Will you show these fine folks on this forum how to make the homemade oyama pots please.My camera isn't working for some reason.
Oh Tish,
Yes Tish, please!!!
Please, please! I've spent too much at Planter's depot buying those pots. I'd love to know how to improvise.
Ok...give me a couple days to get some pictures together to post. Start saving you some plastic parts that fit together...Like fruit cups that will fit into a yoguart cup or solo cup..also little solo cups or coffee creamer cups. Or maybe a small and a large cream cheese/cottage cheese containers....look in your friends and familys fridges, ha...you know they are just going to throw that plastic away. You need something that will be the top pot to plant the plant into and a bottom to hold water.
tish
Will do.
Oh Yes, Please!! btw Jan==did you still want Chirita tamiana seed? I saved some for you( I think it's you)-- jlmk
Tish, are you talking about improvising oyama type planters or putting pieces together for self-watering planters (with a reservoir and a wick)?
Hi. I grew up in Odenton, Md, near Ft Meade...Dad still lives there.
The way i improvise the oyama pots is when the plant needs more water than the bottom part can hold, I sit the top in a bigger container...well, wider so the water level is not too deep, but there is more water. Many times moving a plant up to a larger sized oyama pot does not work.
I make some planters using this and that and get the same results as the oyama.
I apologize for taking so long to post..I've been finishing up some Quilts for Kids I make for charity organization. I will get with the pots soon. Also, there is probably an old post from when we did this about a year or so ago.
tish
I think I have a mental picture of it now... but I'll wait for actual pictures (or will find the previosu thread) before embarking on a major pot project!
I've been going more and more to wicking pots, especially for my houseplants. I think wicks work well in combination with polymer moisture crystals to sop up extra water (say from a saucer) and draw it up into the potting mix, where it's absorbed by the crystals and slowly released to the plant. I also wick smaller pots and place them on old-fashioned trays of gravel and water, or I snap pieces of celing light grid panels to fit into heavy duty 1020 nursery trays... the trays are half-filled with water, the plants sit on the grid, and the wicks dangle easily through the grid into the water reservoir below.
I learned a lot of different watering tricks from folks in this forum and by reading vendor info pages... a lot of what I learned ended up in this article on watering AVs: http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/907/ I've since realized I use these tricks on a lot of other kinds of plants now... big pots of moisture-loving tropicals sit in deep saucers with a wick running up into the pot; seedlings love bottom watering, and on occasion I use a microfiber towel as a capillary mat to provide more moisture and more humidity. If I have a houseplant in a cache pot, and if there's even a little space between the bottom of the inner nursery pot that holds the plant and the cache pot, so that the cache pot can hold a little water reservoir, well that inner pot gets a wick, you bet!
Critterologist- I'm so glad to have you in the forum! I love your articles. I've been growing 2 years and LOVE it!!! Do you have any tips for kohlerias? Mine don't have nice green leaves. They are all more reddish and the leaves seem dry, even though they are in Oyama pots.
I don't have much experience with them, but reddish/dry for me often means too cold... are they near a cold window maybe? Is the soil moist when you stick your finger in the pot? I've used other kinds of self watering pots more often, although I do have a couple of oyamas, and if they really dry out sometimes you have to top water to get them working again... I don't know if that's the case with oyama pots also.
Ok...its posted..look for self watering pots
also look thru the this container and the dandy pot posts...I bumped them up. I didn't see the old thread of the pots Jan and I made and gave directions for them so hope you understand the new ones.
tish
Thanks critterologist. I moved them to another location(warmer) and bunched them closer together with tiny solo cups of water beneath(humidity). They have improved!
Kohleria are water and light hogs...I read that from someone else. They also don't all have green leaves. Do you know the names of your plants?..maybe can find out the leaf description just to see.
Beltane is my main problem with tips browning, lower leaves yellowing and curling up dead. Then there's Ruby and Marquis de Sade with red leaves that seem to lose the red tint with green veining more prominent on the lower leaves. Do you know if kohlerias like something different in their soil besides regular AV peat, perlite, vermiculite, mixed with AV soil?
It almost sounds like you let it dry out too many times and it wants to go dormant. I don't do anything different with my kohleria but they need more light and water maybe because they grow so much. If your plants aren't looking good, I would take tip cuttings, then cut the rest back and let it grow out again.
Do you know Thad Scaggs?...contact him or go to the kohleriakeepers forum on yahoo groups. That would be my go to guy for kohleria questions.
tish
You hit the mark-dryness. I'm reflecting and thinking I need to maybe keep the soil moist at all times. I've been letting them dry between waterings, just like AV's. I'll keep the oyama pot's with water at all times and see if that helps too. You hit the mark-dryness.
Thank you Tish ^_^