Beginner Gardening: Good Growing Practices - an Overview for Beginners, 0 by tapla

tapla wrote:
Thanks for the holiday wishes. I hope too, that everyone had a good Thanksgiving - good food and good fellowship.

It's not hard to hand tame a Chickadee. I recently sold a piece of hunting property that was home to at least 50 tame Chickadees, maybe a dozen nuthatches, a few tits, and a brown creeper. They all have curiously different habits, but I'll just tell you how to hand tame the chickadees & then we have to get back on topic so future readers don't have to sort through too many OT posts.

Hang a feeder from a tree branch and fill with sunflower seeds to get the birds used to coming to the feeder. When you're ready to tame the birds, take the feeder down and put it out of sight. Put some sunflower seeds on your hat, and lean against the tree - very still. Almost immediately, the chickadees will land on your hat. Once they're used to that, shake the seeds off your hat & hold them in a gloved palm. They'll soon be eating from your hand. I can usually hand tame birds within 10 - 15 minutes, once I take down an established feeder. The farther away the nearest neighbor's feeders are, the easier it is to hand tame them. They have little incentive to eat from your hand when the neighbor's feeder is only a few wing beats away. It really is a lot of fun to go out in the back yard & spend time photographing the birds. I can get them to give me a kiss by putting a sunflower between my lips & holding my hand palm down and flat, even with my chin. They land on the hand & pluck the seed from my lips - pretty cool. ;-)

TR - I think that deeper pots are easier to grow in, and pots with gas permeable sides produce healthier plants.

If a soil supports 3-4" (ht) of perched water, it supports that ht of perched water in any container, regardless of its size or shape. If you use a heavy soil that supports 4" of perched water in a 4" deep pot, the entire soil volume remains saturated after a thorough watering; but if you use the same soil in a 12" deep pot, only 1/3 of the soil volume remains saturated. So, the shallower the container - the more important it is that the soil drains well and supports little perched water.

As far as pot material, I prefer terra cotta because it's gas permeable. It lets air in, and the undesirable gasses like sulfurous compounds, methane, and CO2, out. It's especially valuable when you're using heavy soils because the porosity speeds evaporation of the water in the soil. Reducing the amount of water over-retained much faster than pots made of nonporous materials - plastic, glazed clay, etc. Pots with mesh sides are also good, and I use a lot of cedar boxes for the material I'm growing on as future bonsai. They're not the prettiest, which is why I'd probably give terra cotta the first nod as being best for houseplants. Remember too, that I'm answering from the plant's perspective - from the perspective of what's best for the plant. While many may prefer the prettier appearance of other pots and the 'convenience' of not having to water so often. Those votes are not from the same perspective; and though they need to be acknowledged, while doing that let's acknowledge the dissimilar perspective.

SSG - just a guess, but it sounds like perhaps you got some really large bark to make your soil and it's not holding enough water? Particle size is important - let me know how big the bark was and how you made it.

You DO need to water more often after repotting if the remaining root system is small. Also, since all but winter growers (plants that tend to grow more when days are short) are wanting to rest now unless they're under very good lights, it's going to take a while for the roots to reestablish. In most of the US, the period between Father's Day and July 4th is about the best time to repot. Those in the southernmost parts of the US can repot a little earlier and still get very good results.

Can you share a picture of your soil? I think that once the PL's roots colonize the entire soil mass, your watering intervals will increase, but lets look a little deeper into what's going on.

Al