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Learn how to build a container garden in the shade in this free home gardening video. Get beginner gardening tips, ideas & advice. Expert: Scott Reil Contact: www.safelawns.org Bio: Scott Reil is an accredited nurseryman and longtime horticulturalist with over two decades of experience in the field. Scott is now working for www.safelawns.org. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso

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Part 1 - Learn how to create a terrarium container garden in this free home gardening video. Get beginner gardening tips, ideas & advice. Expert: Scott Reil Contact: www.safelawns.org Bio: Scott Reil is an accredited nurseryman and longtime horticulturalist with over two decades of experience in the field. Scott is now working for www.safelawns.org. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso

Gardening Videos backyard, care, DIY, garden, Gardening, grow, home, howto, ideas, planting, plants, tips

Learn how to grow herbs in a container garden in this free home gardening video. Get beginner gardening tips, ideas & advice. Expert: Scott Reil Contact: www.safelawns.org Bio: Scott Reil is an accredited nurseryman and longtime horticulturalist with over two decades of experience in the field. Scott is now working for www.safelawns.org. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso

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Learn how to plant window box container gardens in this free home gardening video. Get beginner gardening tips, ideas & advice. Expert: Scott Reil Contact: www.safelawns.org Bio: Scott Reil is an accredited nurseryman and longtime horticulturalist with over two decades of experience in the field. Scott is now working for www.safelawns.org. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso

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Learn how to choose soil types for a container garden in this free homegardening video. Get beginner gardening tips, ideas & advice. Expert: Scott Reil Contact: www.safelawns.org Bio: Scott Reil is an accredited nurseryman and longtime horticulturalist with over two decades of experience in the field. Scott is now working for www.safelawns.org. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso

Gardening Videos backyard, care, DIY, garden, Gardening, grow, home, howto, ideas, planting, plants, tips

Learn how to water container gardens in this free homegardening video. Get beginner gardening tips, ideas & advice. Expert: Scott Reil Contact: www.safelawns.org Bio: Scott Reil is an accredited nurseryman and longtime horticulturalist with over two decades of experience in the field. Scott is now working for www.safelawns.org. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso

Gardening Videos backyard, care, DIY, garden, Gardening, grow, home, howto, ideas, planting, plants, tips

Learn how to plant your container garden in this free homegardening video. Get beginner gardening tips, ideas & advice. Expert: Scott Reil Contact: www.safelawns.org Bio: Scott Reil is an accredited nurseryman and longtime horticulturalist with over two decades of experience in the field. Scott is now working for www.safelawns.org. Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso

Gardening Videos backyard, care, DIY, garden, Gardening, grow, home, howto, ideas, planting, plants, tips

As might be expected, most plants suited to this method of propagation have comparatively soft and fleshy leaves. There are two types of leaf cuttings : those that make use of leaf and stem and those requiring the leaf alone. An example of the first is the dainty African violet and of the second, the gorgeous Begonia Rex.

Merely knock the plant from its pot, tease away some of the soil from the roots and with a sharp knife cut away the new shoots together with the roots closest to them. Pot these up in fresh soil. Well grown Saint Paulias or African Violets after a time grow to a stage where they should be divided if they are to continue growing and blooming. In this case again knock the plant from its pot and gently ease away much of the soil, damaging the roots as little as possible. It will be seen that instead of a single plant there are in fact a considerable number and many of these can be gently separated from the mass and potted up individually.

A considerably more artificial derivation of the layering process is known as air layering. It is particularly useful for the following reason. Many plants such as the rubber plant gradually lose their lower leaves so we are left with a long, naked stem with a tuft of foliage at the top. This is both hideous and a demonstration of our inability to grow the plant properly. If we can take the tuft at the top and make a new plant from it, then we can begin again.

Plants permitting a leaf cutting rather than a leaf and stem also frequently have a further advantage, allowing the leaf to be cut into many pieces, each producing a separate plant. Examples here are Begonia Rex and Sanscvieria.

The begonia leaf can be cut into several sections and so long as each cut has been made to sever one of the prominent veins, roots will grow from this part. The spear like Sanscvieria can be cut into two inch sections. Each of the sections, from begonia or sansevieria, should be planted with the end originally nearest the stem or base into the soil.

Still another method with the begonia is to pin a whole leaf securely to the soil or sand surface using hairpins or similar bent pieces of wire. Make sure that the whole of the underside of the leaf is in intimate contact with the moist surface. Then merely make a cut right through the leaf at a number of the main veins. Use a very sharp knife or better still a razor blade. If this cut part is in contact with the moist surface below, new roots will form here and eventually new plants.

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Water is essential to all forms of life. No life can exist without moisture. Food, warmth and light are all less important than water, and just as humans can live longer without food than they can without water, so can plants.

The replenishment of the air around the roots of a plant is essential because these pore spaces become filled with carbon dioxide breathed out by the roots and this must be dis-placed with the oxygen present in the air above the plant. The carbon dioxide is a poisonous gas (although I hasten to reassure you that the minute amounts released into our homes by plants could under no circumstances be of any harm to humans) and can achieve high concentrations in a comparatively short space of time.

Even better results are obtained by soaking the pot thoroughly by submersion. In this case the pot is taken to a bucket or sink of water and submerged entirely, even the plant itself going under water in certain circumstances. If the plant is left there until air bubbles cease to rise from the soil surface this will mean that every air space will be filled with water.

The plant is then removed and placed to drain. Water will swiftly course out of the hole in the base of the pot and as this rushes away oxygen is sucked into the pot and quickly fills the vacated pores.

It is helpful to know the two functions of the process of watering to understand why the application of water to a house plant is a vital matter. When you pour water on the soil at the base of a plant this water quickly disappears downwards through the soil and if sufficient has been applied it trickles out through the hole or holes at the base of the pot.

Now when this water courses through the soil it drags clown after it by suction a certain amount of air. Both water and air are essential to the life of the plant roots.

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They are merely practical hints on the placing, tending and training of plants which can enable the housewife or home owner to display his or her talents and personality and at the same time obtain greater value and reward from the plants in the home.

Beside the little wine serving table in the dining-room stands a plant of Philodendron imbe, usually known as Burgundy because of the deep, rich, wine red of its lanceolate leaves and in the bedroom are several soft, intimate, dainty and delicate plants of African violets, seldom without flowers the whole year through. In the kitchen grow pots of quick growing and easily replaced chives and mint and the elegant cone of a little bay tree.

Too often an elegant, upright sansevieria or even aspidistra over years of careful tending becomes a bush or a forest of spears and loses its identity. Divide these crowded plants so that they retain their basic shapes.

The main thing is to use the plants. They are your plants and you can therefore use them any way you wish, however fanciful or bizarre. Why, for example, should a severe and stately rubber plant be allowed to look so aloof and dignified? Take it down a peg and let a climbing ivy or cissus grow at its base and wind its trails through the large, stately, stolid leaves. Why should a sansevieria be allowed to look so rigid and spear-like? Give it a little tutu of sedum or some other succulent to soften it. Why should a great monstera with its slashed and holed leaves and its snake-like aerial roots be allowed to look so dramatically sinister and evil? Hang the odd gay Christmas bauble among the leaves to shine and glitter and cause amusement.

Look at your plants carefully, determine their basic characteristics, shapes and habits and then utilize these to the full.

Remember that warm air travels upwards and the area immediately under the ceiling is likely to be both warmer and drier than at foot level, so where plants are to grow tall or be placed high, increase the relative humidity of the room slightly for their benefit.

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