Gardening by DanceofChaos
Fair Warning: This was supposed to be a long single post. But I have decided to break it down and post it part by part. Part One deals with identifying their needs and your limits and about the potting and watering topics.
The upcoming posts will discuss about fertilizers and getting rid of pests, keeping a log and various other topics.
Table of Contents
Plants and humans have a lot in common.
We both need light to survive and we should take care of ourselves. When we start gardening, we do get carried over sometimes with gathering a lot of plants. In the process sometimes proper care cannot be given to the plants and they die. Instead of giving up when plants die, we can start small and take care and follow some steps in order to maintain a thriving garden.
Know your limits
You have bought a couple of indoor plants and they survived over a year. Yay!
Reasons why people stop abruptly…
Come summer you buy yourself an entire flower plant collection, seeds of a lot of vegetables and plant them all. But you were busy with traveling and work. Some of the seeds took forever to have saplings , you lost interest and your patience. You stopped checking on them for two three weeks. And lo, suddenly you see except for one or two plants, all have dried off and are dead.
You think gardening is not your thing and you give up. Don’t go and buy a tonne of them in rush and don’t be dejected if they do. Start small. Maybe a couple of herbs, tomatoes, one flower plant. Also keep in mind, plants do die. even after best efforts.
Know their need
Each plant has different need. A palm and a basil plant, put side by side in a dark corner will not grow similarly. The palm will grow slowly and the basil will die in a few days. it is important to remember what the plants might need, before starting to grow them.
Do a little research online before you buy any plant or after you get one as present.
The internet is a minefield of information for almost everything. Check to see if your house/ apartment balcony has enough space and available light and air for the plant you want to grow them.
Potting and Watering
A new plant often comes with its own pot, and for most parts they can be grown for quite some time in them.
If you are growing a plant from seed, it is always better to use the small seeding pots. When the sapling grows quite a bit and the roots will survive, it is easy to repot it.
The pots should always have small holes below them for drainage. While water is an essential requirement, excess water is bad for all plants. Excess water can rot the root and cause different harmful fungus and insects to grow. That is why regularly watering the plants in small amounts is very important. The key is to moisturize the soil and not rot it and make it a breeding ground of harmful insects.
There are options of adding capillary watering systems, where you can fill a bottle or a sphere with water.
The soil is watered drop by drop without someone having to look into the plants and watering them regularly. it is particularly useful during summer or when you are away in a holiday.
There are pots with water reservoirs in them, which can hold between three to eight liters of water. Such pots are a good option for those who do not have time to water the plants regularly. On the flip side, they are expensive.
One such example can be this product. [This is not an advertisement of any kind]
That is all for today. The first post of the series was published in the Where to Begin post.
Do keep reading the Beginners Guide to Gardening series for more information on basic steps in gardening. You can read all about my gardening journey in this blog and share your experience and comments with me.
Be sure to check out the blog in the next weeks to leanr more about basic care process. Up Next, fertilizers and getting rid of pests.
Please subscribe to the blog to keep getting the updates on the gardening series and other blog posts.
Comments are closed.