A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Creative plantings

Many of you will relate to my predicament of having more plants than space, so I thought it would be interesting to start a thread on creative ways to manage limited space without sacrificing the number and variety of plants that share our homes.

This ficus benjamina was one I rescued late last winter from someone who abandoned it outdoors. After pruning back all the frost damaged parts, all that remained was one trunk with a few sparsely foliated branches. New foliage is beginning to fill it out somewhat and the plant is recovering but back then it looked quite pathetic, so to detract the eye from my "Charlie Brown" ficus and to save space, I companion planted shallow-rooted purple oxalis in the same pot. (Because oxalis have shallow roots, it is easy to dig up the corms during their dormant period without disturbing the ficus roots, place them in a peat-filled bag for a month, then replant them again.)



Have any of you similar ideas you care to share with the rest of us? I'm always looking creative ideas on conserving space.

I would look forward to some help in that department as well! I have a bunch of plants outside that will be coming in for the winter soon. I have the green colored oxalis and it is doing great right now. When do they go dormant?

Good question. My oxalis doesn't follow the calendar at all. It has gone dormant in December, March and this year in July!

Cricket...
That looks great. Hoping for some ideas!

Good work, Cricket! Both plants look like they are flourishing under your care.

I had not considered the possibility of companion planting the Oxalis because they are shallow rooted. Good idea. An alternative is to keep the Oxalis in its own small pot and set it on top of the Ficus rootball.

Oxalis tend to go dormant when they experience a period of drought. It is generally recommended to stop watering them in early September and about 6 weeks later they can can be set aside in a cool dim location where they can be ignore for about 4 months.

Thanks, Will!

I didn't know Oxalis had to be kept dormant for that long! Mine have never been dormant for longer than 6 weeks. Yikes! As they have only come out of dormancy about a month ago, do you recommend I force them into dormancy again this September?

I like it!

I wonder if you could consider my train garden a "creative planting."

Oh yes! Yours is awesome!

Cricket,

The dormancy rules that I cited are what are used in greenhouses by professional growers. They do not have to be followd rigidly. If you are gettng the results you want, keep doing it your way. If you want to experiment by extending the dormancy, go for it.

Great tag line, Will!

As long as the oxalis blooms (which it usually does) that's good enough for me!

If you are going to use it as a tag line, you may want to correct my sloppy spelling!

Busted! Cut and paste is too easy! Worse, after 10 min searching for the spelling error, I was about to give up thinking you were just messing with my head. :p I knew I should have stayed in bed this morning.

LOL! All it needed was a good eye!

Yep! Better watch Will...he's good at that!

I've been thinking about planting the miniature snapdragons on top of my bulb bed since the snapdragons are shallowroot and bloom spring fall while my glads bloom mid-summer and the cannas appear to be doing the same. What do you all think will that work?

Here is another idea found in a hotel lobby:



Some of you must be doing similar things with your houseplants. Let's get the creative juices flowing and post some terrific ideas!

Cricket,

The few houseplants I have are all in their own pots and none are tall.

Triss,

Most of mine are, too. That's why I'm looking for ideas. Too many plants taking up too much space.

Oh well I guess I should have said the 4 houseplants... Just barely getting started with the indoor stuff.

I protest, Ms Parrot Head! I was not messing with Cricket's head, as she acknowledged. Not my fault she couldn't find my typo before I did.

Will would NEVER mess with my head.
He's still recovering from the shock of seeing my photo....
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OK, here's another idea, if not the best. This little experiment last year taught me the importance of ensuring different plants sharing the same pot have the same care requirements. I thought crotons and marginatas did but soon learned the croton needed much more water that the marginata. That mistake was long since hidden in the compost pile.

Cricket
ewwwww

If I didn't disbelieve online photos, I wouldn't be able to ever talk to you again!

I recently tried to put a pothos cutting in with my big dracaena which is in a large pot. I think the only problem was that it wasn't well started first. Any ideas about the compatability of these two?

Thanks!
Kath

That's an interesting idea, Kath! I've never tried that combination. Dracaenas and pothos seem like a nice fit but I'm no expert, just someone who likes to experiment. What kind of dracaena do you have? Pothos like to be potbound but I wonder if you can get away with a larger pot because it is shared with the dracaena? Let us know how it fares.

BTW, is it a single pothos cutting you planted? If so, you might prefer the results of a cluster of cuttings which will give a fuller effect.

Hmmm, now I'm looking at my pothos which needs pruning. Maybe I will plant the rooted cuttings in with my dracaena and we can compare notes.

Kath, just checked out your dracaena in the other post. Gorgeous!