Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Apartment Gardening
Patio gardening is so common in Austin that when I used to search nearby
back yards for my wandering cat, I found big back yards entirely filled with plants in pots! I once had a housemate who had an older book on patio gardening, but I have no idea what the book was. It is basically gardening in pots instead of soil. You need only make sure your pots are big enough for your plants. You can arrange your pots in any way that looks good. I grow annuals, like marigolds, and those daisy family plants, in window boxes. I have Mexican Heather in a window box, and a small pot. I have small shrubs in larger pots, including a lantana bush, two esperanza bushes, and a plumbago. These are common patio bushes in Austin. Esperanza is particularly lovely and hard to kill. You have to keep picking off the blossoms as soon as they fade, and you water large shrubs thoroughly when the soil has dried out. Water window boxes every day in hot weather - and with luck your flowers will survive. In summer they tend to do best in partial shade. You should prune patio bushes pretty far back annually, about this time of year. I have had varying luck with herbs; I have two thriving rosemary bushes that are two years old; you water them the same as flowering shrubs. It loves poor soil but does well in potting soil. I have one of each of two different kinds. My housemate also has a rosemary bush in a pot. One of mine has been flowering continuously since November. It will die if you never water it. I have a mint plant that is over a year old. It too will die if you never water it; otherwise it is a pretty hardy plant. I had a thyme plant doing well in one of my esperanza pots for over a year. I think it overgrew itself, and I am not sure it is dead. Possibly it just needs pruning, the way flowering bushes do. Parsley once did well until hot weather and drought hit; it seems to be more delicate than marigolds. I tried sage; it lived, one died, the other thrived but got covered with some kind of yicky growth. I have gotten flowers from literally anywhere. Just look at them to be sure they are healthy when you buy them. Marigolds that look literally half eaten, for example, usually only continual disintegrating after you bring them home and sometimes the disease spreads. Ditto for marigolds all of the buds of which are hanging and dead. Dora "Steve Coyle" wrote in message om... I've been container growing at home for twenty years, mostly because I've moved a lot and never wanted to leave plants for my landlord. When I lived at married student housing down on Lake Austin Blvd. we had this little four by six foot concrete patio that was just big enough for a lawn chair and served for most folks in the apartment as a "patio". I nailed together 1 by six lumber, filled it with bulk potting soil and had an instant patio garden. Most landloards I imagine would not be too happy about that but I got away with it mostly because having UT as a landlord they were perhaps not paying much attention. I've got one hundred pots I use for my current garden, and have tried just about everything I could at one time or another in pots. I keep a limit of one hundred so I don't get carried away. I'm sure there will be lots of lists with the obvious canidates, but some of the more unusual ones I like in pots a Beets ( I've got those right now, and pick leaves for our salad. ) Osaka Purple Mustard ( another oranmental and edible green I'm harvesting ) Sedum Mexicana ( very tough sedum with little yellow flowers that trail out of the pot ) Sambac Jasmine ( Very fragrant, right by the front door, this is the first year I kept it out during the freeze and it still survived ) Bay Laurel tree ( I harvest the top so it never gets more than 18'") Of the herbs, Rosemary is real finicky about well drained soil and not overwatering, oregano grows like a weed, I have to replant thyme constantly because my wife makes me grow it, but I've never had much luck with it. As far as Basil goes I do it from seed because a bunch of young plants crowded together do better for me than one of those high dollar four inch pots. Another good thing about container patio growing is that if your getting old and decrepit like me you can hoist the pot up onto a table to work and not have to spend so much time bending over. take care, and by the way thanks for the folks who sent the tips on deer resistant gardens, now I know why everyone's yard west of Mopac looks the same. Steve Coyle www.austingardencenter.com One more thing, the biggest pest that bothers apartment gardens are the pernacious 'landlords', My dear old mom lived in the luxurious Rio Hondo apartments in Hyde Park and for some reason the landlord had this almost obsessive hatred of green growing things. She battled him to a draw over her potted plants by being relentlessly stubborn about putting them out, and she snuck around the complex planting seeds and tree seedlings, a couple of which finally grew big enough for him to give up trying to kill with round up. |
Reply |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
Apartment Container gardening | Gardening | |||
Apartment and Bonsai | Bonsai | |||
Composting at an Apartment | Texas | |||
Squirrels on apartment balcony | Gardening | |||
Apartment Gardening | Texas |