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Plants for Cubicles?
Frank of Earth asks: "Our company recently moved to a new location and I was lucky enough to get a cube with a window. Now that I actually can benefit from sunshine, I thought it would be cool to grow something in a potted container. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a lot of information on growing plants in your cube. Most of the indoor plant growing topics I found are related to illegal types of plant growing you do in your closet. What types of plants make good cube plants with a geek flare? Rather than just growing a boring spider plant, I would like to grow something cool like a fruit or vegetable. If you've had experience growing something unique, please post your thoughts!" What kind of plant would you grow in your cubicle?
Plus the time it takes to grow will make everyone wonder what's going on, and before long, everyone will pay you a visit everyday to see how it's doing.
And when it finally blooms, everyone will congratulate you for a job well done!
/. accepted my story idea!
Thankfully I didn't use any links to my homepage-- that would have been really stupid and costly [ignore the links in my signature!]
Live web cams
Try this Grows everywhere, under almost every condition, everybody will love you, you will be very popular. Good for your health as well.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Imagine a potential client visiting your cubicle, and you feel like you could use a little energy boost, just stroll over to your tray of wheatgrass and graze for a few moments, then rip some out and offer a small handfull to your client.
I think it would really impress them.
You could start wearing animal hides as well, that's also impressive.
(seriously though, wheatgrass is easy to grow, and you can nibble on it or juice it)
I have several bonsai all over my computer desk, on the computer speakers, and sitting in the window by my desk. Azaleas are perfectly suited for indoor life. Also nice is the rabbit's foot fern on one of the speakers which just looks weird and multiplies as fast as a spider plant. Behind my computer (a laptop permanently fixed on my desk) is a small cluster of palms of some sort which enjoy the heat that my laptop's fan pumps out at them.
Occasionally the fern will droop down low enough to get in the way of my screen. This is a really good indicator that the plants need watering.
Direct away from face when opening.
And if it's grown enough, you can even feed her your lusers.
You can try a lemon tree ; sure, you'd have to wait a couple of years (or buy an older plant) before you can actually get a lemon out of it :p
Anyway, the plant smells nice and it's quite resilient - my sister had a larger one in her room for almost 15 years.
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
I would recommend a cactus.
They require little care (water once a week during the warm months, none at all during the cold months, fertilize once a year), so they can survive vacations and weekends unattended.
Cactii come in all kinds of strange, unique geeky forms, and several produce weird looking edible fruit.
Look up epiphyllum catus, beautifull flowers, and fruit that tastes like passionfruit (smell before eating, goes bad very fast).
Most mammillarias produce small red edible fruits, and some have very interesting shapes. Look up mamillaria elongata cristate, or Mammillaria bocasana 'Fred', one of my favourites.
If you like really weird shapes, look up Euphorbias, I specially like my Euphorbia obesa cristate.
Note: Cristate means a Crested fromd of the plant. They usually look like brains.
A Chia Head would be interesting in a cubicle. And it would be the source of lots of discussion. Or, how about an underwater plant? Or one of those dirtless air plants? Or some wheatgrass.
I grow mold all the time, but nobody seems to be interested or impressed.
move along, nothing to
A buddy of mine who happens to be a programmer grows alfalfa sprouts in his window, they are easy to care for and he uses one of those busboy trays like in a restraunt as a planter. Also he has a really nice beer glass filled with nice stones and water and stuck some bamboo into it, then these nice offshoots grow from the sticks.
piss off
Find something that can thrive on neglect.
I like jade plants. They're very long-lived, and don't require much care beyond watering every couple of weeks. When they get older, they start to look like miniature trees.
I've had luck with small bamboo plants. I keep mine filled with water, so there's no overwatering. It doesn't require a lot of light, but they'll grow faster if there's more.
They do grow very slowly though. However, there are many very nicely arranged ones.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
The first thing that you should try is some Basil. True, it is not a veggie or a fruit, but it is an amazing plant that is great to start a window-box-ish type work project. Start with one of the smaller leaf varities (which should grow very quickly in direct sun... try 'small leaf greek') and see if it's for you, and then you can move onto one of the larger leaf varities (opal or italian large). I've had many co-workers enter my office and comment on how nice the smell is.
I would agree that a bonsai tree is definitely the way to go, although I will admit that they can be a bit difficult to care for. I have two of them in my house, and everyone who comes over asks about them. If you put one in your cubicle, you will instantly transform into Mr. Popular.
Another thing to consider is that there are actually many types of bonsai trees, each with their own distinct style. Check out http://www.bonsaisite.com/ for lots of good info styles, growing and care of bonsai trees.
You mean those crispy, brown things...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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Try a bonsai kitten. ;)
OK, ok, you wanted fruits and vegetables---I would suggest peppers. They grow pretty quickly, aren't hard to grow, and you can use them in your lunches.
Also, you can cultivate morning glories. They're not actually illegal (it's just illegal to consume the seeds), and I'm sure once you have a batch of seeds, a few people will covertly approach you and ask to buy some seeds off of you. It's not illegal to sell seeds (as long as you don't know they're being used illicitly), so you'd be doing nothing wrong, and making money. However, I don't know how much space they take...
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
I suggest growing zinnias. They're easy to grow, grow quickly, and turn out some darn impressive blooms. Plus, you can always use them to surprise coworkers of the opposite sex...
De Bas Meister
You can have your very own ecosystem, complete with water and fish. It will not need any care (only a little light), since the bowl is completely sealed.
h ri mp-ecosystem.html
http://www.gadgets.co.uk/eco-sphere-ecosphere-s
I thought of buying one myself, just for the geekfactor.
-- look sir droids...
On my desk, I have a pineapple plant. You can start you own by saving the crown of any store-bought pineapple. Mine is growing hydroponically in a glass jar. The plant is very forgiving and can handle prolonged neglect. I've let my jar run dry up to a week.
Since I don't know of a slashdot for gardeners (stemdot?) I recommend going to your local greenhouse, and telling them you want something...
;)
1. for indoors (duh);
2. that will get light from [whatever direction your window faces];
3. that generally requires a drenching of water once a week, but can handle twice a week and won't die if it doesn't have water for two weeks.
They'll have a whole selection for you. Unless, of course, you'd rather stick with doing the equivalent of asking people in the gardening forum what kind of computer to buy for ordering seeds online.
Venus Fly-Traps are fun but they are not a hardy plant.. you'll have to water them with distilled water.. tap water will kill em :(
as for light they don't like direct light
think swamp floor
I grow many house plants and Fly Traps are the only ones I cant keep alive
I have grown Japanese dwarf tomatoes in small containers indoors with no problems. The tomatoes are about the size of a large cherry with some plants producing yellow and some red. Pretty cool 12 to 15 inch plants with more tomatoes than you would think.
They are uniquely beautiful plants, they live a long time, require little maintenance. They are also quite adaptable when it comes to amount of sunlight.
,even when the plant is in exposed conditions.
Of course, if you have some room and really want a conversation starter, grab yourself a "Laurier" (not sure of the english name). Its quite an impressive plant. Mine is 6 feet tall and lives with about 3 hours of direct sunlight+rest of the day in shade.
As a rule of thumb, avoid any plant which requires constant or high humidity, since the windows will most likely trigger variations (sunlight/aircurrent/heating) when you are not there (weekend/vacations). However, anything with a big, unexposed pot will be able to fare better
I saw this upside-down tomato garden on a recent flight in SkyMall and thought it looked pretty cool. The tomato plants grow downwards and then you can plant something else on top. It's rather large, but I think it's rather unusual and is the ideal geek planter.
If you want to be original I'd suggest adding a bonsai to the cubicle farm. You can get as geeky as you want with it - there is lots to learn about bonsai care and it might even make a nice hobby when you are not dealing with IT stuff.
Get a potato plant, take care of it meticulously, even coming in during the weekends to water it, only to have it die when it's almost full-grown!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I hate to be a party pooper, but if you work at a bigger company you should check with someone first: either Human Resources or Maintenance.
;)
One large company I was with had very specific rules about what could and could not be kept in the office. While it seemed really petty and controlling on the surface, I was told that problems with insect infestation (especially ants) and allergy-causing plants were the reason.
Or you could always get a silk flower, and impress the ladies with your gardening skill. Just remember to dust it every week or so.
Growing an avacado from a pit is pretty cool. After you use an avacado, take the pit and suspend it, round side down, in a small bowl or glass of water. I use 3 toothpicks, stuck into the outside of the avacado, roughly equidistant around the middle and halfway down. You want maybe the lower 1/3 in the water. After that, some references will tell you to give it a week in the dark, and some say to just sit it in the sun. I am lazy, so I just put mine on the windowsill and let them go.
.. the plants are pretty, they smell great, and if they get plenty of sun they'll flower. Nothing big and showy, but quite nice overall.
After a week to a month, the darned thing will sprout. You'll want to keep water in the bowl, and let it grow until you have 3 or 4 strong leaves. Then transplant to a small pot, keep it watered, and there you have it.
You won't get a full-sized tree (they grow 60' 70' tall in the wild) and you probably won't get fruit, but the leaves are pretty, and its cool to tell people that you're growing an avacodo tree.
This is a decent refs: at AllSands.com. Of course a google for "growing avacado" will get 100s of results as well.
I've also grown small herbs (ha ha, not THAT herb) in office settings. Basil, oregano, thyme, some mints
Watch for nasty visitors your plant may introduce or attract to your workplace.
A coworker once had a plant in his cube, it became infested with some kind of mite. These mites then migrated through the halls to some other plants, can't recall if they killed the plants or what the deal was. Caused quite the stir, plants at desks were banned from then on.
Anything is possible given time and money.