h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What I really would like to see is an entry (or more, the more the merrier) about gardens and plantkeeping for those amongst us who don't have the luxury of an outside garden. Us poor people who have nothing but a balcony or conservatory to grow plants in. Those who have nothing but a small edge under their kitchen window catching the last rays of daylight and otherwise spending their days indoors in complete or near darkness. Havy pitty!

Yeh, I'd like to see this too; I've been livign here a few years now and each year I tell myself I'm going to get to the garden centre and gets me some pots and stuff and populate the balcony with colour and scent but I stil don't seem to ahve gotten round tuit

You should talk to the hootoo researcher formerly known as Gosho... he's been balcony growing for ages. Grows great cacti in particular

I'll find his ps and get back to you

Fb

Gosho's called "Oojakapiv. Vhere are the nooclear wessels?" these days Ask him

Not a bad idea. I might have a go at an entry along those lines. I don't really grow much in containers so I'd need to do a bit of reading though.

I don't do containers either, as they all die duck to lack of watering. I could help with some tips though - if I can find the thread where I gave some to 2Legs some are already down on h2g2.

I'm not sure how that duck got in there - pesky things! I meant 'due'.

Well I'll be ducked!

You can get some gel stuff to retain water, but I've never tried it.

I thought about it - but never got round to buying it. I did have some little capsule things that were supposed to help, but I think you do still have to actually water the plants.

I/We could help you on this: we've got a balcony-like garden... all in pots and other small containers.... contact me/us and we'll see what comes out of this .

CptAjb

How would everyone feel if we have a bit of discussion and try to make a collaberative entry about this?

Although to be honest I've just done one entry on plants and I'm tempted to have a change now.

Anyway, any tips CptAjb? What plants would you advise, for starters?

Herbs, particularly mediterranean ones, are good for container planting as most of them like fairly dry conditions I had a little window box at my last flat that I grew oregano in - the flowers were pretty when they came and it is a favourite culinary herb of mine - they stood up to my constant 'pruning' pretty well

I've had a look for any edited entries about containers etc. Here's one:

A626799 Spicing up Your Patio

Hey, I have a researcher credit on that! Needless to say, I was asking questions rather than answering them. I'd clean forgotten about this!

k

I found the thread about balconies that I posted in. I'll just copy the link here, because there was more info on that thread than just my comments.

F19585?thread=569343

I'd forgotten about that one! Definitely useful stuff in there.

First of all you've got to determine whether your balcony (conservatory, indoor balcony - there must be a real english word for the dutch 'serre' than conservatory - ) is frost-free or not. That will most certainly determine what to grow.

We've had a stab at carnivorous plants (venus fly-trap, not from the wild) and that didn't survive because we haven't got a place in the house where it will get down to -9 degrees centigrade; it needs this in order to thrive. We did feed it flies (which we had plenty of) and it thrived through the summer.
Obviously you have to grow plants which are both winterhard and container-growable in those conditions. Woody herbs like thyme, lavender could survive.

For closed spaces (like a 'serre' [for want of a better word I'll call it a conservatory]), which are frost-free, you could grow even mediteraneous plants like bougainville. Allthough you may run into a problem of how to rest these plants, temperatures rarely go below 10 degrees centrigrade in our conservatory.

We have turned our conservatory into a combination of a herb garden (coriander, parsley, basil, chives, laurel, etc.), fruit garden (we grow tomatoes) and flower- and treegarden (we try to raise a bonzai-olive).

In all cases you'll have to mind watering enough and to make sure to regularly add some growing/fertilizing agent to make up for the lack of real fresh soil.

Nice start this?

The subject of watering the plants.

The plants need to be planted in containers with sufficient drainage. Lack of drainage will lead to rot of the roots, because of the water which is locked up at the bottom of the container. Since from the top of the container you are not able to tell if a plant has enough water to survive, you tend to pour in more water. Especially because the top part of the container may already show signs of dryness. Too much drainage is not good either, the plant must have some chance of actually taking up the moist. If the water sort of falls through the plant cannot take up the moist and the nutrients it has picked up from the soil in the container.

In our experience, the best way of feeding water to a plant is -perhaps surprisingly for some- by pouring it on a plate which is placed under the container. This ofcourse only works if the container has little holes underneath so it can soak up the water. This is advanteous for the plant in two ways:
1. The soil in the container will only take up as much water as it can contain, the surplus remains on the plate
2. The plants must grow their roots downwards in order to reach the water. This at itselve is not the advantage, however because of this, the rootsystem grows more healthy.

Somehow we feel that we're contributing items to (pardon the comparison) a medium with a lot of drainage: not much seems to be happening with it, except passing through and ending up the bottom of some container...

Perhaps a question will do it...

We've got a problem with aphids, and small (fruit?)flies which come up every now and then. We're not inclined to spray chemicals on the plants (we'd like to eat some of them, or at least the fruit thereof, and the plants grow almost next to our living quarters so that's two reasons not to spray).

Does anyone have a solution for this?