Plant Language 101 Lesson Three

LESSON THREE. Give me more light.. The branches all lean out towards the brighter light . Your plant is in a dark shady area. You have fewer flowers and skinny long branches. The plant is saying...It's too dark here and I'm trying my best to get more light. Solution: Move the plant to a different location and choose plants that will tolerate the shade that is in that area.

Practice: This is pretty easy listening. You can understand a plant when it is saying "Give me more light". It tells you loud and plain by leaning out to try and get as much light as possible. That's one of the easiest things to hear. What are the other plant words that plants use to tell you that it is too dark.
Not enough blooms. If the plant is supposed to have lots of blooms and instead has only a few. That is one of the signs for "Too Dark" . If the plant gets thinner stems and branches and you have long spaces between where the leaves join the stem. [We call those spaces internodes.] If a plant is in too much shade as the branches reach for light they stretch and get stringy. You see longer spaces between the nodes.

What can you do? Try bringing in more light by pruning branches up above. If that is not possible, can you transplant the plant out to a brighter spot? In the end, if you cannot bring in more light then you must find plants for the area that will tolerate more shade. Go on line and search for shade tolerant plants. When you search on line for any plant material remember that we are a huge geographical area. Peonies and Hostas and other plants that thrive in the east may not grow for more than one season in our temperate Southwest.
Ask your local garden center expert for advice. Be prepared to tell them which plants you have planted and how long it took before they started to stretch. Sometimes you just choose to live with stretched plants and cut them back more frequently.

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