CHENNAI: We all love to be outside and close to Nature. It keeps us happy and healthy. But today’s lifestyle allows us little of that luxury and we keep it for weekends and holidays.
It possible to surround yourself with Nature indoors. You can have plants in your living room, dining hall, kitchen and even bathrooms. Apart from making the place look pretty, these home grown plants can purify polluted air. A study conducted by NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America found that houseplants are a great way to purify air in indoor spaces. The awesome thing is they do so free of cost.
Basically these plants need less sunlight and water compared to outdoor plants. They grow slowly with a nice leaf canopy and rarely produce flowers and seeds. They are propagated with cuttings or other vegetative parts, and not with seeds.
Where to Grow?
Indoor plants can be grown in a section of your home. The plants growing near the window and entrance will get good light. Grow lights could be used to provide lights in the air-conditioned rooms. Pots can be placed in the living room, dining hall, kitchen or in bedrooms. Hanging pots can go on staircases and at entrances. Creepers can grow on the window sill.
Pots
The indoor plants can be grown in any kind of pot. The pots should be smaller than the plant. Copper, ceramic or metal containers looks great. To make your garden more beautiful, ordinary plastic or mud pots can be kept inside the metal containers. This way the outer metal containers can be used for a long time. The outer pot can be filled with a layer of stones and sand. Then keep the plant pot above the sand layer. The excess water drained from the plant pot will get absorb by the sand, giving a cool and moist environment for the plant.
Potting mixture
Potting mixture used for the indoor plants can vary slightly from the regular potting mixture. As these plants grow slowly, we need to provide them with less moisture and nutrients. The cactus-like plants like Agave, Aloe etc like more sandy soil. The potting mixture could be 2 parts of sand and 1 part of compost. The orchids needs more aeration for the roots. For orchids make the potting mixture with stones, brick pieces, charcoal and wooden pieces. No soil is needed. In this mixture water won’t stagnate and it will facilitate more aeration. For other plants cocopeath, sand and compost mixed at the ratio of 1:1:1 can be used.
General maintenance
Indoor plants need a little more care than outdoor ones. As they are slow growers, they need less amount of water, light and nutrients.
Water the indoor plants, when the top layer of soil gets dry. Only add measured amount of water which can be absorbed by the soil with no drainage. Turn the plant once in a month towards the light or keep the plant outside for 3 to 4 hours.
Wipe off the dust on the leaves once in a while, this makes the plant looks fresh and clean Once in a year add some compost with the potting mixture and re-pot with the same soil.
For more information on urban farming or any other related queries contact the author at nalini@artyplantz.com.