Bring your porch to life
You can have a hanging garden on your porch. However, you need to choose the plants carefully. Photo by Edgar R Batte
If the upper part of your porch feel bare, you can make use of hanging baskets to give them a natural touch.
Esther Murungi, Managing Director of Miracle Gardens and Landscapes at Buziga, near the water pump tells us how:
Bringing your porch to life
“If your porch is empty, you can use hanging baskets as decorations by creating gardens in the air. I buy materials from Nairobi and make the baskets here,” Murungi says.
She adds that the materials are expensive, with frames of about 30 centimetres in diameter each cost Shs15,000.
“They have holes, so I modify them, I have them knitted, with nylon wire. Someone does it for me here.”
The containers
“I line them with polythene paper and punch holes in them so that water can come out. When the baskets are ready, I sell them at Shs30,000 each, without plants. If they are planted, I sell them at Shs35,000 each. I hang them using chains. The people I buy the frames from give them to me, but they get them from hardware shops.
Choosing the plants
“Mix black soil and manure in the baskets Three quarters black soil and a quarter should be manure. Plant and water them, then hang them above the empty spaces. Not all plants are suitable for hanging baskets. Choose plants that trail downwards. Upright plants will not hang down, so they will not look good. Trailing plants that can be suitable for hanging baskets are the Wandering Jew and Baby’s Tears.
Maintenance
Water them during the dry and rainy seasons because the baskets will be in the shade and will not receive water from the rain. Use a 500 millilitre cup of water for each every day, because the baskets are small. When planting, put shade plants in the shade and sun plants in the sun. If you mix them, you will not get good results. Note the type of plants from the beginning and decide where you are going to put them.
Check for weeds every two weeks and add manure once a year. Apply fine manure, but it is advisable to use fertiliser. Applying manure will be like adding more soil, yet you need to keep the soil at the same level always. The best method is to use fertilisers or spray them with a booster.
Re-potting
You can re-pot them after some time. I cannot pin-point a duration because when you look after plants well by removing dry leaves and old parts regularly, they can live for long without you having to re-pot them. They can live for more than two years, depending on how you look after them. The trick with flowers is that if you look after them properly, they will look nice. Prune them every two weeks. Check for dry leaves and old parts, to renew your plants and for the breathing areas to be fine.
Mix fertiliser in the water you are going to use to water your plants. Put it in a pump sprayer and spray the way you would a booster. Bio-deposit is a good booster. You can get it from the container village. A 20-millilitre sachet costs Shs5,000. This quantity is big because it is supposed to be mixed in 20 litres of water.
As you spray your booster, you can mix it with a fumigant. You can use Fumex. A litre costs Shs30,000 at the container village. It is also available at Balton (U) ltd.’ Another advantage of hanging gardens is that children and pests cannot tamper with them, so their beauty will be intact.
