Gardening Ideas

[Sopyu ftu äo]

Coming out of Fake Sully's general thoughts thread, I thought a thread on gardening might be a something our community might like

As I said, my longer term aim is to develop my existing garden into a native rainforest garden that draws on the beauty of Pandora to bring a bit of Eywa to Gaia I'd love to see and share any experiences of anyone else who is thinking of or trying a similar thing... or even just having fun playing in their garden!

Also, just a word of encouragement to anyone wanting to try something similar, as Fake Sully felt disheartened by their climate. While my own concept is shaped very much by my own preferences and desires to do this with entirely or almost entirely native plants, if you live in a cool climate and are happy to have some exotics from other shores in your garden, you can definitely still build a lovely slice of paradise

I'll add my thoughts as they come.

 

[Takabrotaka]

I really want to garden as well. The trouble is I can't do anything permanent, and this is compounded by the fact that I want to keep weird stuff. Moss, marimo balls, spirulina algae, other weird freshwater algae, etc and I'm not sure there's any palms or cultivars of bamboo that could be kept in pots. And I don't have much of a green thumb.

 

[Yrel]

I really want to garden as well. The trouble is I can't do anything permanent, and this is compounded by the fact that I want to keep weird stuff. Moss, marimo balls, spirulina algae, other weird freshwater algae, etc and I'm not sure there's any palms or cultivars of bamboo that could be kept in pots. And I don't have much of a green thumb.

oh bamboo can definitely be kept in a pot, the problem is you have to do a bit of work to keep them from becoming rootbound.
as for "weird" stuff, bogleech's etsy would probably be a thing to keep an eye on. as i type this he's only got plant cuttings from bladderworts, liverworts, and a few temperate climbing vines, but he sells sundews as well.

 

[Takabrotaka]

Thank you for that advice! There's a few nurseries near here that seem to sell some bamboo cultivars so I'll have to call and ask what they recommend. I've done a good amount of research but sadly the massive timber bamboos I'd love to keep couldn't be kept in pots, so I'll have to look smaller. I'll have to keep an eye out for that etsy shop as well - one crazy idea I had was growing bioluminescent dinoflagellates, but it'd take some money to keep buying nutrient solution and I'd have to deal with a constantly growing culture as well. You can at least eat spirulina and grow it with nothing but sunshine and water, but not that.

 

[Sopyu ftu äo]

Pretty much any clumping bamboos should be happy in pots - just make sure they get enough water and food and they'll be happy as a lark. Some palms are fine too. A lot of European gardeners keep potted palms so they can take them undercover in winter, so if you look at the species they are going with you should be fine. Most palms like to keep a fairly compact / tight rootball - just make sure they have enough depth for their taproot. Some I'd recommend:

* Howea palms. very happy in pots and are tough as nails. Native to Lord Howe in Aus, so like damp, shady conditions. Cool weather doesn't bother them, long as it doesn't freeze. If you live in a place that freezes, you can bring them inside in winter - they have no issues with being indoor plants. Lovely foliage, and if you don't live in an area where you can harvest the seed from a park / friends garden, they are super cheap to buy.

* Golden Cane Palm (D. Lucitens / D. Baronii). Come from Madagascar. Natural clumping palms, are happy in pots (they are frequently used around here in planters around pools anywhere that needs an "insta-tropical" look - every cheap holiday park worth it's salt throws them round like confetti. In cold climates they are popular as houseplants, but they're pretty tough, and the Baronii doesn't mind frost.

* Queensland Fan Palm (L. Ramsayi). Really really looks Pandoran, IMHO. I love them. You don't see them much abroad, but a specialist should have them, or you can get seeds sent from Australia, but they are slow growers. Happy in pots when small. They are from tropical northern QLD, but are surprisingly OK with cooler winters, as long as they don't get frosted. They like to have some shade. There is a related species (L. Spinosa) that is frost tolerant and is faster growing, but is very spikey.

Also don't forget ferns, and also orchids. Both are great choices for a forest feel, and ferns are *super* easy to look after

 

[Fake Sully]

Golden Cane Palm

I just googled that and found out I had a small one in a pot a few weeks ago (or something similar? died, idk why, ).
They dont really look like palms when small and in a pot.

 

[Fake Sully]

bioluminescent dinoflagellates

I just googled that and found a shop that sells bioluminescent plants (so not algae). The twist: They did some DNA magic (the DNA is from dinoflagellates).
Dunno know what to think about that :/ But it would be cool to have some glowing trees

 

[Sopyu ftu äo]

Yeah, IIRC wasn't there a bioscience startup that was playing around with that concept, Lightbio I think is the company? Definitely in two minds about it. The aesthetics absolutely appeal to me, but I'm ethically troubled by it. We've seen what happens when humans crash around messing with things without thinking, and there are so many ways this could go bad:




Also, should we mess around with other species just for our own gratification? While I get the appeal, it doesn't feel right.

 

[ahoragi]

We grow everything we can eat spring through summer every year. Hundreds of pounds of harvests. Makes us feel more connected to our mother earth and healthy too. During the winter we use Aerogarden to grow a little indoors.

 

[Eltu]

Beautiful! Looks a lot more organized than our garden

 

[Sopyu ftu äo]

Better than mine too! Right now it's pots of weeds, some trees from when we moved in, some random exotics (some my "bright" idea and some fom when we moved in) and a fair sized chunk of lawn (wittled down by my earlier exotic idea, but still a big expanse of nothing that is lovely to have for it's potential, but a bit empty..... but Gaia will take care of that )

 

[Naranawm]

Looks so good! I wish i had the patience and dedication

 

[Fake Sully]

View attachment 295View attachment 296View attachment 297View attachment 298
We grow everything we can eat spring through summer every year. Hundreds of pounds of harvests. Makes us feel more connected to our mother earth and healthy too. During the winter we use Aerogarden to grow a little indoors.

That looks REALLY cool! What exactly did you plant there (well, duh. I can see the sunflowers : P)

 

[ahoragi]

Well it took a few years to learn some things about companion planting. I am no expert so still learning but the sunflowers in that bed attracted ALOT of pollinators for the pepper plants that were below them. It might be hard to see but there are 10 pepper plants of different varieties along with different herbs, which some prevent certain pests. There is another bed right next to that with zuchini that benefited from the pollinators as well. We had a big issue with squash bugs and cucumber beetles the year prior so we planted the squash away from the main garden and had more success. My lady has a bad back so I built 12 raised beds to her height so she doesn't have to bend over as much.
Here are some more pictures:


The zuchini plants



Kale, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts that failed to.....sprout with a cherry tomato in the middle.



Spinach with a few cucumber plants on the left. They climbed up onto the deck for easy pickings.



This was my lady standing next to a 12 foot sunflower plant that had pole beans climbing up it.


Green bean super bush. They grew over an arch that you walked under for easy pickings.


This was an experiment with bush and pole beans. The bush beans were growing in the bed below and the pole beans grow up on the arch. Worked out great but the pole beans got a little heavy on the arch.



Big potato patch with a dozen corn plants on the left and tomatoes growing up the string.

Too much going on here. Potato plant next to green house. A 12 foot raised bed on blocks full of potatoes with pole beans and snap peas at the rear. Around the deck are bush beans, pole beans, zuchini, blueberries, and a huge patch of strawberries on the ground under those beds.





Hope you guys enjoyed the pics. 🙂

 

[Sopyu ftu äo]

I love it - that's fantastic! The arch idea is great

 

[Fake Sully]

I LOOOVE IT!! That looks like YEARS of work and experience

 

[Raiden]

Cool thread idea.
It's pretty much the polar opposite of gardening to produce food, but I started collecting plants for fun several years ago. I live in the Willamette Valley of western OR, which has a great climate for growing a relatively wide variety of plants outdoors (USDA zone 8b, some pockets of zone 9a/9b on the coast).

I also became more interested in growing Oregon/west coast native plant species; this is generally the best way to support native insects, since native insects co-evolved with the plants here, and growing native plants helps maintain gene flow between wild populations of said plants. I also enjoy showcasing the plant diversity of this region, which is higher than many people realize.

I went back to school a few years ago and do not own a home/land, so I'm restricted to containers, but most of the plants I really like are on the smaller side, so that suits me. Most of my outdoor plants are currently dormant and don't look like much, but that will change very soon.


This one is Sedum oblanceolatum, a rare stonecrop species endemic to the Klamath Mountains of Southern Oregon and adjacent California. It grows on craggy basalt cliffs; I collected small pieces of a wild plant, which are what you see in this pot. They are firmly rooted now, and growing pretty fast. I enjoy growing plants collected as seed or cuttings from the wild; it makes them more special to me, and it helps keep the gene pool of cultivated plants from getting stagnant.


And these are most of my sun/rock garden plants. The tub contains wetland plants that prefer sunny conditions. I have a lot more than this, but I had to move recently and I'm starting a field tech job soon, so most of my collection is being cared for by my friends right now.

 

[Fake Sully]

My plants have had some problems lately. One orange tree just "died", removing all leaves and creating a honey-like liquid on the spots the leave were attached to prior to falling.
Has anyone ever noticed that pot-plant's soil kind of "wears off" with time? It just does not look like normal soil anymore. I do add some fertiliser from time to time, but rarely. I assume it might be the microbial composition changing over time?

 

[tulkunbrother]

My plants have had some problems lately. One orange tree just "died", removing all leaves and creating a honey-like liquid on the spots the leave were attached to prior to falling.
Has anyone ever noticed that pot-plant's soil kind of "wears off" with time? It just does not look like normal soil anymore. I do add some fertiliser from time to time, but rarely. I assume it might be the microbial composition changing over time?

Could you post here some pictures of this, friend? Depending on what kind of fertilizer you use, it might be harming the plants even more. Some kinds of fertilizer are just chemicals such as nitrogen and so on. This can be good, but we also have to look at how much organic material there is in the soil and the "acid level" of it.

For example, we cannot put too much of these chemical fertilizers, but we also need to look if the soil has organic material (such as rests of fruits and vegetables).

 

[Raiden]

My plants have had some problems lately. One orange tree just "died", removing all leaves and creating a honey-like liquid on the spots the leave were attached to prior to falling.
Has anyone ever noticed that pot-plant's soil kind of "wears off" with time? It just does not look like normal soil anymore. I do add some fertiliser from time to time, but rarely. I assume it might be the microbial composition changing over time?

Can you show me some photos of the orange tree? I could at least help rule out disease, although I have zero experience growing citrus.

I do have a fair amount of experience growing plants in containers at this point, and I've experimented with quite a few media mixes. My friends actually tease me because sometimes I find useful materials while hiking and I end up coming back with buckets of sand and rotten wood, etc. I've learned a lot from making my own soil mixes; plant nutrition and your soil mix aren't mutually exclusive (you could make it yourself and use fertilizers after, etc.), but things like drainage, pH and certain mineral nutrients (iron and magnesium especially) are strongly correlated to your media mix, at least before fertilizers.

I can't tell if you're describing a problem with the soil of a potted plant, but if you think there's a problem, telling me what kind of plant it is and showing me a photo of the pot/soil will help.