutely no windows. So even with all the blinds open, my house has a dark look to it. I kill my poinsettias every Christmas, within two or three weeks. There just isn't a sunny enough spot to keep it going for longer than that.

EDIT: A friend of mine pointed out that it may be getting too much light. Or maybe the watering requirements are off. Whatever the reason, I suck at poinsettia growing :)


This one is about to buy the farm. Looks even worse now, than when I took this picture a couple of days ago:


I know I can buy plants that require low light levels, but it seems like all the ones I want to grow are high-light plants. I'd really love to grow a dwarf Meyer lemon tree, like the ones pictured in this photo:


I could have it on the back porch during the summer months, no problem. But where would I overwinter it? Where's that sledgehammer? I think I'm about to put in some do-it-yourself windows...