Garden

[PINKdogWOOD]

@gardenman  The clematis is lovely and obviously doing well.

[gardenman]

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@PINKdogWOOD wrote:

@gardenman  The clematis is lovely and obviously doing well.

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Yeah, that's Clematis Jackmanii, an oldie but a goodie. It's been there probably twenty plus years now. It's very happy. I'm experimenting with using thunbergia (brown eye susan vines) in pots to cover the railing banisters this year. Thunbergia grows well on the porch as I've used it in baskets before. I've run fishing line along the banisters at three levels and I'm hoping the thunbergia gives me a curtain of flowers and foliage behind the boxes. I've got a pot of thunbergias behind each of the four front posts (also on the drip irrigation) and in the last week they've started growing like mad. They're now growing about an inch or two a day. Thunbergias are a nice vine in that they typically max out at about four to six feet, so they won't take over the porch. If they work like I'm hoping they work (might be asking too much) they'll create a lovely green, orange and yellow curtain behind the boxes. I'm training their stems along the fishing line and God willing, they'll send vertical stems up and about to create the look I'm after. Each banister will hopefully get wrapped by a thunbergia and be smothered in flowers. Most other vines (moonflowers, morning glories, cardinal climbers, etc.) are a bit too enthusiastic as growers and would be harder to control, but thunbergias might just work.

[PamfromCT]

Absolutely lovely!  All your planning and hard work has paid off.

[gardenman]

By the way, if anyone thought I was kidding about the impatiens seedlings being bonsai'ed by the Jiffy 7's, here's a picture of the tray that has the surviving ones. Bear in mind they were started in early February and should be about six inches tall by now. This photo was taken this morning, about four months from the time the seeds were sown.

I've never quite had anything like that happen before. To say their growth is slow is a gross understatement. My best guess is the Jiffy 7 trays got contaminated with Preen or some other growth inhibitor/weed preventer somewhere prior to my buying them that is restricting their growth. Suffice to say I won't be using Jiffy 7's again next year. I lost about a hundred plants that either didn't germinate at all, or exhibited this insanely slow growth that you see in the photo. It's very annoying. I'm still giving these guys a shot to see if they ever shake off whatever is slowing them down, but I'm not optimistic. If you need a bonsai version of an impatiens, well, I've got them. Just don't ask me how or why it happened. It certainly wasn't intentional.

[AuntG]

You have it down to a science. Wish I lived in your street because I'd stop and say hi.

[JYWilliams]

So pretty. I love all the different flowers and colors.

[ScenicMaine]

Very impressive design & beautiful plants.  

[gardenman]

Thanks. The basic premise of the planter boxes has been the same for 25-30 years now. They were featured in the July 1995 issue of Flower and Garden Magazine's: "Our Reader's Gardens" article. The photos used then were shot in September of 1994. I'd been doing it that way for some time even then.

The older boxes each slanted towards the steps with a drain with PVC pipe leading back to the high side where a five gallon paint bucket would catch any unused water. I'd plug the drain, empty the five gallon buckets into each box, add a couple of extra gallons, then let everything sit and soak up the water while I manually watered the hanging baskets and other pots, then I'd pull the plug and let the unused water drain back into the buckets for reuse the next day.

Those boxes had been made out of pressure treated plywood with a "lifetime" warranty. Well, it turns out the lifetime of the plywood ended, so they needed rebuilding this year. Now they're made of PVC trim boards that should never rot. (Though oddly the PVC only comes with a 25 year warranty.) The new boxes follow the same basic idea, just altered so the back right most corner is now the high point and they all slope gradually to the back left corner where the fill and drain port is. Instead of using a stopper, I just leave the pump running for 20 minutes. (It's only a 40 watt pump.) When the pump shuts off, water drains back out through the pump. There are two overflows, one just below the top of the boxes on the left side, and one just an inch high on the right side. These prevent the boxes from overflowing should there be a problem. The two boxes connect under the steps using some 3/4" PVC. 

The system is now fully automated, once the plants are potted up anyway, and largely maintenance free. If plants start to dry out later in the season, I can even add a second watering by telling Alexa "Turn on pump" or using an app on the phone to turn it on. Last summer I couldn't manage things with the broken femur, so this year I've made things more self-managing. It's working out well so far. By the Fourth of July the plants should be looking quite good, and then keep getting better into September when we typically start getting nor'easters that ding them a bit.

I used to add a little Miracle-Gro with each watering, but how much to add to my 220 gallons of rainwater is something I haven't looked into too much just yet. My old watering can was two gallons and I used one small scoop so it would probably take 110 of the small scoops to match what I used to do. I'm letting the plants grow a bit more before I worry about that too much. If I try to match what I did, I'll probably weigh out ten scoops of Miracle-Gro and then see how much that weighs, and scale it up from there. (Likely ten times the weight of ten scoops for approximately a hundred scoops instead of 110, just to be safe.) Then as the rain water gets used up and replenished I'll have to guesstimate the amount to add, but we'll see how things go.

[hayseed00]

Love the flower boxes and your high tech water system !!!!

[DiAnne]

Very clever!