We’re in the final stretch of winter in Wisconsin, when February gives us signs of spring with warmer temperatures and sunnier days.
What better place to take that seasonal inspiration than to a greenhouse? And of course, you can’t leave empty-handed, bringing some of that life with you back into your home.
Tiffany Olson has some tips about plants that can thrive in all of Wisconsin’s seasons.
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Olson has 20 years of experience in the plant industry, from organic gardening to houseplant sales. She has been the owner of the Madison Greenhouse Store since 2017.
“My love of house plants got started by necessity of living in Wisconsin,” Olson told WPR on “Garden Talk” with Larry Meiller. “I moved up here from Texas, and there I was really into a lot of plants that we would just grow outside and bring in for one month in January.”
“With the logistics here [in Wisconsin], house plants became a necessity and a great joy,” she said.
Olson talked on “The Larry Meiller Show” about plants offered in the store, how to avoid overwatering, and the plant boom that occurred during the cooped-up days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Larry Meiller: Tell us about your store, Madison Greenhouse Store. Give a little history of that and when it opened and so forth.
Tiffany Olson: The store opened almost 12 years ago. My friend, Jordan Hosking, founded it. He has the Wisconsin Greenhouse Company and he builds greenhouses.
He thought it’d be fun to have a garden shop on Williamson Street, because we all really love our neighborhood. And after a couple of years, he realized he just wants to build greenhouses. I was really excited to have the opportunity to take over the business. We’re located in the historic Way House of Light that was Mona Boulware Webb’s hippie commune artist place. It’s a really neat old building and a really great neighborhood.
LM: What kinds of plants do you carry?
TO: We carry lots of plants that do well in homes. There are a lot of plants that can do well in Wisconsin, and not all plants are going to be happy in a Wisconsin home. So we try and focus on ones that will do well in your house.
For example, ZZ plants and snake plants do really well. We’re really into peperomias and money trees because they’re pet-safe. A ton of our clientele come in and want a plant, but they have a rambunctious cat, and so we really try and make sure to have options like peperomias and hoyas and money trees, photonias, that are safe for their pets.
LM: What are some newer plants that have been introduced in, say, in the last decade or so that you like and you use and sell?
TO: I’m a really big fan of the Raven ZZ and the Supernova ZZ. They’re both ZZ plants, but they have dark foliage, and then the new foliage comes in chartreuse green. So it’s just kind of a really fun, different plant.
There’ve been a lot of really interesting monsteras that have come out that are now approachable for people. The problem with them is that they quickly grow too big for what a lot of people can handle. So I do appreciate the dark-colored ZZ having the ability to stay compact and remain part of your life and not become a problem.
LM: The house plant craze that started during the pandemic — give us an overview of what happened during that time.
TO: Well, it was fascinating. I had only been the owner of the store for 2 ½ years or so at the time, so I was still getting my solid footing. And all of a sudden, everybody wanted everything. And, I mean, it was crazy. There was so much demand, I couldn’t get a golden pothos for a while, and that’s the most basic possible house plant. Florida just ran out of plants.
I think everybody was cooped up inside. They realized maybe their house is kind of boring and they need live green friends to help purify the air, give them something to watch grow. I think it was a really, really healthy endeavor for people to get into. And I’m happy to report that it seems that a lot of people that started getting really excited about house plants during COVID are still doing so.
LM: So prices, of course, went up when Florida’s running out of its plants, as an example. Have prices leveled off?
TO: Prices have definitely leveled off. Their normal house plants have increased in price with inflation and costs.
But with the rare plants that became really popular during COVID, there was such demand and they were hard to get, that people were able to charge just insane prices.
And a lot of those things are now very available, and the prices plummeted. It’s nice that it’s become affordable for people to obtain these exotic and fun plants.
Overwatering
Olson said if you’re having plant trouble, the most common culpruit is watering too often.
“The vast majority of people, when I give advice, I find that they’re overwatering their plants,” she said.
Depending on the size of the plant and the pot, let the top 1 to 2 inches of soil dry almost completely before giving it a good water.
“And once you water well, you want all of the soil to absorb the water. Don’t just pour it in one spot,” Olson said. “And then after a little bit, make sure you drain whatever water is left in the saucer. You don’t want it to be sitting in water for too long.”
Olson recommends the bottom watering technique. To bottom water, fill up your sink or some kind of container with water and set your plant pot in there, allowing the roots to soak up the water through the pot’s drainage holes. This technique ensures the plant gets just the right amount of hydration, because it won’t take in more than it needs.
You can also consider using distilled water for your plants if you’re unsure of your home’s water quality or notice brown tips on the leaves.
Fungus gnats
During Olson’s apperance on “Garden Talk,” several listerners called in to ask questions about pests and diseases in their plants.
The most common is fungus gnats, which you have to be extra careful of when introducing new plants into your home to prevent spreading to others.
“In some situations, it’s somewhat impossible to avoid,” Olson said.
She recommends quarantining new plants when you bring them home if they have fungus gnats. Olson’s favorite technique for getting rid of fungus gnats is to “break the life cycle.”
To do this, cover the top half-inch of soil with a solid layer of sand or fine crushed glass.
“I am a big fan of breaking the life cycle, of covering the surface of the soil, so that when the bugs are flying around, they can’t land on the soil. Then when the young ones hatch and come out, they can’t get out,” she said. “And if you can stop that transaction at the surface level, you can save yourself a lot of heartache.”
Bottom watering also helps with fungus gnats by making sure the plant doesn’t stay too moist.
Another technique for getting rid of fungus gnats is to treat your plant with mosquito bits, which Olson said is a “bacterium that only kills mosquito and fungus gnat larvae that can be super helpful to mix into the soil or into your water.”
The Madison Greenhouse Store website has a list of different plant pests and recommendations for treatment.
Indoors to outdoors
In a state like Wisconsin, when the weather cools down in the fall, it’s time to bring your outdoor plants inside. Changing environments can shock the plant, so it’s important to do this gently.
Take note of the plant’s tolerance for different temperatures. For plants that you know you’ll be moving in and out seasonally, Olson said to keep them in a pot.
“I would suggest having it live its life in a pot,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it in the ground, dig it up, bring it inside. That’s too many changes.”
“You only want to make one big change in its life,” she added.
Olson said her best success with transporting plants between indoors and outdoors has been with herbs.
