This is not to disparage or discourage OP in any way, but when (and really if) people say something like "X is not a houseplant" they absolutely don't mean you can't grow such a thing indoors at all regardless of how much equipment and effort you use. That would be stupid, and easy to counter, since indoor greenhouses are a thing as are heaters, humidifiers, air conditioners, fans, and artificial lights.
By the time you're injecting CO2 you're well past the point of what would be considered typical indoor growing conditions. Let's be honest. I think we can mostly all agree that if there actually were people who said "you can't grow X indoors", those people likely meant under standard household conditions.
There is a bit of humor and a bit of truth. I don't have a garden and so when I was looking into whether it was possible to grow a pumpkin in a pot, most of what I found stated that the pumpkins need a lot of ground to have a strong and healthy root system, and a lot of sun, and so it is not recommended to grow them indoors. I thought that the plant would begin to grow but at some point the pot would not be able to sustain the root system and the plant would die. This has happened to me with many trees that I try to grow indoors - most recently my tamarind trees. They look perfectly healthy and then drop dead. Well, I am not certain of why the trees die but I suspect their roots rot.
But the humor is that I still don't think it is a good idea to grow this plant indoors. It has taken over a lot of space! My original plan was to prune it and keep it small, but I noticed that even the farthest leaves are able to pull moisture from the pot with no problem, and so I am letting the plant grow to see what happens.
I stuck this thing in succulent dirt, in that pot, from a right off the top of a grocery store pineapple 5 years ago and figured that it would never have a shot to flower because it’s in a north east facing window, but I always thought it was a cool thing to look at that I kept alive. I’m shocked that it’s actually flowering. I had to share.
Because you shared your story with me, I feel like sharing with you one of mine.
We had some neighbors move in across the street. This is way back when I used to live with my parents. The new neighbors had two little girls and they were worried about this huge cactus in the middle of the yard. They didn’t want the girls to run into it while playing. They tried to dig it up, and failed miserably. It was just too big and too heavy. The next bright idea was to wrap a chain around the cactus and anchor it to the back of a truck and rip it out of the ground. The plant was absolutely gnarled. Clearly, the rot would set in and it should surely die. It seemed like they only got 3/4 of it out of the ground and the rest of it died in that spot.
We asked if we could have the remains. They said sure, why not. We dragged the massive cactus flesh pile across the street and made a vague attempt to plant it in the ground beside our house. Almost 20 years later it’s flourishing, and we have dozens of beautiful blooms every year. I watched over many years as the plant carefully grew new offshoots and discarded the mangled parts of itself from the chains. The specimen is truly stunning now. Thing is, that cactus probably lived there for years before they built the house, and they sold the house five years later. That was 15 years ago when they sold it.
That plant faced such adversity and then with almost 2 decades of neglect it looks like it was tended by the gods. Perhaps it was.
That’s an incredible story. All of my plants are rescues and because of the shit light situation that I have in my apartment they are all leggy but I have given out so many pups from offshoots and broken off branches that all thrive. It’s like a little orphan village in my windows now. bonus family photo
Flower stem and leaves seemed fine and not dehydrated (I did the fold method on leaves to check).
We did not water after transplanting.
I did end up giving her a little bit of water before bed last night though. And woke up this morning to her all perked up! Not sure if the water helped, or she became acclimated, but my daughter will be waking up happy!
I'm assuming when you say 3D design, you using either CAD or modeling software? If yes, you could consider selling STLs as well as the finished product. Giving away, or heavily discounting, STLs for an alpha/beta run, would eliminate your shipping and material cost for testing. You would still be able to sell physical parts, as well as produce parts that are nicer than your average hobbyist will produce (for example, print molds and cast the planter in a more traditional material).
I give away some of my designs, but not all of them. Also the 3d printing community, which I do belong to, is fine and all, but they have a different approach to things like this than what I'm trying to do.
If you give a 3d printed shelf or planter to someone not in the 3d printing community, they have a more critical/functional eye I've found. They aren't burdened by some of the limitations and give different feedback. There is overlap for sure, but the best feedback I got was when I partnered with a local plant shop. The creativity and eye for what worked best was awesome. Unfortunately that shop didn't survive the covid years so I'm trying to recapture that feedback loop. I hope that helps explain my thought process.
I hope I didn't sound like I was implying that you should give your designs away for free :)
I understand what you're saying - better to give the early design to a person who gardens as a primary interest than someone who 3D prints as a primary interest since the gardener will likely have insight into what works or doesn't work for the act of gardening. There are some of us in both camps, but the overlap probably isn't that big.
Looks like a fig tree to me! Hard to say what type until it starts to fruit though, the leaves are very similar. You’re in for a treat though when the crop comes in!
Definitely spider mites, I've gotten rid of them by giving them a good spray down with my shower head, wiping all the leaves with damp paper towel, and then dousing the plant in miticide (i used safer's end all, it comes in a yellow bottle). I did 3 separate treatments 3 days apart. and then kept them quarantined for a month to make sure i got em all. I managed to get rid of the mites on most of my infested plants except for my parlor palm which i ended up throwing out. There's other, more environmentally friendly options you can google but that's what worked for me.
Make sure you get all the nooks and crannies, including the underside of the leaves, stems, and the top of the soil. Those buggers are prolific and if you miss some then they come back quickly.
They stretch like that when they aren’t getting enough light. It looks over watered as well. The soil looks very wet, you will want some that drains better and dial back the waterings a tad.
Depending on the time of year and other factors they will also put out air roots and even without the air roots you can clone it straight into dirt during spring and summer.
Bingo. I've grown these before and they get hints of red at the top of the bell only when they get enough light. I think it's light deprived but still looks very healthy.
So from what I have read the minimum time to flower is about two years and temperatures play a big role in that. You can force the flowering stage with the gasses that apples produce (see comment thread from one of my older posts) but in my case it took about 4.5+ years for mine to start to flower. After the process begins it supposedly takes about 6 months to have a fruit mature enough to harvest. I only stuck mine in succulent dirt and sort of bound it in a plastic pot that was slightly too small and also watered it like the rest of my succulents. I essentially stressed it a bit with drying it out between watering and then soaking it when I did water it to get it to reach deep for the water. Liquid succulent plant food occasionally. I am a dick to my plants but they seem to do decently and I have no idea if any of that is really a good way at all.
To be a good succulent parent you do need to tend toward the neglect side of things.
Potted plants in general tend to get over watered thanks to too much love and attention from their owners. Roots need the opportunity to dry out and pots do a good job of resisting that.
Many first time growers who experience dead/dying plants think it's because they're not doing enough, when the inverse is often the case: they're doing too much.
I am in NY, so during the warm months I bring them outside and in the sun, when it gets cold, I bring them inside and the growth process usually stalls.
This is the first pic that I have of the plant that I took presumably because it was when it was actually showing growth. I’m guessing that this was a few months after I originally jammed it in this weird rectangle pot. This was from September 2020 so I probably bought the original pineapple sometime around the original covid lockdown. I guess it is closer to 4 years and a couple months old actually. I have only repotted it once since then and it has only ever been in that window.
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