Newbie Questions :P

[Leo in N E Illinois]

@Leo in N E Illinois good god man! that's a lot of plants. How do you water everything?

It is an unfinished basement, several floor drains. I essentially use a garden hose. Watering the entire collection takes about an hour. Most are set up to need water only once a week. I need to take a new photo, the collection is much less crowded today.

For watering I have a 55 gallon plastic barrel, top cut off. I blend hot and cold water to make sure the water I use is near room temperature (in winter this is important for the orchids in particular, leaf collapse can happen if a true tropical orchid is hit with near freezing temperature water). I have a pump that I use to either re-circulate and mix the water, or to pump it out through the garden hose. I am able to mix fertilizer into the water, without having to use a hose proportioner, if found hose proportioners to be unreliable, delivering either too much or too little.

My carpenter does not think my set up is good for my house, like I said in my initial post, I should have built a vapor barrier first, and I should come up with a better, more controlled method for watering. So don't duplicate my method in your home. But the floor drains are what makes this possible.

 

[lieuz]

@Leo in N E Illinois your comment about the vapor barrier made me breathe a sigh of relief. Would a drip system help?

 

[sorce]

@Leo in N E Illinois your comment about the vapor barrier made me breathe a sigh of relief. Would a drip system help?

Did you miss the "should have" before it!?

Lol....his house is totally gonna fall down!

Seriously......you can get more than just vapor barrier.....

Look into the Proper way to do a tile shower!

Sorce

 

[lieuz]

@sorce OH GOD! I'm so clumsy...::holding breath intensifies:: and floor drains FTW!

 

[sorce]

@lieuz oh God...

I am confused! Lol

Sorce

 

[M. Frary]

I just had to go buy more ass oil....

I make my own.
Every day.

 

[Woodland Spirit]

One thing I do for my tropical non bonsai plants that should work for bonsai. ( my mistakes are in one now) is a 3 foot hole in the ground (3 * 3 * 3) with a ceramic heater ment for chickens, covered with clear plastic in 3 layers spaced 1 inch apart. All this is under a coldframe.
Stays summer in there if you want it to.
Although my mistake pit is colder.
You can stick grow lights on there to lengthen the days. Only thing is it can get to hot if you don't have automatic vents.

 

[JudyB]

other folks who have been hacking away at indoor techniques

Ok, here is my indoor setup. I only keep a Eu. olive, a BRT and a kingsville boxwood. I had a willow leaf ficus in these same conditions, but sold it. I don't do anything special, just a regular shop light fluorescent light and a south facing window. Water about every other day. The BRT and the olive put on a lot of winter growth. (I just did a major cutback on the BRT, and it's just put on a whole new set of leaves with more inner buds coming...) I don't do any extra humidity... I actually think that over humidification can lead to a lot of problems with indoor growing. But this is just my experience, with the few trees I do grow inside ONLY during the winter, they go outside for summer.