The Compost Bin

Just wanted to share this TED video with everyone. It's about dramatically improving indoor air quality to the point where it benefits your health. And it's done very easily by adding three very common houseplants to certain rooms.

• Areca Palm
• Mother-in-law's Tongue
• Money Plant

Ahhh yeah, this is Anthony coming at ya from W-H-O-S-T-A and I've got another funky beat for you to get your groove on. This one is called "Hosta Pictures". Check it out baby.

I've found that my houseplants do a lot better since I got an indoor fountain. During the winter when the heat is on, my house gets pretty dry. And as my house plants have shown me in the past, they don't like it when it's dry.

I've tried using a squirt bottle to mist the plants and was even doing it more that once a day but having a little fountain is a lot easier.

Another benefit is the soothing nature of the fountain. My living room now has a zen like atmosphere that you'd pay big money for a luxury spa. Especially when my kids plug up the spout with gum and water starts shooting all over the house. Now that's relaxing.

Unlike my giant elephant ear, this hibicus made it inside the house for the winter. I trim it back to make it smaller and neater and it overwinters in my living room. Been doing it for 3 years so far and the plant is doing just fine.

But anyway, it was looking a little be droopy recently so I added shot of Sea Magic Fertilizer to my watering can and now it's flowering. Wow, this stuff is really good. I think I used it once on my tomatoes and some other vegetables very early in the season but really I just forgot that I bought it (my garage is a giant disaster).

You fill up a gallon bottle with water and add the contents of the package to make it in concentrated form. Then just splash a little bit of the concentrate into a full watering can and you're ready to go.

During the winter my hibicus doesn't grow too much and has never flowered inside before so this is kind of exciting for me. I plan on doing some experiments with my houseplants to see what other damage I can cause. Have to get my gardening fix somehow. Still have a long way to go until spring.

This past weekend I was excited to see that the buds on my rhododendrons are starting to swell up. That usually means that spring is on it's way but as I'm typing this post, we're in the middle of a winter weather advisory in New York/New Jersey. It seems that after getting an inch or two of snow today, it has decided that ice should fall from the sky for the rest of the night.

Checking back on some old posts, my Rhododendrons don't usually open until April or May. So seeing that bud was really just wishful thinking on my part.

My rhodos will have to wait a few months before they can start blooming and I'm going to have to get the shovel out of the garage tomorrow morning and chip away that ice.

What's a gardener to do in the middle of winter? Well I don't know what you're doing but I'm keeping busy with indoor gardening projects like making a Terrarium. It's pretty easy to make your own Terrarium and I like the way they look. The project will also help take your mind off of the fact that you're stuck in the darkest, coldest days of winter.

First you'll need a glass jar or an old fish tank. I bought this jar a few years back at a kitchen store with hopes of storing flour in it for all the bread I was going to make with my bread machine. Well, the bread machine has been moved to the back of the closet and now I've got a great jar for a terrarium.

The key to terrariums is choosing the right plants. The inside of a glass jar (with a lid) is a pretty humid place. Pick a plant that likes a lot of moisture. If I had somewhere sunny to put this terrarium, I'd grow some Venus Fly Trap. But unfortunately my house has gigantic eaves that block out the sun. There is not one sunny window sill in my house which is great for the air conditioning bill but not too good for plants.

I get a bag of ground charcoal and put a 1/2" layer at the bottom of the jar to keep it from getting stinky. Next up is gravel for drainage. A half inch to a full inch is plenty in a small jar. Here's a tip, you can buy black fish tank gravel that looks like dirt. Top it off with regular potting soil but remember to leave room for the plants.

Now sit back and enjoy your terrarium. That's what I'll be doing until spring arrives.

Hostas are the MVPs of shady yards. And you can usually buy a bag of 10 bareroot Hostas for under $10, so they're a bargain too. Of course there's more exotic and expensive Hostas but I've had good luck with the regular bargain bin variety.

I start my bareroot Hostas is pots filled with compost and keep them in a spot where I can watch them. Once they get past that first year they become near indestructable. You can almost just toss them on your driveway and they'll be fine. Well, maybe I'd stick to somewhere with dirt but you get the idea.