All About Miniature Plants and Gardens Indoors and Out

Chapter 13.. Planting and Care

PLANTING AND CARE

Whether your glassed-in garden is an artistic arrangement of plants or an actual garden, give your design a tryout by placing the plants on a temporary basis. Put them in place and appraise the arrangement. Don’t rush. You’ll save time by not having to do it over later.

In the case of containers rounded on the bottom, line them with thin sheets of moss. Turn the green side out. Next add an adequate layer of pebbles or sand, for drainage. A sprinkling of broken charcoal is particularly desirable. The close humid air may cause soil to grow “sour” without it.

Soil may be acid or not, heavy or light, sandy or humus-rich. It all depends on the type of plant to grow in it, and it will be moist when you use it. Please, make the soil deep enough to give the plants root-room. If you want to make it interesting, build it up gently into slopes or natural mounds. Flat land is dull, not nearly so interesting.

As you put in the plants, add the stones, pebbles, paths, or pools--whatever you have in your design. May I warn you--don’t dirty the inside of the glass. Once dirty, it is almost impossible to clean up later. Plant sparsely. Remember, your plants are going to grow. The finishing touch will be the addition of “sod” or moss on the bare areas. Most of the suggestions for dish gardens and model landscapes in earlier chapters apply here. Finally, polish the glass and spray the plants with a fine mist to clean off any soil that may be on leaves and stems. Water very gently.

According to tradition, partridgeberry bowls are arranged differently. The base of the bowl is lined with moss, and covered with drainage layers, charcoal, and then soil. Then the berried plants and any others to be combined with them are placed, one layer at a time, with their faces against the glass. Their roots are toward the center and covered with soil. Finish the top layer facing up; sprinkle any loose berries on top; mist the foliage gently; cover with glass, and deck out with a big bow of Christmas ribbon.

For a few days after planting, set a terrarium where the light is not bright. After that, it needs light or sunlight according to the requirements of the plants. If they grow lank, limp, and leggy, they are usually stretching out for more light. Window-sill plants may lean toward the window--remedy: simply turn the terrarium around, and alternate it every few days so that both sides get an equal share of light.

Temperature also depends on the plants. Hardy outdoor natives are best at 60 degrees or less, even if they are moved to a cool spot at night. Tropical plants, and many others, are happy at the usual living-room temperatures.

Watering can be tricky, but not if you are careful and rational. Obviously, if the top of your container is covered tightly, not much moisture can escape. It will condense inside the glass and drop back into the garden. Water will be needed less frequently. But don’t be too happy about this. If there is excess moisture, if too much collects on the glass, if the soil is always soggy, mildew and root-rot may result. Lift off the top for a while and let the inside dry out a little. Keep the soil on the dry side if the cover fits too tightly.

Here is another warning--soil should never become completely dry. (I am afraid I have you walking on a tightrope.) Again, take that handle of a spoon or fork and dig down through a bare spot so you can see how wet the soil is at the bottom. If water is needed, add it very gently. Remember, the small plants must not be deluged and dislodged; use just enough water to moisten the soil, not soak it. Sorry, but it is impossible to write down any definite schedule for watering. Frequency and quantity depend on the size of the terrarium and the size of the plants, on the outside temperature, and on other environmental factors. Even the weather and the season of the year are important. But, I’ll bet you need watering much less frequently than you think. You may feel you should fertilize the plants so they will grow more vigorously. Here is a word of warning on that score--few woodland plants appreciate chemical fertilizers (the powders you buy at the hardware store or in the horticultural supply shops). If you want to feed your plants, the best thing to use is a weak solution of manure water. I am always bundling up manure in gunny sacks, soaking it in a watering pot, and then using the water on my plants.

Glass-covered terrariums usually keep themselves clean inside, because dust just can’t get into them. You may need to remove fading flowers and leaves. If you have any plants, particularly creepers, that threaten to take over and smother the others, get a sharp pair of embroidery or manicure scissors and begin pruning. Aliens such as earthworms and slugs are out. Put on your sharpest-pointed heels and step on them.

CHAPTER 5

MINIATURE GREENHOUSE GARDENS

As far as I am concerned, the first part of this chapter is a dream. It is such a precious dream I shouldn’t even publish it until it comes true. I am afraid I must confess that parts of it have already been published in Flower and Garden. I was so carried away with the idea I rushed it into print, just so I could tell the world about a dream. It is a dream I hope you will dream with me. The magazine has given me permission to repeat the article I wrote for them.

The whole thing started when I began to get bored with prissy rows of pots in my own greenhouse. It is a forty-by-twenty-foot house and really isn’t ours. (It belongs to a neighbor who used to use it for the chickens. The chickens didn’t like being dispossessed, but they adapted themselves to the horse barn, where they are much happier.) My dream picked up emphasis when I tried a few “potless gardens” with plant roots unconfined and running freely in the soil. I immediately saw how much happier the plants were and how much more naturally they throve. I am a working girl. I have but a few years to go on my retirement plan, and then I can retire. Hence, I dream about my own personal greenhouse. My dream greenhouse.

I picture it as an extension of our recreation room so I can look out through the large window to the glassed-in garden a dozen times a day, every day of the year. There will be a convenient door for the many times I’ll be lured away from my typewriter. Any moment I wish, I can step into my garden to watch a bud unfold, tuck a wandering tendril back around a support, breathe in the fresh, moist fragrance only a greenhouse has.

My garden will be tropical. I love it that way. You, my reader, may wish a desert planted with fabulous cacti, or perhaps a cooler garden for alpine and hardier plants. But I love the exotics; and I will plant each one where it will grow according to its natural whims. Please, no more neat rows of pots on benches. My creepers will be planted where they can clamber over the soil and an occasional rock or rotted log. Climbers will have some picturesque support on which to climb. Epiphytes will have trees to perch on; and the danglers, baskets to hang from.

There will be variations of light, from full sun to patches of dappled or deep shade. If I can manage it, somehow I’d like to have variations in temperature in the different parts of my dream greenhouse. Some plants like the vigor of a cool corner; others revel in tropical warmth. Then there is the matter of moisture. For dry-growing plants there would be rock gardens and raised beds; for moisture-lovers there would be sunken, humus-rich bogs.

But you can’t have a greenhouse, dream or otherwise, without having utilities, heating plant, water pipes, and potting places. Those I would conceal under the shade of flowering vines. I think I should allow myself the luxury of a stool--perhaps even a rocking chair--where I can sit down to pot or propagate my plants.

Of course, there would be a pool in my greenhouse garden, with a water lily to flower in it. Around the edge would be arranged rocks to make a home for friendly frogs, salamanders, and turtles. I would teach them to be so friendly I could take them to safe quarters when I had to spray or fumigate. Restful ferns would frame that pool. A fountain would make the musical sound of splashing water. Perhaps the overflow would run into a tiny, winding stream. I’ll have to ask Fred, our plumber, about that.

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