March 2025 Meeting

At our first meeting of 2025 we had a good turn out and many members brought interesting plants to discuss.

Ron showed pinching new growth on some of his fuchsias to make them bushy and keep them small.  He has them growing under lights in his basement.  To prepare the fuchsias for Bonsai he recommends removing big leaves to make the plant grow smaller leaves. He had a fuchsia trained in bonsai style and in a future meeting will demonstrate how to make plants into bonsai forms.  Lorna recommended that triphylla fuchsias can be repotted by cutting 2 inches of roots off the bottom of the root ball and then replanting them deep with soil added on the top – remove leaves from the stem first as new roots will grow from there. This will encourage the plants to make multiple stems from the root system.

Lorna showed a scented geranium that she is overwintering and taking cuttings from – she has just put it outside in a protected area. She also talked about the Streptocarpella that Margo brought in. Very easy to propagate, fast grower, doesn’t like cold water like most gesneriads. She also showed us a Pilea peperomioides or Chinese money plant or UFO plant.

Ron described how Streptocarpus leaves can be damaged by cold water. He showed us a Kafir lime grown in a shallow pot bonsai style. It spends winter indoors and summers outside. The leaves are used for cooking. He showed a crown of thorns that has large blooms starting pink and fading to green. He also showed a thanksgiving cactus in bloom and discussed the differences between Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving cacti – he passed around cuttings from each to show the differences. The main difference is blooming time which depends on daylength.

Show and Tell 

Mini plant art presentation: Lorraine described how she made the flowers out of clay and then painted them. Stamens of poppies were made from wires dipped in glue and sand. She uses a special mixture of hard and soft Japanese modeling clay that is hard to find but needed for the fine details in the flowers. She took a course but has had a hard time finding other classes to take – especially in English.

Melanie showed her propagations from September’s streptocarpus cutting demonstration by Garth from the African Violet Club. Members are reminded to bring their props in for the next meeting so we can see how they are doing. She also showed some of her begonias and had a large selection of sale geraniums on display.

Many different beautiful plants on our display table. The winner was Ron’s Streptocarpus ‘Azure’