GARDEN JOURNAL

One Gardener's Garbage is Another Gardener's Gold

It’s starting to cool down here, leaves are turning yellow and there is the occasional frost warning. So I’m starting to think about closing down parts of the balcony garden – especially the ponds.

One gardener in the ‘hood did a serious clean up of their balcony garden on Saturday morning – plants, pots and planters et al. But not to worry, I look out onto a pretty active back alley. In the time it took to snap the first view from above and then go down to the parkade to shoot the close up – about 5 minutes – an intrepid gardener had snapped up the pots and the purple flowers. And by noon today, the rest of the materials were gone.

This garden, or at least all of the fixings, will live on.

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Water in the Garden

Gardening Gone Wild has invited bloggers to showcase water in their gardens. I’ve always had a water garden on the balcony, often including a school of pond comets. Container ponds are pretty easy to set up. They attract birds, bees and wasps and are a refreshing change from potted plants. I’ve had the good fortune to find four beautiful stone containers that I’ve used for the last couple of years, but have also had great success planting a pond in a glazed ceramic pot.  

Floating fern (salvinia natans), water hyacinths (eichornia crassipes), water grass (hygroryza aristata) and water clover (marsilea mutica) are the plants of choice this year in the ponds. The floating ferns are easy to grow, spread quickly, provide shade and prevent algae by using nutrients from the water. The water grass is a new discovery. Seems to be a slow grower, but looks pretty cool. The water clover (below) is tough and has grown into a strong, healthy plant that continues to be happy even with the heavy winds and cooler nights that we have been having lately – it might get to come to the office over the winter. 

The water volume is relatively small and the water level in each pond goes down about an inch each week because it is so dry here. But topping up the water gives me the chance to check out the plants regularly, do a little clean up as needed and thin out the growth. No pumps, no mosquitoes and no problems this year.

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On a Roll

Started to move containers around today and remembered that most are heavy and ackward to lift. Checked out the local nursery in search of strong platforms with wheels and hit the jackpot. Bought five inexpensive round wood ones and a larger metal version. The wood planters have four casters, the metal version has a five caster set. They are nice and low to the ground; functional and unobtrusive. The wood platforms are perfect for the tufa troughs, but not quite strong enough for the cement troughs. Neither are strong enough for my new stone bowls, so I’ll continue to stack up bricks to add height to the pond set up.

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Heavy Lifting

These stone bowls are carved out of a beautiful creamy granite that has a sparkle to it. Picked them up at a store in Inglewood where they have decided to no longer bring more in because they are so heavy.They will be perfect for small balcony ponds.

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The Mint Test

As I’ve been having trouble wintering over perennials in my horse trough I decided to use mint as a test plant last year. I reasoned if mint (a hardy, woody, Zone 2 variety) didn’t make it through the winter, there wasn’t much point in continuing to try to winter over the plants I love to grow. To my surprise, the mint did not make it – so the horse trough is now officially gone from the balcony. (It went to a good, new home.)

The horse trough was a great idea. If you consider using one on your balcony as a garden container, line it with one and a half inch foam insulation before you fill it. I had a healthy layer of landscape bark in the bottom for drainage. I placed a layer of landscape fabric on top of the bark and then filled the trough with a soil-less mix. Over the years, new soil was added as I emptied containers and planted new favourites. A bag of well rotted manure was occasionally dug in during fall clean up to supplement the top soil. After seven years, the trough was still in great shape with no water retention problems or rusting. I opened the drain every September to make sure there was no residual moisture before freeze-up. Looking for a large container for your balcony garden? Try a horse trough.

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