It's raining today, so I'm really glad I drove up the coast yesterday to visit my friend, Bonnie. She moved from one condo to another recently, and I hadn’t seen her new place yet. She also has a solarium now and wanted advice on setting up a garden there. After a tour of her new home, we stood in her spacious solarium and made plans. Some of the area had once been a patio, and that part is covered with a solid surface. The rest of the roof and half way down the sides is glass attached by a sturdy metal frame. There are windows that open on three sides and two glass doors. She gets plenty of sunshine and, with the windows open, ocean breezes. The floor is a light colored tile. This place reminds me of a high-end green house and just begs for a garden.
Bonnie drove us to an enormous nursery in Costa Mesa. It's set up in what appears to have been a series of warehouses. It's a landscapers dream. Each room is filled with a different kind of plant or collection of gardening pots, tools, supplies and knickknacks. The areas between the buildings are covered with rows of ornamental and edible plants. It felt like Disneyland for garden lovers. After wandering around and discussing the various options and prices (ouch), Bonnie selected a decorative metal trellis. Very cute and great for pole beans now and snap peas later.
Then it was off to her local Lowe's home improvement store where I knew we would find pots with a more reasonable size, weight and price. When selecting pots, these are the most important criterion. Aesthetics count too, but being able to lift the pot without a fork lift or personal injury is critical to keeping gardening easy. We found a large selection of lightweight pots, many sizes, colors, and designs. What she liked best was the style I purchased. They are eighteen inch square Hampton “deck boxes”. The price has dropped to just under fifteen dollars. Sure beats the eighty dollar ones we had seen earlier. They are so light weight, that you could easily pick up several stacked inside each other with just one hand. She bought two of these for a tomato plant and pole beans. She also picked up a long narrow planter for herbs.
Next we went over to the bags of planting mix and found Mel’s Mix. This is also called Garden Time and/or Square Foot Garden Soil. We picked up two. Well, actually, a young strong male employee did the lifting; we just smiled, pointed, then pushed the cart inside the store where we found another employee to load up one bag of sandbox sand. When I was in my twenties and thirties I would have done the loading of the cart myself, but my lifting days are over. I don’t even try anymore!
Back outside Bonnie selected her plants and a third employee helped load the trunk of her car. We asked him to put the big bags of mix on the bottom and the heavier bag of sand on top. I knew from experience that this would make unloading a snap. When we arrived back at Bonnie’s condo, she fetched a hand-truck from her garage, and we placed one of the plastic pots on the lifting surface. It was easy to slide the bag of sand into the pot and roll it into her solarium. We repeated the process with the bags of mix, and then unloaded the plants. Easy peasy!
She is now ready to plant. The steps are just as easy.
- Drill a hole in the bottom of each pot.
- Place a small piece of panty hose inside the pot to cover the hole.
- Scoop an equal amount of sand into each pot.
- Fill the rest of the pot with Mel’s mix.
- Make a small hole and insert a plant.
- Water.
Until next time,
Elizabeth
