House Plants - Growing Vertical!

With people finally thinking “green” more are beginning to realize the benefits of plants indoors besides their beauty!

One problem many homeowners and apartment dwellers face indoors is a space problem. They just do not have the indoor real estate to give up for a 10 inch houseplant that stretches 30-36 inches across. We often look only at floor space where the vertical space goes “unused”.

Recently, I purchased some plants from a grower friend and asked that the plants not be well rooted. Why few roots? I wanted to try repotting the plants into smaller containers to see how well they would do.

Growing houseplants which get a little top heavy in a nursery or greenhouse can be difficult with air constantly moving around. Indoors that is a completely different story.

In doing this “test” I down potted the plant from a 10 inch pot commonly called a 3-gallon in the nursery industry to a homemade pot.

I took a 1 gallon plastic water bottle, cut the top off and planted 4 Dracaena canes into this container using LECA rock. This opens up so many new possibilities. The smaller container “footprint” allows the use of some many other decorative containers.

While in the testing planting mode I also planted up 3 Dracaena marginata canes in a 2 liter soft drink bottle to see how well it will do.

I’ll keep you posted on the results and provide more on going selecting plants when going vertical with houseplants in future post.

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