Turn a dull, drab windowsill into a colorful oasis with little effort through bottle gardening.
By JOHN A. STARNES JR.
Published October 16, 2004
[Photo by: John A. Starnes Jr.]
Use bottles of different shapes, sizes and colors to create an attractive garden on your windowsill.
Maybe when you were a kid you did the school project of piercing a sweet potato with toothpicks around its center and lowering it into a jar of water.
This idea of "bottle gardening" works just as well today and can look classy, too. Create an indoor garden in a sunny window with empty decorative bottles, water and a few cuttings and bulbs.
An ordinary onion will send out roots into the water and send up lovely green spires. Start an "onion bottle farm" every two weeks for a perpetual supply.
Want fragrance?
In place of an onion, nestle a prechilled blue hyacinth bulb or a paperwhite narcissus bulb into a jar. White roots and green leaves will emerge quickly, soon followed by richly perfumed flower spikes.
Decorative blue wine bottles sparkle in a sunny window while giving a watery home to hassle-free plants of Nephthytis (Syngonium), coleus, wandering Jew, aglaeonema, Dracaena marginata, "Lucky Bamboo" (actually a dracena species), wax begonia, geranium or impatiens lowered in as unrooted cuttings from mature potted plants. I add a pinch of an all-purpose soluble plant food or a small drop of fish emulsion because tap water has few nutrients.
Care is minimal; keep the water topped off, and if aphids or white flies infest the plants, just hold them in front of your shower head and let the blast of warm water send the buggers down the drain.
Lift your spirits by bringing the outdoors in with a surprising number of plants that thrive in water as well as soil.
- John A. Starnes Jr., born in Key West, is an avid organic gardener and rosarian who studies, collects, cultivates and hybridizes roses for the diverse regions of Florida. He can be reached at johnastarnes@msn.com
