Field of Science

Dealing with drips

The ladies over at the Garden Rant recently posted about pantless gardening, which sounded exciting, but TPP read it wrongly, and it turned out to be potless gardening.  Plants don't really need pots, but gardeners do especially when gardening indoors, where pantless is more doable, but potless isn't.  For years the indoor part of gardening has been a problem for TPP's tropical epiphytes who really like being out of doors for 4-5 months.  It really promotes their flowering druing the winter.  But watering plants when potless, or even when in hanging pots, can be quite a problem.  Mostly these plants grow in a loose bark or very porous soil mix so water flows through quite readily.  No problem outside, but inside it's a drip, drip, drip problem, one that fascinates one of our kitty girls who seems puzzled and fascinated by getting plunked on the head by water drops.  At any rate, Mrs. Phactor recently stumbled upon these plastic drip catchers that hang on the outside of your hanging baskets and the sell for the outrageous price of $2.  Sorry, no brand or store endorsements allowed, but the product works great.  Still every couple of weeks its a good idea to put all these plants in your shower and give them a nice 10-15 min soft, tepid showering, and then allow them to drip away in the tub before rehanging.  The only trouble is that a couple have gotten so big they take up too much room.  The image shows one on the outside of a pot holding the Queen's tears.  No, it's not in flower; just a bit of holiday finery added to the pot by TPP's personal Martha Stewart. 

3 comments:

mr_subjunctive said...

It's not in flower? I'm surprised: mine started blooming a week or two before Thanksgiving.

The Phytophactor said...

Mine pretty regularly flowers in January or February.

mr_subjunctive said...

Huh. I just checked my blog, and mine previously bloomed in mid-January. I wonder why it's early this year. (And it's dramatically so, too: last time, I got a single flower spike; this time, I have at least seven. Granted, it's a lot bigger than it was last year, too.)