Popular Indoor Plants for Tropics

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When gardening is pursued indoors as a hobby, it is known as indoor gardening. Indoor gardening can be a leisure-time pursuit or a main hobby for plant lovers. Indoor gardening may be practiced as a practice of horticulture therapy where therapeutic benefits of indoor plants are exploited to the benefits of inhabitants. When a garden is created indoors, it is called an indoor garden. An indoor garden may created indoors of residential as well as commercial buildings. That is, an indoor garden may be created inside residential buildings like individual houses, private villas, and apartments or inside a commercial establishment such as a hotel, hospital, and a business office.

As mentioned earlier, indoor plants are used to decorate interior spaces of residential as well as commercial buildings. Hence great care must be taken while arranging indoor plants so that aesthetics of interiors must be enhanced to the maximum point. While arranging indoor plants, they may be placed either in suitable combinations or as a single specimen piece. For a large room, group of bold leaved large plants must be placed against a big wall. Single plant specimens are most suitable for small rooms. Tall plants like philodendron and rubber plant are best suited for rooms with horizontal lines whereas tall monstera plants and large ferns are most suitable for rooms done in contemporary style with simple straight lines. Ficus, diffenbachia and dracaena are best suited for traditional rooms with ornamental furniture. Plants with red, pink and orange flowers like amaryllis or chrysanthemum are most suitable plants for rooms with white or light colored background. Plants with bright colored foliage like coleus and caladium may also be suitable for decorating such rooms. White flowered plants are best for rooms with dark background while plants with variegated foliage like caladium may also create similar effect.

As far as placing of ferns are concerned, a group of different varieties of ferns should be grouped together to get the best visual effect while in case of begonias, a group of different varieties of begonias should be grouped together to get the best visual effect. While grouping indoor plants for dark corners of the rooms, height of individual plants must be taken into consideration. Tall plants are arranged at the back; medium tall at the centre; and dwarf trailing ones are arranged at the front. While grouping of plants in centre of a hall or room is concerned, tall plants must be placed at the centre; medium tall plants arranged around tall plants; and dwarf ones along the edge. Best plants for such arrangements are potted chrysanthemums; potted asters; potted coleus and caladium. Best indoor plants for table decorations are plants grown in terrariums and glass cases; plants grown in bottles; bowls; dishes and troughs; and aquarium cases. Indoor plants may also be used for creating miniature landscapes inside the houses. By using suitable combinations of foliage and flowering plants miniature landscapes such as woodland scenes; desert scenes or formal garden scenes can be created.

Indoor plants can be displayed in beautiful combinations on floors; window sills and window ledges; tables and desks; book cases and book shelves; shelves and trolleys; window boxes and planters and on plant stands placed on the floor.

An attractive display of indoor plants may be created by keeping pots inside a beautiful metal or red basket. Color, texture and size of the containers should harmonize with those of the plants and the setting of the room. Living and dining room spaces can be divided with beautiful planters having gorgeous foliage and flowering plants for enhancing overall aesthetics of the room.

Roby Jose Ciju, Horticulturist and Agribusiness Consultant from India; Owner of Agrihortico CPL at http://www.myagrihortico.com/

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Methods to Grow Plants Without Soil

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Ponos is the god of labor in Greek mythology and the basis for the Greek word ponics which means hard work. In modern English, ponics is combined with the Greek and Latin words for air and water to describe different methods of soil less agriculture. Photosynthesis in plants requires access to minerals, especially nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. These nutrients are found naturally in the soil but the soil itself is not required for plant growth. So the common thread in all soil less gardening techniques is the existence of an alternative means via air and water of delivering those minerals directly to the roots of the plants.

Hydro is the Greek word for water and hydroponics literally means "working water." It is the name for the process of growing plants in beds of sand, gravel, or similar supporting material that is flooded with nutrient rich water based solutions. Hydroponics is the oldest of the soil less cultivation methods and goes back 1000s of years to the early Egyptians, Aztecs and Chinese. Of the three soil less gardening methods described in this article, hydroponics is the simplest to implement but also the least efficient. Regardless it enables easy indoor gardening and will typically produce crops on about 20% of the land and use about 10% of the water as traditional agriculture.

Aero is the Greek word for air and aeroponics is the gardening technique for growing plants without anchoring them in soil or a nutrient drenched hydroponic media. In aeroponics, the plants' roots are suspended in air in a chamber and intermittently spayed or misted with nutrient-laden water. The goal is to hold the humidity of the chamber at or close to 100% which exposes the roots to abundant oxygen, CO2 and the necessary nutrients. Aeroponics is a relatively new high tech method of gardening dating back to the end of the 20th century. It is well suited to indoor gardening and can produce crop yields that exceed hydroponics by as much as 40%. It is also more complicated and less forgiving than hydroponics. The wet/dry spray cycles must be consistently timed and crops can be severely damaged or completely lost due to even short electrical power outages or equipment failures.

Aqua is the Latin word for water and aquaponics is the modern practice of growing fish and plants in a closed water system utilizing the natural synergistic relationship between these two species. Aquaponics combines hydroponics with aquaculture to create a sustainable food producing process that yields organic fruits and vegetables plus healthy fish populations for either consumption or as ornamental pets.

Aquaculture or fish farming is the growing of aquatic species, such as fish, crayfish and prawns in a controlled environment. A key to the ability to grow healthy fish in an aquaculture system is to maintain the water quality through the removal of adverse elements produced from fish waste products. As previously stated, hydroponics is growing plants in a solution of water and nutrients. Hydroponic farmers must maintain the level of nutrients in the water as they are consumed by the plants adding labor and expense to the processes.

Aquaponics utilizes a symbiotic relationship between the two species to provide nutrients for the plants while at the same time sustaining clean water for the fish As they eat and grow fish produce waste that introduce ammonia into the water which is toxic to most aquatic animals. Through a natural multi-step process known as the Nitrogen Cycle, ammonia from fish waste products are transformed by bacteria into nitrates that are a source of the nutrients that are needed by plants. The plants feed on these nutrients and filter and clean the water for the fish. By combining these two older systems, aquaponics is the ideal answer to a fish framers problem of disposing nutrient rich water and a hydroponic growers need for nutrient rich water.

All three of these growing methods can be used for indoor soil less food production year around. They are a growing alternative for urban gardening and for full scale food production in areas of the world with limited access to arable land.

If you want to read more about aeroponics visit our site at Aeroponics Systems and DIY Aeroponics

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