Inside Urban Green

CuGreen Plant Lab » Indoor Plant Season is Here Again

These are some of the plants growing in the CuGreen plant lab. All are either sub-irrigated or growing in expanded clay pebble hydroculture. There is no drainage. They are watered on a fixed schedule. All soil based plants are growing in the same artificial soil media. There is no need for "special soil" based on the species of plant. Any terrestrial plant (with roots), including cactus, can be grown and maintained using these methods.

I am writing a how-to guide for what you see here. It will be a free download. Stay tuned.

The Daily Drain Hole Report » The Big Deception

This is the first in a continuing series about the big drainage deception perpetrated on the American gardening public. A need for drain holes is a bogus teaching that wastes huge amounts of plants, water, time and money. You can easily prove it to yourself. All it takes is a little time and a willingness to unhook from the propaganda. It will cost next to nothing.

There is much more to come. It is long overdue to out the perps. Stay tuned.

About the photos » Normally I black out the background to remove my amateurish cloth backdrop. These unedited photos are as seen by my camera.

The objective is to show the quality of the plants growing in containers with no drainage. Click on the photos to view larger sizes on Flickr. Click on Actions for the menu that includes "View all sizes". 



About the plants » All of the plants are Chlorophytum comosum, common name Spider Plants. They are reputed to be highly susceptible to soluble salts burn. Note that even though there is no drainage there is little or no leaf tipping due to soluble salts burn.

About the growing methods » Top photo - Left plant, sub-irrigated planter (SIP) made from a recycled glass bottle. Note the white cloth wick to move water by capillary action from the reservoir up into the soil/root system. Center plant - growing in expanded clay pebbles in a recycled glass beer bottle (cut in half). Right plant – sub-irrigated planter (SIP) made from a recycled glass beer bottle. These small bottle planters are about 2/3 the size of a standard can, demonstrating that if you supply plants the essentials of light, water and nutrition you do not need a large pot. Most of the plants I see on the web are over-potted, particularly in clay pots that so many gardeners favor. 

Bottom photo – Left plant in white container, sub-irrigated planter (SIP) made from a recycled clear plastic cookie container inside a trash basket cachepot, standing on an inverted trash basket pedestal. Right plant in white container – growing in expanded clay pebbles in an IKEA ceramic cachepot. Other plants are the ones in the top photo.

About the big deception » Drainage of soluble salts is the big deception foisted on consumers as the only reason cited for drain holes. Deception is a more polite word for lie.

If you are maintaining or growing decorative or edible plants in containers with drain holes, know that you have been propagandized, deceived, duped, bamboozled, hoodwinked, ripped off, rolled or conned. Take your pick. It is the big lie of consumer horticulture. 

Stay tuned for more about who and why.

Hydroculture Sansevieria in a Blue Ceramic Rice Bowl

This is a Bird's Nest Sansevieria (Sansevieria trifasciata 'Hahnii'). It is in the same expanded clay pebble hydroculture setup as this tabletop Ficus tree. 

Those are polished decorative pebbles as "ground cover". You can see a couple of the brown clay pebbles peaking up.

Sansevieria is a very durable indoor plant that will tolerate lower light conditions. It is also easy to propagate. This plant is a newly cut offset from another plant. The total out-of-pocket cost of this plant as pictured is about $5.

This would be a great desktop plant for your office, or a gift for someone else's office. With desk lamp lighting like this it would likely need watering every two weeks or longer. The key is to check the water level with a pipette tube and only add more water when it shows that the water level is at empty. 

See more tabletop plants like this on Flickr.

Hydroculture Ficus in a Blue Ceramic Rice Bowl

This blue glaze rice bowl caught my eye at Fei Long Asian Supermarket. It is bonsai quality for only $3.99. The little Ficus tree now has a new hydroculture home growing in expanded clay pebbles covered with decorative polished pebbles. There is no need for a much more expensive planter with a drain hole.

Note the 1/2" diameter clear plastic pipette access tube. Simply insert a length of 1/4" tubing to the bottom, hold your finger over the top end, lift and see the water level. Add water only when empty. Plant care is that simple and virtually fool proof, keeping in mind that when dealing with living organisms nothing is totally fool proof. Hydroculture is probably as close as it gets.

The tree was propagated last October from a bundle of cuttings held together with a rubber band. The propagator was a recycled soda bottle SIP with a deli container hood for holding humidity.

The small caliper stems will fuse together over time to create a thick trunk. No pruning has been done at this point. I will prune the tree for bonsai type character at a later date.

The houseplant market is a dying business in more ways than one. Why don't we have sustainable indoor plants like this available at retail? Why are houseplants essentially a feminine product. Surveys show 80% of the market with a large part of the remaining 20% purchased by men as gifts for women.

A more masculine symbol tree like this could be a young boy's lifetime companion.

See more tabletop plants like this on Flickr.

Where Do Expanded Clay Pebbles Come From?

There is an interesting ScienceDaily article about lightweight concrete after the jump. I believe it is the original use of expanded clay pebbles that eventually led to horticultural uses.

Expanded clay pebbles known by many as LECA (Light Weight Clay Aggragate) are much more well known in Europe than in the U.S. Europeans use them in a very popular form of hydroponics known as hydroculture.

The leca (generic use of the word) on the left is Hydroton and dominates the U.S. market in the world of hydroponics (mostly pot and orchid growers currently).

Glass Joins the Recycled Bottle SIP Parade

This is the first effort at cutting glass bottles to make sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) or hydroculture planters. I believe it is the start of something big. Wine, champagne, liquor, water bottle planters to come. Who knows what else.

I pulled these small beer bottles out of the trash. The planter on the right is the same configuration as the plastic soda bottle SIPs.

The inverted neck portion of the bottle forms the planter. The bottom section forms the water and air reservoir.

There is a fabric wick/retainer at the end of the neck that holds the soil mix in the neck of the bottle and feeds water up by capillary action.

The planter to the left is hydroculture, which is a very simple form of hydroponics. There is no need for the neck. The bottom is filled with expanded clay pebbles. There is a ½” clear plastic tube going all the way to the bottom of the bottle planter. You can insert a piece of ¼” clear plastic tubing (or a straw) and oxygenate the water by blowing air. You do not need an electric pump or air stone.

Recycled Soda Bottle Hydroponics: Science Experiments for Kids

The return on investment for you and your kid’s education is phenomenal with this idea. The bottle planters are more than free because you help the environment when you convert them to science education tools instead of tossing them into a recycle bin or the trash.

A fashionable belief is that every school needs a dirt garden, a throwback to a bygone time of so-called “victory gardens”. What an extravagant and often wasteful idea.

The no-cost bottle planters you make (along with other SIP variants) have the potential to teach your children more about science, the scientific method, botany, biology, physics, chemistry, nutrition and the environment that any dirt garden ever will.

These bottle planters should be in every classroom in America. Every teacher (and parent) should know how to use them. Not just science teachers.

Unfortunately, few teachers know about them and their educational potential. We can thank the USDA, the National Gardening Association, our land grant institutions and botanical gardens (aka collectively as “big dirt”) for that.

The big question is whether you are motivated to do anything about it? 

Comments:

Growing plants in "artificial soil" in sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs) is really a simplified form of hydroponics. Few understand that an EarthBox is really a hydroponic planter.

Look at this Flickr photo set. The design I advocate has a larger plant section and smaller reservoir than the design in the photos above.

Pothos is a more low-light tolerant, durable plant than Swedish Ivy. It is what I would use.

via hydroponicsdictionary.com

This experiment is meant as a fun introduction to hydroponics (or SIPs). We suggest that anybody new to hydroponics start with this experiment.

You will learn (that) what you feed a plant matters more than what the plant grows in.

Plant for all experiments:
We suggest Swedish Ivy /Creeping Charlie. This plant seems to grow no matter what – we even rooted this one in a coconut pound cake ! The roots will set from the nodes. Put the cuttings in a glass of water and wait for roots to appear (aprox 2-3 weeks).

‘Shopping’ list.
Empty 2 liter soda bottle, wick, fertilizer, plant, lemon or lemon juice, baking soda. Optional: pH test kit or litmus paper, straw, Lego blocks, shredded fabric, shredded paper.

A Kennedy Valcent Video Plug

How much magic still remains in the Kennedy name? We may find out since Robert Kenndy, Jr. and Stephen Kennedy Smith have associated themselves with the Valcent VertiCrop hydroponic system.

This video was my first opportunity to hear them both plug Valcent. I wasn't particularly impressed with these interviews but recognize that their family name still has clout in the marketplace. Have a look and see what you think. Are they persuasive?

Hydroculture Houseplants

Left -Dracaena Janet Craig Compacta - clear glass vase (Walmart) Right - Sansevieria - ceramic planter (IKEA).

This photo from my archives reminded me of my deck in San Diego where I could take pictures outside. The photo has obvious faults but I found the shadow patterns interesting.

Both plants are growing in expanded clay pebbles, known widely as hydroculture. The pebbles are porous and have excellent oxygen holding characteristics.

It is a very low maintenance method of indoor plant care. If not for the research I do, I would convert all plants to clay pebble hydroculture.

Low Light, Low Maintenance Janet

Dracaena Janet Craig Compacta is an excellent low light tolerant plant. Three or four of them (4" pot size) planted together make a handsome tabletop plant. They are low maintenance plants to begin with and even more so when converted to expanded clay pebble hydroculture. The glass vase is a low cost planter from a chain discount store.

TJ Maxx, Marshal's, Ross, Target, Ikea and Wal-Mart are good sources of well-designed ceramic and glass containers from around the world.

Look in the giftware, kitchen and housewares departments. Also look for marked down containers with small defects that will not show when planted.

There is no need for a drain hole when using sub-irrigation or hydroculture. None of the planters I show come from traditional retail gardening sources.