Easy to Grow and Maintain Patio and Balcony Plants!Drive past any highrise apartment building and look up at the balconies. Very few have a plant on them, yet they are all capable of providing very useful habitat for wildlife. Planted with native plants in potplants, balcony habitats will provide a refuge for small birds, butterflies and even frogs and dragonflies.In cities that are largely covered in concrete and tarseal, balcony habitats can be small Islands of wildlife refuge in the concrete jungle. There are hundreds of suitable native plants that will grow in potplants. You can encourage bushier growth on them by pinching out the growing tips. Visitors may include small birds such as finches and honeyeaters, stick insects, small insect-eating bats, geckos, dragonflies and butterflies. On a balcony you can even have mobile native garden in a wheeled box which you can move around to suit the sun or shade, or move inside if you wish. Patios too can provide good habitat with the right plants. The biggest killer of indoor, patio, and balcony plants is over watering. Busy people somehow seem to neglect the water until all of a sudden they remember, and flood the plants for a few days, and bingo! Poor plant! Indoor plants need to be watered regularly, misted frequently in hot weather, and trimmed and fertilised every six months or so. They need to be watched for insect infestation, and have their leaves wiped with a damp cloth occasionally.
 Above; So many balconies...yet so few plants! Because balcony plants do need maintenance and that’s why many indoor plants don’t survive, because many people think they can dump them in corner of the balcony or patio and forget about them. There are many ways you can reduce the need to spend lots of time on maintenance. Grab a few minutes while the jug is boiling, while you are waiting for the floor to dry, or in between any household task. Fast growing plants will need to have growing tips pinched back occasionally. Sometimes you can reduce the need for trimming by just changing light conditions. When buying, choose plants that are hardy and easy to look after. There are three things to consider when choosing native balcony/patio plants, choosing plants which are tolerant of variable conditions, giving them the optimum growing conditions your house will allow, and adopting simple strategies which will make it easy for you to maintain them. Just by buying the right native plants, your maintenance time can be dramatically reduced. There are many native varieties of balcony/patio plants. Most have been grown successfully indoors for many years. Even a balcony can host climbing plants, but you may have to prune regularly to keep them managemable. Some suitable vines are Cissus antarctica, Kangaroo Vine, Hoya australis, the Common Hoya, Hoya macgillivrayi and Epipremnum pinnatum. Generally speaking plants with large green leaves like less light, and more water. Think about where the plants came from. If they are jungle foliage plants, they like a warm wet humid atmosphere. One way to get around this humidity problem is to place a bowl or dish of water next to the plants. You can grow a small water plant in the water if you like. Another trick is to have a nice attractive tray with river pebbles and water in it, and sit the houseplants on the pebbles. Place the plants so they are not in the water, but sitting on the pebbles. It’s also good to rotate plants into the bathroom occasionally, where the humidity will boost them along. And of course, when it rains, if you can move them outside for a few hours, they will really appreciate it.
Don’t forget the pot you use! You can use almost any sort of container for balcony/patio plants. The plants should be placed on a container so they don’t leak water, but sometimes they are also placed inside a basket, or exterior container as well. You don’t have to pay lots of money for an expensive pot. One of the most attractive pots I’ve ever seen was a porous pottery one, which had used postage stamps pasted all over it, and then sprayed with clear varnish. It looked great! An old china teapot with a hole drilled in the bottom with a masonry drill for drainage makes a good planter pot. A chipped coffee mug also makes a good small plant pot. Another trick we have seen is a plastic pot, sprayed with clear varnish, and then rolled in dry white sand before the vernish dries. Looked great too, and what about black sand? Or red sand? Lots of containers can be recycled into unique and attractive pots. Even an ordinary plastic pot can be hidden in a basket. If you have a climbing native vine in your garden, and if the first 4 or 5 inches of a new tip will bend without cracking, it can be taken as a cutting, dipped in a root hormone powder or gel, and planted in sand in a pot. It will grow, and can be trained up an attractive stick. These softwood cuttings may need a clear plastic bag over them to keep them warm initially. Many large soft leaves can be scored across the thick stem under the leaf, sprinkled with hormone powder, placed face down on some potting soil, pinned there with a couple of toothpicks and left to grow into several new plants. These plants include native violets, succulents, and similar soft, large-leafed plants. Many plants will shoot out new roots from stem nodes, if placed in water. Some vines do okay just growing in water in an attractive bottle. Just add a couple of pellets of dried organic manure occasionally. An avocado seed with a toothpick stuck in each side of it, and suspended in a glass of water with the bottom half submerged, will send out roots in a month or so. After it has started to shoot from the top, plant into a pot. A young avocado tree makes a very attractive balcony/patio plant. If your balcony/patio plant starts to wilt, its usually temperature wrong, too wet or too dry, or may have accumulated too many salts from fertiliser. Leach the salts out by repotting or flooding the plant with water, and allowing to drain. If it collapses, it could be from draughts or salt problems. If the leaves fall off, from under or over watering, poor light, or draughts. If leaf tips turn brown, all or some of the above. If the leaves turn yellow, all or some of the above. Tall stalky growth, not enough light. There are many native species suitable for balcony/patio planting. Experiment, and if the plant is not going too well in the house, put it in the ground outside! Tips for Balcony and Patio Garden Containers Use quality potting mix The best quality potting mixes contain a number of important water saving elements including additional organic matter, soil wetters and important root stimulants. Double potting The temperature of potting mix sitting in the sun in a container during summer can become so hot that the plant’s roots will be damaged. Placing your pot inside a larger container is an effective way of providing a solution. Use a soil wetter regularly. Often when you water container plants the moisture runs over the root ball rather than soaking through it. Adding soil wetter to your water every eight to 10 weeks will quickly overcome this problem. Aqua spikes for baskets Low cost spikes that allow you to attach a 2 or 4 litre bottle of water is an effective way of keeping your hanging baskets in reasonable shape.
|
It’s also a good idea to bunch plants with similar water requirements together, so they can all be watered together. Saves time! Other plants in Nature grow in less fertile areas, and are more hardy. These sorts of plants usually require more light, and less water.
