Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Patio gardening

It seems like my interest has shifted from sewing to gardening. I started off in planting more resilient plants such as succulent. For someone who have killed a lot of plants in the past, succulent seems like a good choice. They don't require a lot of care. You can plant them in pots of any containers. I've planted mine in big bowls with no drain holes and some in pot with drain hole. You can mix some 1 part sand to 1 part soil mix or purchase a succulent soil mix. I prefer the more budget option that is to mix it myself. It's handy to keep sand mix as you can use it for propagating mix too.

A good trick i've learned is if your container doesn't have drain hole, put a layer of stones at the bottom. Some books that i have read also have a layer of carbon on top of the stone. I think this is to prevent smells if you ended watering too much water. I haven't put any carbon on mine and they seemed fine. Just make sure you don't water too often. I water when the soil is dry. Another good trick I learned is to cover top surface with pebbles. This helps retain moisture and also great for decoration.

It's good to have a mix of colour when you select plants for your terrarium. This bowl used to be a bird bath.  
1/2 wooden pallet
 Now this i have to give credits to my husband Rick. He cut the wooden pallet into have with a circular saw and we covered the area where the soil goes good quality tarp that we were going to throw out. You can use weed mat but in our case we decided to recycle the old tarp.


We love hanging plants on our patio. This is a mix of dwarf marigold. The colours are so vibrant. Love it! We also discovered that if u keep the dried flower, the seeds are in there. Spread the seeds and you'll see new seedlings out in just a week.

Our rustic galvanised pots just arrived. Here are some photos with plants. Trying to think of more usage for these rustic pots. May be a mini fairy garden next time.