General Gardening
7 Steps to Grafting Cactus
Grafting, which can be done with many plants, is a propagation technique in which a gardener will take two separate plant species, cut them and grow them together as one plant. The plants, if they are compatible, will bond and grow as one. Moon cactus is one of the most popular grafted cactus that gardeners keep.
Gardening Recipe: How to Make Mint Tea
Ornamental container gardens are beautiful to view and fun to cultivate, but there’s nothing like having a fresh tomato from your balcony garden or some fresh herbs in a salad. And no herb is more soothing than spearmint, especially when it is brewed up into a cup of hot or iced tea.
Plant Scientific Names
Like all classified animals, plants also have scientific names (you can see these scientific names in all of the Fact Sheets). Plants are scientficially classified with a system called binomial nomenclature. Here's how it works...
Coconut Fiber in Planters
The first plants to suffer from the heat or dry air are those in hanging containers with coconut fiber lining or sphagnum moss. The strawberries shown here, for example, wilted due to dried-out soil during a heat wave. BalconyContainerGardening.com suggests using plastic plant containers in balony gardens more than any other container (i.e. terra cotta containers) because plastic containers are lightweight, cheap and insulate the plant (i.e., lose soil moisture much slower).
Starting a Garden
Before you get started on planning what garden supplies you need to buy and what you want to plant in your balcony container garden, think about what you ultimately want from your balcony garden. Determine what you really want, and then decide if it’s do-able with your balcony conditions. You may love to grow food and want a kitchen garden, but other people have flower gardens, modern topiary gardens, Asian-themed gardens or whatever other styles and themes the imagination allows.
