Episode 124: plant health, herbs and sustainability with Maya Thomas
Herbologist Maya Thomas is my guest this week.
Transcript
Episode 124
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Jane: Hello, hello, hello, it's On The Ledge podcast, episode 124, I'm your host Jane Perrone. Do you know what happened after I finished recording the Hoya tour from last week's episode, episode 123? I realised once the episode had gone out, I'd forgotten a Hoya! I knew I had thirteen and I talked about a dozen of them. So first thing is first and I need to tell you about that final Hoya. We'll also be meeting listener Jessie East Ward - answering a question about a yellow Dieffenbachia and in the main chunk of the show an interview with herbologist and chef, Maya Thomas, about everything.
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Jane: Question, what do Jack, Pattie, Stephanie and Andy all have in common? Answer: They've all become Patreons of On The Ledge podcast this week, so thank you very much to you, you give me life and you are helping to grow On The Ledge and take us to even greater heights. Find out how you can become a Patreon at JanePerrone.com and there's also details there of how to give a one-off donation via ko-fi.com and support the show in lots of other ways. Don't forget the On The Ledge shop which offers you the chance to buy wonderful On The Ledge merchandise featuring our fantastic logo designed by Jacqueline Colley. T-shirts, Hoodies, Hats, Mouse Mats, it's all there. So do take a look at the shop, the link is in the top right corner at my website JanePerrone.com
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Jane: So, before I forget, Hoyas, Hoyas, Hoyas, the one I forgot, is the lovely Hoya australis lisa. How could I forget this plant? Well, it was sitting on my kitchen windowsill where I normally don't keep Hoyas, so I think it got a little bit hidden and forgotten when I was pulling those plants together for my tour. But it's a really nice plant, my one is a fairly small specimen that I picked up, I bought it from North One Garden Centre, regular listeners will know I'm a bit of a fan of that particular shop. This was bought there last year sometime, I can't quite remember when, as a smallish plant, I think it's actually two cuttings in a pot. So far it's going up, the stems haven't got long enough to be the point where they start to droop down but the foliage on this plant is really lovely. If you can imagine a leaf that starts out at it margins in the darkest, darkest possible green and then in an irregular random pattern becomes ever lighter to move towards a pale lime green centre. It's glossy. It's leathery. It's a lovely Hoya leaf and the nice thing about this plant also is that the new leaves come through this rather carmine pink colour and you do get flashes of carmine pink in the leaves as well and in the stem depending on how much light the plants are in.
So this is a really, really nice Hoya, I can't wait for this to get bigger and start to trail. It's an easy one, I would say it's as easy as your regular Carnosas and so on. I think it's also fairly easy to get hold of now, so it's one of those entry Hoyas that will really get you into this particular genus of plants. So I apologise, Lisa, for forgetting you, I do love you very much and if you've got a Lisa that's a bit bigger and more developed I would love to see a picture so I can see what my plant is going to turn into. So there we go, that's number thirteen. I don't think it's going to be long before my Hoya collection becomes even bigger. I just discovered a website in the Netherlands that sells loads of rooted and unrooted Hoya cuttings. There's also somebody in the UK who sells on eBay, so as soon as the weather warms up, I think I might be adding to my collection somewhat. I'm going a bit Hoya crazy right now but I can't get enough of these plants. Thanks to all of you who responded to last week's Hoya tour, it seems you can't get enough of Hoyaseither, so do share your Hoya pictures with me, I'd love to see your collections and what plants you have. Do get in touch for any cutting swaps because I'm totally up for that if you happen to be in the UK.
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Jane: Now, it's time to Meet the Listener.
Jessie: My name is Jessie East Ward and I live in Shepherds Town, West Virginia in the United States. My first hour plant was a schefflera which was given to me when I was about fourteen, this is when I first started taking an interest in house plants and I've loved them ever since. For years I've had more plants than I have a reasonable amount of space for and since I've started listening to On The Ledge that problem has only been compounded.
Jane: Question one - There's a fire and all your plants are about to burn, which one do you grab as you escape?
Jessie: This is such a difficult question, so many of my plants have been with me for years and have their own stories. If I had to choose I think it would be Euphorbia trigona or African Milk Tree. I would choose this one because it has grown the most in the time that I've had it. It was given to me by a friend about seven years ago and it was only four inches or ten centimetres tall. Now, it's about 40 inches or one metre tall.
Jane: Question two - What is your favourite episode of On The Ledge?
Jessie: My favourite episode is number seventeen about Pilea Peperomiodes. This was the first episode that I ever listened to and I love to know the history behind things, so hearing the story behind this plant was the perfect introduction to your podcast for me. A friend of mine owns a flower shop and he hid baby Pileas around the town and posted about it on social media for people to find. My kids and I went on a hunt and that is how we got our Pilea.
Jane: Question three - Which Latin name do you say to impress people?
Jessie: I'd have to say Sansevieria trifasciata just because it's a very well known plant but people know it as the Snake Plant or the Mother-in-law's Tongue, so when they hear the technical name behind it, they get a little baffled.
Jane: Question four - Crassulacean acid metabolism or guttation?
Jessie: Guttation because I have an orchid, Cattlianthe Fire Dance Patricia, that I purchased this year at the Philadelphia Flower Show and it did this all summer long.
Jane: Question five - Would you rather spend £200 on a variegated Monstera or £200 on 20 interesting cacti.
Jessie: I'm a sucker for a good bargain, so I would definitely go for the interesting cacti and get more for my money.
Jane: Jessie you are a woman after my own heart, if you'd like to be featured on Meet the Listener, then drop a line to OnTheLedgepodcast@gmail.com and it could be your dulcet tones on the show very soon.
Jane: I first met Maya Thomas at the Garden Museum's Houseplant Festival last year when she was part of a panel discussion about plants. Maya is a cook, writer and herbologist, she's worked in herb and kitchen gardens across the UK including the Chelsea Physic Garden and she runs herbal workshops around the country. You can find out online at themodernherbal.com and after hearing her speak I knew I would love to have a longer chat with Maya, so I headed down to meet her in her London home before Christmas and we chatted, boy did we chat. The resulting interview is wide-ranging to say the least, we cover everything from plant health, to herbs, to why weeds are wonderful. We strode quite a long way from house plants but I hope all of you will enjoy listening on a chat between two planty people. Do check out the show notes as you listen at JanePerrone.com because there's lots of links in there to the things we talk about. For more information about the Don't Risk It Campaign which is a UK Government campaign to encourage people not to bring plant material back from overseas. And a link to a piece I wrote about the community herb garden that I mention in this interview. I decide to run this whole interview which is about an hour long in one big chunk, so make yourself a cup of tea, settle down and have a listen.
Jane: Herbs are amazing, I'm always amazed by how little people understand where things come from. If I'm making something and it's got some particular thing in it and sometimes I don't know and I'm thinking I don't know where this comes from, or how, and I always find it fascinating to look that stuff up. What was it I was looking up, I think it was maize, and I was like: "Wow, that's blown my mind, I can't believe what maize is," and I didn't actually get to the point of looking up where they grow maize.
Maya: Indonesia, well, a lot, because it's the outer of the nutmeg. If you think back to the spice trade, basically, I was trying to say this to my dad the other day. Our whole economic system is basically based on the trade of plants, that's what it is, that's what all trade has been about. Back in the medieval times, like, four cardamom was the same cost as a labourer's yearly salary.
Jane: It stretches across the world, doesn't it? Cotton in America, slavery. Do you get into that?
Maya: Interestingly enough, the Chelsea Physic Garden, if you go there, they've got original seeds that became the most grown cotton in places like Virginia and things like that were sent by Chelsea Physic Garden out to America. It's our whole history, plants are our whole history. It's in the same way that we have become so focused on how the provenance of our food, where it's coming from, how has it got to here, and we're all being slightly more ethical and we want our farmers' markets and we want to be interacting with the producers and how is it grown? No pesticides? I think in the same way we need to be that curious about our house plants and things that we're bringing into our home. It's not possible to grow everything locally and we can't go back in time, particularly in the UK, because we're a country that has been formulated on the fact that we had an empire and we traded in all these places, in a quite unhealthy way for a long time. I think that having all of that as part of history, it's great that you can come to the UK and eat all sorts of food and have all sorts of people living here, that's amazing. We're all culpable, we're all responsible and I think just as individuals we to, if we can, start to ask those questions a bit. Nothing's going to be perfect, we're not all going to stop flying overnight, we're not all going to stop using plastic overnight, but if we can start to ask some of the right questions ... that's where I think Defra's campaign for plant health comes in. Talking to Nicola Spence, who is Chief Plant Health Officer and Department Director of Plants and Bee health and varieties and seeds.
Jane: Oh my gosh, she has got a lot on her plate.
Maya: She has got a lot on her plate and I think her Twitter handle is @PlantChief - which is great, I love that we have a chief of plants in the UK.
Jane: We need a chief, we do, we need that person.
Maya: She and Defra have recognised that because we've got open orders, so to speak, that it's very important that we're starting to protect some of the native species like oaks and things like that. From pests and diseases and climate change and our climate warms up, we're being confronted new pests and diseases all the time. If you think about it it's a logistical nightmare and it's not just the plants that are hosting some of these pests, it's also things like wooden crates that come in, they can hold particular pests in the wood. She said something brilliant, and you might have to talk to her about this to get it specifically, but our football stadium turf, they're heated from underneath and obviously they have to change the turf fairly regularly, you can't dispose of that turf just any which way because of the way that it's heated, it can create a breeding ground that's perfect for particular bacteria in the soil, so it has to be disposed of in a very specific way. So things like that we wouldn't even think about, where's this turf coming from...
Jane: I think what has interested me, as you say, the situation is complex, there's a lot going on here, and yet often I see quite a blasé attitude amongst house plant people to the idea that maybe we should be a little bit careful about where we're getting stuff from. I quite often see on Facebook groups: "I'm going to the Canary Islands on holiday and I'm going to bring back all these things," and then people going: "That's not a very good idea," and other people saying: "Stop being so negative," and we're not being negative for the sake of being negative but because this is a serious issue. There's this blasé attitude possibly based, I'm sure, a lack of information by people.
Maya: Yes and that is something that they've done, they have a Don't Risk It campaign, that some people maybe saw it in airports was targeted at people like that, people going away and thinking: "Oh, I'd love to grow this at home," and not thinking of the consequences of that. There isn't at the moment any legal procedure at the moment any legal procedure to stop people coming in with things like that, but there will be and I think they're going to introduce that. One of the things that I believe in vehemently is supporting our botanic gardens in this country and I think the danger of having something that has, essentially, become a trend which is great because any way that people can get into plants is brilliant and if they find benefit from that, great - but the thing with trends is that there's a section of people who will then want something that's slightly different, or something that's slightly more exotic so I'm going to take a bit of a risk in trying to get that and it's not just individuals taking risks, it could be shops and things like that. Trying to get something new in that they can then get their sales up, so they end up taking risks, because those plants they're getting in, we don't know how they're being harvested, we don't know where they're coming from, are there a legitimate nurseries that are breeding these plants or are they being taken from the wild, we don't know any of that. One of the benefits of having the Botanic Gardens is that you can go into a space where they have plants from all over the world where they're doing research into those plants and the properties that they might contain for medicines or how they've helped the textile trade or something like that. Plant collectors from the 18th and 19th Century, bringing those back, where you can go, of course you have to pay money to go in, but that money generally goes to research and upkeep and you can learn about those plants in a very specific curated atmosphere for that. I think that particularly places like Chelsea Physic Garden, they rely on people coming and seeing the plants in the glass houses and all the ferns, you've got plants from all over the world there in a four-acre space and a secret garden in London and I feel like not enough people know about the work that they do there. It's that thing of, you don't want to be the downer on anyone's enthusiasm, they're new fans and green fingers, and again, I know you've talked a lot about propagation and people getting together and social networking being online, being a great forum for that propagation and we can share things like that. I do think that, again, there is that risk of, occasionally, some people being like: "Yes, I'm going to go..."
Jane: It's a bit of a gold rush, isn't it? With aroids particularly, there just seems to be this fever and I look at the plants that somebody is going crazy over and importing from Thailand and going to the effort getting a phytosanitary certificate which costs extra money, so props to them for doing that, but I look at the plant and go: "I know that it's really rare, but I think you could probably buy something just as beautiful and just as interesting quite cheaply but it wouldn't be that species". It's that thing of "It's rare, therefore I must have it!" rather than saying: "This is a beautiful plant that I can get easily and can grow it". Maybe I'm being unfair to the aroid crowd. I just worry that this desire for rarity sends people off on a bit of a hunt that is not necessarily very productive for horticulture as a whole in terms of shipping stuff way across the world and paying a lot of money for something which, oftentimes, with any gold rush, there's bad practice happening, so people buying cuttings that don't have a node, that aren't actually going to grow, and that have got so much white variegation that they're going to suffer and die because they're just not viable. So it's not benefiting anyone in the long term. It's quite terrifying in a way.
Maya: It's interesting isn't it? I work with food, I'm a private chef as well as doing my herbology which I try to fuse the two together and if you look at how food has evolved, particularly late 20th Century and early 21st Century, there was this trend towards cheaper cuts of meat instead of your feed and grown lamb and locally reared things. A lot of that was to do with the term "heritage" and learning about the history of that and I think what could be interesting is making the history available of more plants that are maybe not strictly native, maybe they were brought here a couple of hundred years ago, but also some of our native plants that we were talking about Ivy earlier, there's a really interesting historical evidence around Ivy and how we used it, particularly in iron age and things like that and even before then. I think it was an iron age site or a bronze age site out in somewhere in Hampshire, and in the 80s they did a study of the pollen that they found in this old site. Overwhelmingly 87% of the pollen that they found was Ivy pollen and they don't know why, they don't know whether they were bringing it inside in the winter to feed to cattle, which they don't normally eat, so Ivy berries can be poisonous, Ivy is used as a cough medicine but I wouldn't recommend anyone to go and pick Ivy because it would make you sick, but if you go to a good health food store, they usually have Ivy cough syrup. The evidence of that and we've had this tradition of the Victorians used to bring the Ivy inside and decorate it at Christmas, it's this evergreen thing that's always going. It's also known as dimorphic, so you have the five-pronged smaller leaves and then as it gets bigger, as it reaches the sunlight more, because it's a forest group.
Jane: I love Ivy. I think Ivy is amazing and I love the fact that you get this amazing - know with aroids, you're always talking about juvenile foliage and the old foliage - Ivy does exactly the same thing, doesn't it? People don't really realise that. Ivy is incredible. I have to say I'm impressed you've got Ivy growing and looking well there because I've tried to grow Ivy indoors and it doesn't like it. It might just be me.
Maya: I have the same.
Jane: It's a lovely thing to bring indoors though, it's tempting because it's there and it's all around us, so why not have some indoors and people can grow it.
Maya: A much older friend of mine, she's in her 70s, she decorates her house every Christmas with loads of Ivy, she goes outside and brings it in. There's never not an abundance of Ivy yet you spend money and we go to our florists and we buy it. The poinsettias and things like that which are just a nightmare.
Jane: I'd love to go to Mexico and see poinsettias growing in Mexico.
Maya: That would be amazing, they're supposed to be huge things.
Jane: Yes, they're tree-like. I would love to go and see that, but I just don't want one in my house, that's just my thing.
Maya: I've worked in a garden centre at Christmas and they come in and we normally had to throw about a fifth to a quarter away of every shipment because they just weren't sellable, so I would try to take them home and save them from the bin.
Jane: Even if you're good at house plants, I think poinsettias are quite hard, it seems like a real waste of...
Maya: And they get thrown out, I don't know anyone who is like: "Oh yes, I get my poinsettia."
Jane: On social media, I've seen a few people who have managed to get them through to the following year but they're not red the following year, you have to do this whole regime of light and timing to get them to go red again. That's a plant that I don't really understand why people would want that. There's a great deal of conservatism in our relationship with plants. They've got things that they're comfortable with, that's what we do, we get that plant and we have that and we go on to herbs. There are so many edible leaves and interesting herbs that you can grow and eat but it's quite limited really, what people will do extra work with.
Maya: It's interesting, I think that's one of the things I try to do through my work, is introduce herbs to people. People are like: "Great, you know about herbs, so we'll hear about some exotic adaptogen like Ashwagandha," or something like that and I'm like: "We're going to start with rosemary, sage and thyme," and everyone is like: "We know those. Why?" People don't understand the antioxidant properties, the anti-inflammatory properties, how they're all anti-virals. They're brilliant to use through the winter.
Jane: I was going to ask you this, a little personal plea here, I must have read something about sage being really good for you. Every day in winter I drink at least one, if not two, cups of just sage leaves in boiling water.
Maya: Amazing.
Jane: It seems to be amazing. Every time I get a cold, which is frequently, but as soon as I have to go on that sage tea, if I haven't already been drinking it, it does seem to kill off the cold really quickly.
Maya: It will.
Jane: It's amazing isn't it?
Maya: Why did you start drinking it?
Jane: I read something, I've gone through some work-related thing doing something on herbs. I got a lot of books on herbs, so I must have just read something up about sage and just thought: "Why am I not using sage for my colds?" My husband is like: "It tastes disgusting." I'm like: "Anything that you have, that you start having, like a child having a new food that you haven't had before, is going to taste weird. Like if you had normal breakfast tea for the first time, you get used to the taste of sage. It's fine."
Maya: I don't know about you but I find it very delicious.
Jane: I've got used to it now, I'm totally used to it, and it just gets picked out of the garden and used.
Maya: Do you just put it in a cup with hot water?
Jane: Sometimes it's fresh, sometimes it's dried, I will dry a load. I just cover it with not quite boiling but hot water and leave it. Sometimes I wait until it's cold or sometimes I'll just drink it when it's warm.
Maya: Once you've put the hot water in, do you put a cover on the cup?
Jane: No, should I do that?
Maya: Yes, do that.
Jane: Oh my gosh, okay, good tip.
Maya: Because of the strength of the aromatic herb is in the volatile oils which obviously escape, so something like sage is very potent anyway. So you've been noticing the benefits, but even if it's a saucer that you put on the top, the volatile oils will escape in the steam but they bounce up and back in.
Jane: I always feel thrifty and very pleased with myself when I do this. I go into the supermarket and look at the prices of these herbal tea bags and I'm thinking bloody hell, I wouldn't pay £4 for that. I think there's no reason why I would ever buy any of these because, I'm not saying I've got an amazing herb garden at all, I help run a community herb garden, so anything I don't have is usually in there. But again, you don't need a lot of things but it's an amazing resource. Why would I spend money on those bags?
Maya: Absolutely, people don't realise. I was with someone the other day and they said: "I've pulled out my sage plant and chucked it, because it was too big, it was too prolific and I never used it," and I had a minor stroke at the table, I was like: "Can we go and find it? Is it okay?" He was like: "No, it was a few weeks ago." I was just devastated. That's the thing, people think they use it with a bit of pork, and it's great for digesting fats, it's wonderful, but again, there's this whole other scope for it. So what I try to do with the cooking in that is to try and bring the two together and looking at historical cookery books which are actually based on the very first herbals that were ever written. You look at the first cookery books, they all tell you to go and look at the herbals written by people like Dioscorides and things like that. So there wasn't such a break, food is medicine, medicine is food.
Jane: That's such a major message, isn't it? We could go on about that for a whole day, couldn't we? There's this cross over between indoors and outdoors and I know lots of listeners are trying to grow things like lavender and rosemary indoors. I'm always negative about that, I'm like: "It's not going to work, it's going to die," but I don't know what your take is on that? You can bring those things in for a bit and enjoy them but, ultimately, they are happier outside.
Maya: They are, I'm with you on that. I think even if you've got a small window ledge that you can sit them on outside. They are hardy to our climates and they do better outside and I think when you grow herbs, if you can, they're supposed to be grown quite big, they're shrubs really, a lot of them. When we're talking about hardy perennial woody type herb, and if you think about how much you're using herbs, I use a lot of herbs, so growing them in tiny little pots inside is not going to work for me. I'm very lucky because I've got a tiny bit of flat roof outside so I can put things on pots there. But it's an absolute mess at the moment.
Jane: It's the time of year when everything looks horrendous.
Maya: It's one of those things. Anna Greenland, who was on the panel at the plant house festival we talked about, because she's an organic food grower, she's setting up a market garden in Suffolk. We've talked quite a lot about herbs.
Jane: I'm sorry I'm going to have to cough, I've had another cold.
Maya: Is it quite chesty?
Jane: It hasn't been up to now, it's just made me tickly. I have a cold that lasts about a day and then I say the sage kicks in, but it has seemed to be particularly bad this winter. I don't know if it's because it's been so wet, but normally I don't get that many colds. It's probably actually because I'm more tired this winter than I have been in previous winters, recently.
Maya: So you're immune system is having to fight a little harder?
Jane: Yes, I think that's what it is. Anyway, enough about me moaning, sorry for interrupting with my tickly cough. Where were we? Anna Greenland.
Maya: Yes, Anna Greenland, we've talked quite a bit, can we grow herbs inside, there's a lot to be said for micro herbs and things like that. I went to work for Anna when she was at Soho Farm House and that's how we got to know each other. I felt if I want to be in the kitchen, I need to know how to grow everything. I have a plan for the future, which is set in the future, all the chefs will be trained partly in the kitchen and partly in the garden because I think it will stop a lot of wastage if people understand the amount of...
Jane: There's this false wall, isn't there, between food and gardening? In journalism, very much so, which I always really kicked against when I was working at The Guardian. It's really, really prevalent, as a chef if you understand how to grow stuff then it massively opens up your horizons?
Maya: In terms of flavours, to how you cook with that produce, because something that's grown properly is going to taste completely different from just having it from any supplier. Everything is seasonal now, for the chefs that have really been championing that for a long time, that has filtered through and down. For me, it's a no brainer. Also because when you work in a garden and you work in a kitchen, the skills are quite similar, you're doing very similar things, a lot of it can be quite repetitive, in terms of you might be chopping, or planting seeds, a production kitchen garden is hard work, it's really hard work. There's an understanding of how much its taken to grow that, you're not going to be throwing just anything away.
It's interesting, I worked for a few days, I was very lucky to get some experience at the River Cafe and how that was set up by Rose and Ruth, was phenomenal anyway, from so many different points of view. They've never had less than 50% women in the kitchen and I think my first day there I think it was like 80%. I got told off because I was snapping asparagus and he was like: "I know there's a neutral break but you can break it here," anyone who's snapped asparagus, you know you snap the ends off. Nothing goes to waste, absolutely nothing and it's the same, I trained at Ballymaloe in Ireland and it's a 100-acre organic farm and then the kitchens you have these hen buckets everywhere because they've got loads of hens, these are the best fed hens in the world. So they're providing us with beautiful delicious eggs to cook with every day and we're giving them any bit of food, even the peelings go into making jams and chutneys and other things, so literally, nothing goes to waste. Woe betide you if you get caught trying to throw anything out.
Jane: I think it's true of house plants, it's true of gardening, it's true of cooking that there's this whole amazing universe of knowledge that our ancestors had. I'm not talking about way back, I even just mean our grandparents, that some people are carrying that on, but there's a whole fountain of information, and over the last 50 years lots of people have lost. Sometimes when I'm talking to people I feel a freak that I know how to, and it's not like I'm trying to say: "Hey, I know how to pickle things," or something, I just feel like I wish that everyone knew, so I feel like a bit of an idiot evangelist going: "You need to learn how to pickle, you need to learn how to propagate house plants," because it just feels like, come the apocalypse, or not come the apocalypse, come life, you need to know how to do this stuff. My husband laughs at me because I'm always feeling like I need to improve myself and get more skills but I think that's because I think they're going to come in useful at some point.
Maya: Absolutely, creativity is born out of necessity. We've only had the period of, I say it in inverted commas, "luxury" of this throw away culture of not having to store things. Our grandparents generation didn't have that luxury, think of what they were doing. Incidentally, I'm sure you know this, but the second world war diet in the UK is one of the most studied diets around the world because it was so healthy despite the powdered eggs and the National Loaf because people were growing, people weren't eating that much meat and they weren't having that much sugar. What meat they were having were the cheaper cuts and everything was being stretched a lot further, we had beautiful orchards in this country, everyone was doing their bit. That all goes back to the soil, it goes full circle, but I'm completely with you.
I don't think the knowledge has been lost, it's just been pushed to the side in terms of this. It's a false economy basically, everything is being done for convenience sake, but we live in a really time-poor society, so what we're compromising on, and I was working in a state school in Hackney as a cook, and it was me and another cook and we were cooking for about 360 students every day. It was part of the scheme of healthy eating, the kids had a garden, so they'd grow rhubarb and we'd make it into crumble so they could see that... and we were doing a lot with vegetables and trying to keep the cost down. They got rid of that scheme really sadly, because of cost cutting in education, and at the same time, what was happening was more standardised testing, so they're cutting down the dining times for eating as well. It's the myth that we can have all the hours in the day to work, work, work and we can get our ready-made meals as we go home and that's convenient. But you lose something in this as I think probably it comes back to the house plants and gardening and things like that. It's about nurturing something, it's about caring for something, it's about taking a bit of time to be considered and slow down. This is something I talk to Dr Catherine Norwood, who was on the panel and has written a potted history. We talked about this because when I was preparing for this talk at the house plant festival I was going through history and like when were the times in history where house plants were really, really popular? And the first time was during the Victorian age which was part of the expansion of the empire and it was a status thing, but it was also in the background of the industrial revolution, people going to factories, leaving the land, we were mainly an agricultural society and coming into the cities. Then this explosion of this fascination with nature and going fern hunting on the Jurrasic coast.
Jane: The ferns, oh my gosh, the madness of the ferns.
Maya: And flower pressing and creating your own herbariums and I think what we're in now is a digital revolution and it's moving much, much faster than we are evolving to keep up with it. That's the quite scary thing about it. People are feeling overwhelmed and they're feeling burned out and all the rest of it and I find it interesting, again, then we see the strive towards everything back towards nature. Nature is a comforter and it's a wonderful thing that that is the way, it's just making sure that it's not turned into a commodity at the same time.
Jane: There is a joy to saying, take an ordinary plant, take a bit of Ivy out of your garden, or just a bog standard plant (I'm just going to blow my nose, the cold continues) and taking that plant and nurturing it. Don't make your first house plant a rare variegated aroid because you probably don't have the skill set yet, you probably don't understand enough to look after that plant. It's really nice that you've got the power and money to go out and buy that straight away. As I say, I've got so many plants, what am I talking about? You're going to set yourself up for disappointment because you're going to get that plant and it's going to die, or you're going to get that expensive cutting and because you are so desperate you've bought it from somebody who is not following best practice, it's going to die and then what are you going to do? You've lost your money and you could have started out with something a bit more...
Maya: And also your confidence, I remember early 2001/2002 going off to university and like :"Oh, yes I want a house plant." The only place to get it was IKEA and they just die within minutes. I just thought: "I'm rubbish, I'm just really rubbish at growing things, and I'm never going to try again." So when I started again, the only thing I felt safe with was with Ivy. I was like: "I'm not going to kill that," and then to get to Scotland and it just died within minutes, it was a soft southern Ivy, it wasn't prepared.
Jane: Yes, you need the tough Scottish Ivy. I think that journey of discovery, perhaps people go on it by buying the rare aroid first, but that's what our forefathers would have gone through, that journey of failure and getting things wrong on the way to learning how things work. There's just less of a risk. Nothing's going to happen if we kill our house plants, but if your crop failed then you were in dire straits. I think that's part of the journey, but also we've got access to this huge mass of information, I guess what annoys me though is that there's so much poor information out there. If you Google house plants, you just come up with all these ridiculous articles that don't really tell you anything or there's numerous, numerous articles saying exactly the same wrong thing, so that's kind of depressing.
Maya: Going back to the plant healthy scheme that Defra are doing, there's going to be a logo, they're going to introduce it at Chelsea, I think that's where they're going to unveil it. It would be something to ask Defra and Nichola, but I do think whether that comes with the standard that the people that are going to have that, whether it's in their shops, with particular nurseries or whatever, whether that is also a sign that these are people that know about plants and will be able to tell you the best way. In the garden centre I worked in, even though it was a commercial garden centre, there were certain things in terms of wasted plastic that comes in and all of that stuff, these were people that didn't know about plants as well. I think it is about supporting your local garden centres, if they're a good garden centre and they've been there for a long time, there's a reason for that. Instead of looking something up online, we used to have people come in and with their phones: "I'm growing this at home..." and one guy who had grown an avocado from an avocado seed, it was two-and-a-half metres tall, it was getting too big. He was like: "What should I do with this?" and we were like: "Well, I've never seen one that big!" Then another lady who came in with pictures from her allotment and I think she'd grown up in the Ukraine but had been over here for 60-odd years and she was like: "I've found this, I can bring some in to show you but I think I can eat it, but I'm not sure," and it was actually an edible weed but one that we don't necessarily eat here, but they eat more in Eastern European countries. That was great that people felt that they could come in and have that relationship as well. Because online is so much easier and we think it's so simple, but part of what you do with your podcast is that you're communicating with people.
Jane: There's nothing better than an actual person asking another person, that is very, very true. You will tend to get an answer that is personalised to you and what you're actually asking, as opposed to searching for something online and you get the bog standard answer. That is a great thing. It's a great resource to be able to go to those places. The most depressing thing is when you go into a garden centre and ask for help and they know nothing, it's really depressing.
Maya: You could have just as easily walked into Starbucks and asked them?
Jane: Yes, and when I do find a really knowledgable plantsperson, I'm like: "Okay, you're going to be a while now, you're talking to me and helping me out." What I really hope happens in this whole Brexit scenario we're in right now, what I really hope happens as a good consequence of whatever is going to go down, is that there is some opening up of new blood coming into the nursery industry and growing house plants in this country. Wouldn't that be amazing if we increased the number of production nurseries producing this stuff?
Maya: Absolutely, and I feel like that across the board. I've got this dream where our market towns are going to come back to being market towns, up in East Lothian, where I lived in Scotland, it's a very rich agricultural area traditionally, it's where the combine harvester came from. The soil is almost a purple colour, it's beautiful because you've got three volcanic plugs up there, so it's mineral rich, although commercial farming has done its best, but because it was rich agriculturally, you had these old estates with walled gardens. I started to see some really phenomenal stuff when I was up there, there were Pyrus Botanicals, if anyone wants to check them out, please do, they're amazing.
Jane: Pyrus Botanicals?
Maya: Yes, two former arts students who met working at a florist in Edinburgh and they were shocked by the amount of flowers that were coming in, lots of tulips coming in from Holland, or the Netherlands I should say, and all these other places. They thought what about our native flowers and species? Anyway then now rent out, they're very successful, they rent out a walled garden, one of these old walled gardens, they have their office there and they just grow all these native flowers and some other flowers, but it's all grown there. I've had friends, when they got married, would go and pick up a couple of buckets of flowers and do their own decorations with it and things like that, so that is starting to happen. In another walled garden they're growing tea and they're all done organically in these walled gardens, the soil is amazing because it had not been used for growing things for a long time but when they were used they used to use horse manure and things like that, so it hadn't been touched for a long time. There are so many walled gardens in this country that are not being used and utilised, so that's another way of creating ideas around that and people being able to do that.
Jane: The other thing that gets me twitchy is that whole thing, I hear from so many listeners who live in urban areas and they can't access rain water for certain plants they're growing. I've just had a question from a listener who has all these leaves that come into her covered porch that she wants to do something with. I'm like: "You really need to bag them up and use them for leaf mould," but she hasn't got anywhere to store it. So I wish that there was community composting, community resources for people in urban areas to be able to go: "Okay, can I get some rain water from somewhere?" I don't know, I don't know how these things work, I don't know what it would look like, but I think we need more outlets for people, who are in urban areas, who are catching on to this whole: "I want to be nurturing plants," allowing them to have outlets and there are, obviously, lots of community schemes and volunteer schemes but I think we need more of that.
Maya: I think we do, I think you're absolutely right, there are some great things going on in London and having been away from this city for six years, I have to say the change is incredible. The thirst for knowledge and people wanting to know about things and willing to get involved in things. There are some brilliant schemes in each borough, and each borough does contain loads of green space, so that's wonderful, it's just making that more accessible. I think also having borough councils supporting that in some way, it's great that people can set up these schemes but then a lot depends on funding and people being organised and, as we know, as soon as you get into an urban environment people are really busy as we all are, and it's just finding the right people.
Jane: Tell me about it, as I said to you, in a minor way help to run this herb garden which is on a roundabout, weirdly, it is a very nice roundabout but it is on a roundabout. We have volunteers and we do have maintenance sessions and stuff and people often, when we're doing that, walk past and go: "Oh" and they assume the council funds it and we're like: "No, the council gave it to us to maintain and it's done by volunteers," and lots of people love it, but lots of people still don't know about it and you're trying to say: "Yes, you can come and pick things and to educate people," but it's hard, it's an uphill struggle to get people to come and help and so on. That's life, isn't it? Anything you do with volunteering.
Maya: What I've seen where I've seen the difference mostly is with kids. You get hold of them...
Jane: You get hold of the kids, it's so true.
Maya: They really want that, they really want to know, they get so into it. I used to have ten nieces and nephews, and I remember being a kid, as soon as you're outside, there's a whole world to explore. Not everyone has access to outside space and I appreciate that and there are groups in London that are trying to fix that. I did some work recently with a company called Studio Cultivate and they go into state schools all across London, they also work at Chelsea Physic, doing these wonderful workshops for kids, they work with kindergarten age all the way up to Year 4 or 5. They teach about nature but through storytelling, I think it's such a wonderful thing. They try and get the kids into some green space, once a week, and get their hands in soil and learning about: "Okay, this is a seed, what do we need for a seed to grow?" So there is that and the kids remember stuff, kids as young as four are like: "Yes, you need soil, you need water," I know a lot of adults that don't know that.
Jane: It's amazing what they take in, it really is, and once you've got that engrained in them from a young age, even if they forget it for a little bit in their teenage years and 20s, they will come back to it, I think that is the crucial thing. I love it when kids are like: "That's a so-and-so plant," and you're like: "That's amazing you recognise that." I always think it's like putting on a pair of plant glasses, if you've got your plant glasses on, you'll be walking down the road and you'll be going: "Oh wow, look at that gallant soldier," or some weirdly named weed: "That's an avocado tree that somebody's growing in London, that's amazing," but most people don't have plant glasses on. Wherever I'm going to somebody's house I'm checking out what's going on, and it might be nothing, but I'm always looking for people with interesting plants and looking at barber's shop window where there's some kind of weird plant because I've got my plant glasses on at all time.
Maya: I'm the same, when I left London, I was like: "I'm leaving, I'm never seeing you again, goodbye city, I'm a country girl, I'm off," and life happens and then I'm back here and I thought: "Oh God, how's this going to be? I don't know what it's going to be like." My whole experience of London is different because I spent time working with plants, learning about plants, I can't walk anywhere now without... even if I walk down a street, where there are some trees, they could be London plains or whatever. The roots of these trees are underneath the concrete right now, it's a whole different way and then just knowing about weeds, which is a wonderful thing about herbs, is that so many of our native herbs...
Jane: We're going to go off on a weed podcast now, because I just love this stuff, I think there's so many awesome weeds that I can just talk about all day.
Maya: They've got the best names and the ones that kids play with like Sticky Willy, actually that's a potent medicinal herb. I live near the river, so I'm really lucky because there's a whole load of other stuff going on there as well, but if you're looking for the green stuff, you're keyed into that, it's not that I'm looking for it, it's just a second nature thing. It's like a sixth sense.
Jane: It's there, it's engrained in you and I think whether you start out with house plants or you start out with outdoor gardening or, however you start, I think then it just colours you and it makes changes your attitude to everything. I have had people who are outdoor gardeners say to me, as a result of listening to the podcast, they suddenly wake up and go: "Hang on, indoor plants?" And they're really coming round to the idea of having plants indoors whereas they thought they couldn't grow them indoors, well, of course you can, you just need to try and have a go. So I think that's a really exciting thing about anything to do with plants is that once you've got your plant glasses on, you go, I mean house plants... there's incredible stuff going on in your house plants all the time. Amazing stuff which I love learning about and I think there's such an acceptance it's not a bad thing to have that knowledge about your plants, you can go as geeky as you like and people who listen to my podcasts are still: "This is amazing," and botanical Latin, I thought that was going to be the least popular episode ever, I've done a podcast on botanical Latin, but no, people really enjoyed that episode and got a lot out of it and it's one of our most popular episodes. That's cool, I'm really pleased that that's the way it is.
Maya: It goes to show that when people understand, it gives the depth of understanding to something that helps you to form a wider relationship with the plant. It's not just about how it looks, it is about a relationship. I'm sure we all talk to our plants, I can say that in safe company, right?
Jane: Yes.
Maya: Some of my plants are hes, some of them are shes and some of them are theys. It's that thing and that is what creates the difference and it's pretty scary if you read the papers these days, it's pretty scary if you watch the news and we feel like we're speed balling towards a climate crisis that no-one who has actual power is doing anything about, no matter how much the rest of us cut down on plastics or do anything like that. Having that relationship, whether it's with one succulent or the Ivy growing outside your front door, or whatever it is. If you're able to see that and know a little bit about that it actually shifts your consciousness, that's personally what I feel, I don't know whether that's an idealistic way of looking at it. I think things start at home and sometimes it can be so scary to think about what's going on on the other side of the world and how climate is affecting in much greater ways than what we're seeing here in the UK, although we're obviously seeing changes here in the UK. If we can start to just bed in and if we can start to open up those crevices in our mind to forming a relationship because that's what it's about, it's about getting back and having something that's tactile and seeing the benefits of that for the plants and for ourselves, then maybe that will have an impact on something wider. That's how I choose to see it and that's because I have to.
Jane: You've got to stay positive, you have to stay positive, completely, you have to hope that more and more people's consciouses are going to change because, as you say, we've got to stay positive. I think that's where the whole house plants for mental health thing comes in. If I go into somewhere where there's no plants, it just doesn't feel quite right to me, it always feels a little bit sterile.
Maya: Not quite complete.
Jane: I think in 20 or 30 years time we might be in a very different ... I'm getting all existential now.
Maya: I always use this example, do you remember how people used to view acupuncture and yoga. It was very on the margins, it was very on the fringes and healthy eating - look at how mainstream those things have become. Some people went into it because it was the trendy thing to do, it was the new thing to do, and actually once they started doing it they realised: "This really works for me, this feels great." There is still a large section of that world that is geared towards image and whatever. However anybody gets into something, the truth of it is there if the benefits can be seen, they will be seen.
Jane: There's a lot of things that used to be quite marginal. I'm not vegetarian or vegan, my husband is vegetarian. I remember, 20 years ago, going to stay in a vegan bed and breakfast in Wales and they did an evening meal which was this amazing vegan evening meal. I remember literally there would be other people staying there who'd be in tears because it was the first time that they'd eaten somebody else's food ever as a vegan because you couldn't go out as a vegan 20 years ago, it was just so amazing: "The food was so good and I haven't had to cook it." Whereas now the idea of that is ridiculous, isn't it? Anyone who is vegan can go to the supermarket and get a whole range of wonderful stuff, as it should be. Change is possible and it's happening, so that's our positive takeaway.
Maya: Exactly and I think it's just being aware of the ways in which we're doing that. I think there's good ways to be into plants and all the rest of it and with veganism, which I totally think is amazing, I was cooking a lot of Greek food recently on a job and I realised most Greek food there is some meat, but a lot of Greek food is actually vegan. I was like: "Do people know about this?" Because we're all thinking about the newest vegan this and that and tofu and how's that putting strains on the environment and stuff. Again, you don't want to be that person who with your hand up going: "I've just been thinking about monoculture farming and the fires in Kuala Lumpur, and the air quality from..." You don't want to be that person, but also we can't afford to turn a blind eye to anything. Like you said, it's easy for us in our bubbles to think: "Yes, things are getting better," you just have to do what you're passionate about and hope you can bring people along with you.
Jane: Just to finish, if somebody listening to this is into house plants but they're just thinking: "I don't really know where to go with this whole sustainability thing and plant health thing," what are the three things that people should be doing now to get themselves on the right path in terms of sustainability?
Maya: Listening to your podcasts, obviously, that's a very good start, the few episodes you've done on sustainability. I think, next year, when the Plant Healthy scheme rolls out, that will be something visual and tactile that people can key in to. You can look at the plant health portal online, it hasn't got loads of specific things about houseplants at the moment, but what I would do more than ordering your plants online, I know there are some really reputable, brilliant people online selling house plants, but if it's your first house plant go and find a good nursery. Talk to a friend who is growing houseplants and has done so quite successfully. How did they get into it? Start simple, like you said, it doesn't have to be the most beautiful stunning, incredible... I remember I got a Calathea and I killed it.
Jane: Well, so many of those plantspeople are killing them. The one they sell in IKEA, the orbifolia with the huge, massive leaves, the number of those I see on people's feeds and I'm like: "Oh God, you've just bought that haven't you? It's going to be dead within six months. It's a really hard plant." It makes me cry.
Maya: I know. I actually say I killed mine. My mum, who is amazing, she did somehow manage to bring it back to life.
Jane: They are tougher than people think actually, they can literally be cut down to the ground. I had one that was literally like one tiny leaf and it's coming back quite nicely. It's a tricky journey.
Maya: It is and I would say, also, don't be afraid. I think that's one of the things that when people come towards plants they can feel a bit: "Oh God, I don't want to kill it." Obviously, most house plants die from over-watering as opposed to under-watering, I think that's the most common thing. In terms of sustainability, yes, find a good nursery that you can form a relationship with where the people seem knowledgeable, where they can tell you the provenance of the plants, definitely find good sources of reliable information online and talk to friends who grow themselves. I think also propagation might be one step too far if you're just starting, but it's a great way to get into it. If you've got a friend who grows prolifically or you can find someone online who might be willing to give you a plant even.
Jane: There's some amazing swapping going on actually, there's some really, really wonderful houseplant groups where loads of swaps are happening, that seems to me to be a great way to get a plant. The other thing I always think is if you're going to buy a plant, don't buy the massive huge mature plant, buy a young plant because it's less disappointing if the tiny plant dies, but also I think you've got more chance of moulding it to your way of living, do you know what I mean? A big mature plant is already set in its ways. I'm also just a cheapskate and I don't want to pay a lot of money for big plants.
Maya: Exactly, something that costs £2 or £3, very simple, but I think all of that and also just basic plant hygiene which you can educate yourself really easily on, which is just about, if you've got something it's going to lose its leaves at some point just make sure everything is clear and clean and you know where your soil has come from and all of that. If it does come in plastic, please don't throw the plastic tub away. Make sure you can keep those because you never know, it might start with one plant, and then before you know it...
Jane: How true, this is very true. I was actually thinking of doing a tweet a day of my houseplants. Then I thought that's going to take me the whole of next year. I might do that for 2020. I'm thinking a houseplant a day and seeing how long it takes me to get through all my house plants, that sounds like fun.
Maya: This is going back to something you were saying earlier. This is a book my great grandfather wrote, he wrote a few books. It's about starting small and I opened this book when I was going through a really difficulty personal time and it made me feel so much better, but also just in terms of plants. So he says: "Everyone who writes gardening books is morally bound, I think, to help the beginner. Someone is always beginning." It's a rose book, so he talks about roses: "There is also a debt to the roses. For some are so much more accommodating than others and to start with the difficult ones is like turning the wrong turning on setting out for a long journey. How lightheartedly we go forward, the mind full of pleasurable anticipation, eager to discover fresh delights, keen to perceive new points of interest that every bend of the road brings into view. But when it is forced upon us, that the way we have taken leads us not to where our hopes are set, but that each step takes us further from the goal in mental view, how different it all seems, how long and weary is the way back, how dull, how void of interest that path that seemed so bright, so gay, so full of sunshine."
Jane: What's his name?
Maya: H. H. Thomas.
Jane: That's a lovely thing to have and what a beautiful cover it's got on it. That's amazing.
Maya: Yes, he was really prolific, his father was actually born in Anglesey and he went to work on the local estate when he was just a wee lad and ended up becoming Queen Victoria's head veg gardener in winter. Then this was the son who went into banking and then decided that was rubbish.
Jane: Career changer.
Maya: That's always happening. This is what he said, his conclusion on how to begin well is - for the novice rose grower, but this could be for any plant grower - he'd suggest for the rose grower to start with both climbing and dwarf roses: "The latter for delight, the former to captivate the promise of an abundant blossoming to come." So basically, when beginning with plants, find something delightful that which brings you delight and verb, which is to please someone greatly, or a noun meaning great pleasure, that will help you climb out of whatever ending you've had to endure and let it lead you into the light and to start small. "The smallest beginnings can lead us to prolific growth and blossoming."
Jane: That's so lovely, that really sums up my own philosophy, because I see so many people and think: "You're buying that plant because you think it's the cool thing" and actually, just be driven by what makes your heart sing and that might be the most unfashionable plant, but if it's bringing you joy and making you happy then that's why I love the gesneriad family, which is very out in the cold, style-wise, the streptocarpus and things, but I love them and I'm going to keep on growing them.
Maya: Absolutely, again, it's that thing if you're going to a nursery, you might be drawn to something completely unexpectedly as opposed to looking at images online and thinking: "That looks cool in this room that I've seen." Go in, see what you're drawn to, because it could be something unexpected.
Jane: It's very true, Maya, thank you so much, we've ranged all over the place but that's cool. As anyone who listens to my podcasts knows this is what happens when you get talking. It's a delight talking to you today, so thank you very much.
Maya: Thank you very much.
[music]
Jane: Thanks so much to Maya for inviting me to her home and giving me delicious homemade hot chocolate to drink which was amazing - best hot chocolate ever. Now we've just got time for Question of the Week before this mega episode closes. It comes from Laura who's got trouble with a dumb cane, Dieffenbachia, there's a million pronunciations for that one, it's the same thing, a dumb cane, a beautiful foliage plant that many people love, but it is worth being aware with this one that the leaves are a little bit toxic, so you don't want to be letting your pets or children grab hold of the leaves of this one. If you are repotting it, it's worth putting some gloves on if you have particularly sensitive skin.
Anyway, the problem is the plant has yellowing leaves, it's a common story at this time of year. This one was bought a couple of months ago, Laura tells me, and it started to drop leaves, which have turned yellow, gone pale and then fallen off. She knows the plant's a bit pot-bound and looking at the picture I can say yes, Laura, you're absolutely right. There's a lovely little mesh of roots around the outside of the root ball, showing not a great deal of soil, this plant is definitely looking for new space to grow into. She she's been trying hard not to over-water and making sure it's not sitting in water, but she's finding that these yellowing leaves are still happening, so what's going on?
I think you've hit the nail on the head Laura, the plant is a little bit pot-bound and what moisture there is, the plant is finding it hard to absorb the moisture that's there. It's shifting between being water-logged and being too dry and this is what happens when you get a pot-bound plant, they just can't regulate the amount of moisture so well, because there isn't enough spare soil in the pot. So you get this situation of: "I'm water-logged, now I'm too dry, I'm water-logged, now I'm too dry," because the water is just running through or pooling in the bottom.
What to do? I would recommend that you should repot this plant, it's probably safe to leave it for another month or so, Laura, until you get to mid to late-February, the plant is not going to die in the intervening period and it might cause a bit of stress if you try to pot it now during the dormant period. If it keeps going downhill, then go ahead and repot because it's better to repot than to lose the plant completely, but it would be better to wait until it starts into active growth again.
The rest of the plant is actually looking pretty healthy, so I don't think this is too much of a problem. I think it can cling on for a bit longer until you're ready to repot. When you do repot, the usual rules apply, only pot it into a slightly larger pot and tease out those roots because otherwise they're going to end up going round in a circle and they're not actually going to grow into the new compost so well. I think that's the problem with this plant, it's a really common problem at this time of year, every plant that you have will be developing a few yellowing leaves and these foliage plants just do that this time of year. There's less resources around therefore they've got less need for the energy factories that are their leaves, so they're going to drop a few, it's an efficiency procedure which the plants do, you can understand why, it's not something to go too panicky about unless all the leaves start doing that, so keep a close eye on your plants and with this dumb cane, it should be fine once it's into a new pot, Laura. I really hope that helps, it's a lovely-looking plant. I'll post a picture in the show notes. It's a plant that's relatively easy to look after.
Oftentimes, when you buy one, you'll find it's been potted up and it will just be bursting out of that pot, so oftentimes, when you first buy a plant, it's worth having a look at the root ball, seeing what's going on, see if it's potted into the right kind of mix. If it's not potted into the right kind of mix and/or it is already root-bound then repot straight away, there's no harm in doing that. The plant is going to be in shock anyway moving to your house, repotting is only going to help it if things aren't quite right down below from the beginning.
So that is the dumb cane in summary. I haven't done an episode on that plant, maybe that's one that I should look at, I've got such a long list of plants I need to cover. Thank you, Laura, for your question, I hope that helps. If you've got a question for On The Ledge, you know what to do, do what Laura did, send me a lovely detailed message with lots of pictures to OnTheLedgepodcast@gmail.com
[music]
That wraps up the show for this week, I'll be back next Friday, but I hope that you have an absolutely fandabbydozy week! Take care, plant fans. Bye!
[music]
Jane: The music you heard in this week's episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, I Snost, I Lost by Doctor Turtle and Take Me Higher by Jahzzar. All the tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. See JanePerrone.com for details.
Subscribe to On The Ledge via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Player FM, Stitcher, Overcast, RadioPublic and YouTube.
I first came across Maya Thomas when she spoke at the Garden Museum’s Houseplant Festival last year, and I knew I had to get her on the show! Maya is a private chef and a herbologist, and we had plenty to chat about, from why weeds are wonderful to why buying small plants is a good idea.
Want more on sustainability?
Read my top ten tips for sustainable houseplants
Listen to the other episodes in my sustainability series
Check out the notes below while you listen.
Mace is a spice that’s produced from the seed covering of the nutmeg!
The UK’s chief plant health officer is Nicola Spence, and she’s spearheading the Plant Healthy biosecurity campaign: she is @plantchief on Twitter. The Don’t Risk It campaign is educating people about the dangers of bringing plant material to the UK from overseas.
I was fascinated by Maya’s reference to ivy pollen in neolithic times: I found this reference to it in the History of the British Flora.
Never seen Poinsettias growing in Mexico? Here’s what they look like.
Anna Greenland is a wonderful grower who is worth knowing about!
Never been to the Chelsea Physic Garden? Put it on your bucket list!
One day I’d love to visit the River Cafe, a London restaurant founded by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray. I’d also love to visit Ballymaloe House with its hen buckets.
Find out more about Pyrus Botanicals in Scotland - they’re growing flowers and even tea in walled gardens.
Find out more about the community herb garden I help to run.
Studio Cultivate is doing wonderful things in schools.
Never heard of the weed Gallant soldier? Its Latin name is Galinsoga parviflora.
Another fab weed is sticky willie aka cleavers aka goosegrass aka Galium aparine.
Fancy visiting the vegan/vegetarian guest house in Wales I mention? It’s called Graianfryn.
Laura’s Dieffenbachia.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Laura got in touch about her dumb cane (Dieffenbachia) which has started to display some worrying symptoms. She wrote: I bought it a couple of months ago, and in the last few weeks, it has started to drop leaves after they turn yellow and pale. It is definitely pot bound. I have tried very hard not to overwater it, though that tends to be my habit. It is in a west facing window. When I have watered it, I have made sure it is not sitting in water. I wait until the leaves start to droop a bit before watering it. Any idea what I am doing wrong?”
I reckon Laura is spot on - her plant needs repotting, so currently it's struggling to absorb water: when watering, the water just runs through the congested rootball and can’t be absorbed properly. It’s protesting by producing yellow leaves. I suggest repotting from mid-Feb onwards into a pot slightly larger (so you can get your finger in between the old and new pot when nested together, but not much more). It’s important to tease out the matted roots when repotting, so they don't just grow around in a circle. The yellowing leaves will drop off and should be replaced fairly promptly as spring progresses.
Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!
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CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, I Snost, I Lost by Doctor Turtle and Take Me Higher by Jahzzar.
Logo design by Jacqueline Colley.