Herself's Houseplants

I’ve been lusting after a small indoor water garden ever since I saw them at a flower show a couple of years back. I have to say growing aquarium plants has been the most challenging for me of all the plants.

This water garden is about 3 weeks old, I’ll post more photos as it matures.

Large glass containers are much easier to find now and much cheaper than they used to be. This one holds about a gallon and a half of water.

The plants you see are from the pet store aquarium dept., nothing special. I also bought a package of bulbs. I added them last week, they should begin to sprout any day now. Small pet stores usually carry a much more interesting selection of plants than do the larger chain stores. The dollar weed that is such a nightmare in your garden also works well in aquariums.

First you need a really clean glass container. I put glass beads at the bottom, what ever stones look best will work. You only need them to weigh down the plants. The stones are about an inch deep. I then added the plants. Add the plants before the water or you’ll be fighting to get them to stay put.

I use filtered tap water. Bottled water turns into an algae nightmare quickly. My water is very hard, the plants don’t seem to mind. Nor does the betta fish.

The fish is just there because I like to watch him. Goldfish eat plants, betta do not.

I placed a fluorescent light onto of the water garden. The plants grew just fine with out it, the fish seems to prefer the light. I found just an hour of dappled sun light is all the plants need to grow. Too much sun grows algae instead of plants.

I add StressZyme and StressCoat 1/2 ml per water change for the fish. and Flourish fertilizer, 1/2 ml per water change for the plants. Any of the liquid fertilizers will do just fine. Avoid the solid fertilizers they turn the water to mud.

The success lies not in any of above mentioned things but in frequent water changes. The more water I change the better the plants do. I drain about half the water and replace with filtered tap water every day while I have my morning coffee.

I received an interesting question by email this week, someone wrote to ask if there was a list of plants preferring to be bottom watered as opposed to top watered.

Most people know that African Violets prefer bottom watering and that’s about it.  While I don’t know of a list of plants preferring bottom to top watering I can give you some rules of thumb:

Bottom water preferring plants:

- Plants that are tropical and prefer moist soil, including African voilets but any plant that prefers moist soil and warm temperatures.

- Plants that don’t like wet leaves, this is usually your warm weather tropicals and plants with fuzzy leaves, like Purple Passion/Purple Velvet plant.

- Bog plants including Venus flytraps, pitcher plants and other bog plants grown inside.

Top water preferring plants:

- Any plant planted in sand like cactus, the sand doesn’t wick up enough water from the bottom to water the plant.

- Any plant in bark, same as above, to bottom water a plant you need  a soil that will wick the water up.  So orchids in bark need water from the top.