I have a marvelous greenthumb with just about anything outside the house....

But I am the kiss of death , the proverbial black thumb to anything that is grown indoors.
I tried one year to start from seeds, I did EVERYTHING I was supposed to, went so far as to buy special growing lights and hang them from the ceiling... I spent so much time and money.... NOTHING grew....
I hope to figure out what I did wrong that year, and the first year I was married I went out and bought around $100 in pothos to grow around our first apartment...
Pothos, they are "un-killable", but mine all died!
My Mom had a ton of them, they all looked great, she couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong... she gave me some of hers, thinking that it was the plants and where I had bought them from.... nope, it was me....
those started dying too....

Now this year, I decided in the fall I was going to bring my beautiful Rosemary inside.....
It is REALLY struggling!

I was on the herb forum and asked what I can do to help the poor gal out....
No answer.

Anyone know what might be her problem(other than my black thumb)?
She is growing REALLY spindling new growth and some of the leaves on the old growth are starting to turn black.

She is in the warmest, sunny window in the house... lucky gal lives in my Jacuzzi bathtub in a bay window that has the sun all afternoon.
She has no right to look spindly, she gets fed, watered and sun.
Other rosemary growers on the herb forum were talking about how their rosemary plants inside are blooming...
not this girl.

Maybe she is like my girl rabbit who is in a bad mood cause I won't let her out to play with the outside rabbit and the cat... except Rosemary does not know that her friend mr. tomato plant bit the dust after the first hard freeze. :-)

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as far as Castor beans, can't have them or any dangerous plant in the yard, have to many kids and animals that pop things in their mouths at any given time.

Learned the hard way when babysitting my nephews years ago, and they ate some bright red berries from the backyard.
One had a few in his hand and when I saw them, I recognized that they were very poisonous, made them spit em out... but they had already swallowed some....
So I called their mom and we met at the ER, gave the doctor the berries and he said that they both needed their stomachs pumped.

I decided right them and there that when I grew up and had kids, I would have a yard free of poisonous plants.
Now we just bought this house and soooo many plants here need to go!
I have nearly a thousand feet of virginia creeper that needs to go.....
Anyone have a clue as to the best time of year and best way to get rid of it?
Wish it was not poisonous, it looks so nice along the fenceline.

This is actually a new subject, so I am going to post it with a new heading and keep this about the cold.

Bill

I found a great resource online a few years ago for seed starting. Some seeds need darkness to sprout (like when they're buried in the ground) and some need light (like they're laying on top of the ground). Some need warmth and some need coolness. So I found several websites that had copied a document Thompson and Morgan used to print, with a long table of plant species and what their light and temp requirements are. One version of it is at the link below.

Also, I started sprouting my seeds by putting them between two moist paper towels and sealing them in a ziploc bag. Sometimes they sprout overnight this way! But of course, some take longer. If they need warmth, I pile several ziplocs on top of a heating pad (usually set on low, but put a thermometer on it to make sure it doesn't get too hot!). If they need dark, I put them in a drawer. You have to watch them every day, because if they sprout fast and you don't plant them right away, their little roots can start to penetrate the paper towels and will break when you pull them out (that doesn't necessarily kill them -- depends on how much broke off). Actually, I have a long post on this at my personal garden blog. It has photos, too.