#Gardening containers

[bumblebeeappletree]

Costa meets a young gardening couple who have created a habitat haven and productive paradise four storeys up.

City living offers many conveniences – but also many challenges for keen gardeners.

In busy Edgecliffe, right in the heart of Sydney, a rooftop garden overlooking a busy train line is the only space available to Philip Georgiou and Ian Belgiorno-Zegna, but they’ve still managed to carve out a productive, potted palace to enjoy outdoors.

“We’re really lucky to have this space,” says Phil.

The total area is 350 square metres – and 200 square metres of that is the roof garden. Some is paved and some has decking, but all the plants – from tiny succulents to olive trees – are in pots.

“I’ll use the herbs from here – we use the rosemary nearly every night,” says Ian. “Phil got me onto the native trees and I’m eating lilly-pilly berries now.”

Their Eureka lemon (Citrus limon cv.) tree looks really healthy. “We had lavender underneath, but we took it out and it’s really taken off,” says Ian. Costa agrees that’s a good move because lemons don’t like any competition around their shallow roots.

Costa spots a tumbler compost bin: “Because you can’t put in on the ground, this is really appropriate for this space,” he says. Turns out it was a gift from Phil to Ian for his birthday!

They’ve also joined the ShareWaste scheme after seeing in on Gardening Australia. They receive donations of other people’s garden scraps to make compost to use on their garden.

Costa checks out the compost and says moisture wise it’s perfect – he advises mixing it into the soil after clearing a crop or spreading it around crops, making sure to cover with mulch to stop it drying out and killing the useful microbes in the compost.

“Then that compost will perform all those feeding and water-holding roles.”

Ian and Phil are growing peas, silverbeet, carrots, rocket, pineapples, herbs succulents, cycads, cacti and plenty more.

They have done a lot of work to the roof area, which was all decking when they moved in. Some of the challenges include having to get an engineer’s report to check that the roof would sustain the weight of their many pots – the large cube planters weigh more than a tonne by the time they’re full of wet potting mix, and there are 13 of these alone, plus dozens of others.

Another issue was drainage – they had to make sure all the water would drain into one corner.

The pair loves native plants and have nearly 20 grevilleas, plus callistemon, eucalyptus and banksia. There’s also lots of edible produce that they use in the kitchen. Phil’s favourite is Grevillea rhyolitica ‘Deua Flame’, which has a pretty, pendulous red flower and bright green leaves. He loves them because they flower all year around and attract loads of bees.

They ask Costa about how best to prune a bottlebrush tree to reduce the size without hacking it too much. Costa advises trimming back the flower spikes after flowering. “That will keep it nice and dense,” he says. Cutting any dieback from the centre will also encourage more light in, and hence more shoots.

The row of larger native plants offers the garden some privacy from neighbouring buildings and a nice view from the sitting room.

Ian makes a rosemary sugar syrup to use in cocktails, so Costa presents him with a lemon myrtle bush (Backhousia citriodora) that he’ll be able to use for lemon-flavoured drinks, too.

[los-plantalones]

reblog to share some mint with your followers. just don't let it escape containment, okay?

Edit as if 6/17: Y’ALL FAILED ME

[vintagehomecollection]

The Los Angeles House: Decoration and Design in America's 20th-Century City, 1995

[geopsych]

Begonia Fragrant Falls Peach.

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Wednesday 28 August 2024

The cactus flowered, tender perennial, Dahlia 'Labyrinth' has been grown in containers either side of this bench to provide a touch of the exotic in the late summer and autumn.

Jill Raggett

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Sealed up the greenhouse from earlier and added growlights. All running off the solarpanel.

[queer-ecopunk]

Hey, don't be sad. Seeds are sprouting today.

[prince-liest]

I have officially seen my own patients for the first time! :D

I saw inpatient patients and street medicine patients yesterday, and today I got to see my own clinic patients! It feels like a milestone because the clinic patients in particular are the ones who are now establishing with me as their primary care doctor.

Anyway, that's the last day of residency orientation done with! This weekend is my last weekend as a free person and starting on Monday I'll be doing EM-peds for four weeks. We did a cute little last-day team bonding thing this afternoon and got to make our own succulent gardens, which was incredibly up my alley:

This has prompted me to finally look into proper succulent care, set up my remaining grow lights on a bookshelf, and repot my poor long-suffering jade plant to life alongside this little plant garden. And now I have a suitable place for, uh. Any more succulents I impulse purchase. :'D

[curiousfancy]

Backyard container garden, year 2 (Summer ‘23)

[microgardendesigns]

They return 🐥🐓

[vintagehomecollection]

Deck & Patio Styles, 1996

[geopsych]

The names of both the thunbergia vine and the begonias include the word peach. They go well together.

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Sunday 8 September 2024

The drooping, crimson tassel-like racemes of tiny flowers of Amaranthus caudatus (love-lies-bleeding, chenile plant, Inca wheat, lady's riding whip, velvet flower, cat tail, tassel flower) are at their most dramatic at the end of summer and early autumn. This short-lived frost-tender plant is popular in summer bedding displays and for containers.

Jill Raggett

[greenhorizonblog]

[ghettogardener]

Ooooookaaaay Round 2! Transplanted all.of those morning glories that shot up into bigger pots.

Distributed Marigolds into Basil and tomato pots.

Got 8 cucumber shoots transplanted into their own pots.

Planted Hollyhock seeds and a varying variety of different tomato plants.

My craft room is over flowing!! I can't wait to get the greenhouse back up. Hopefully it will be done by April 15th!

[queer-ecopunk]

These might be the worst sugar snap peas I've ever seen