Thursday, July 2, 2009

The VG in the CG

We are wondering how to make the sitting area in the CG better looking. A round table and a couple of chairs are placed next to a fence and the area is quite cooling cos' it's under some trees which give some shade. At this time of the year the area has the sun full blast from 11 am to 3 pm and then it will be in the shadows of the block of flats.

I thought that it would be quite soothing to have a some plants as back drop at the fencing area and then the idea of the VG came to light. Since we have some bamboos and cable tie and a saw in the CG I proposed to my neighbour that we could decorate the fence using a vertical frame and place pots of plants there to get a hanging wall garden. She quite like the idea and the idea of the vertical frame materialised.

Dh and I spent one afternoon about two hours just constructing the frame roughly. I spent another couple of hours over several days to strengthen the frame structure using raffia strings.
I encountered several problems in the process ......

* Using bamboos for an open air vertical frame .....
I don't know how long the structure can remain intact cos' I can see ants and insects making their homes inside the bamboo poles. Maybe better to use those plastic water pipes or even metal water pipes to construct the frame.

* Using cable tie to secure the frame .....
These are only good to help you construct the frame roughly cos' they tend to slip away from their original positions. The joints in the bamboo frames need to be secured with another set of strings or twain. Maybe need to use nails to secure the joinning point so that the poles will not slip downwards after some time.

* Using potted plants with garden soil ....
I can't use soil as the planting media in the pots. It's too heavy for the poles to withstand about ten pots per row. So now I'm changing the soil media to using compost to plant in the pots.
My worry now is whether the plants will grow well or at all in the compost media for the specific plants.

Here's a pic of how the vertical frame looks ......

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2 comments:

Monica said...

Hi Chawanmushi,
Reading your blog for the lst time. It's great!
Just a suggestion to increase the support for your vertical garden frame. How about add another vertical support in the middle. Your horizontal bamboo looks long, so may require another vertical support. It this works, u maybe able to stick to using soil instead of compost.
Just my 1 cent worth.
Have fun!

Chawanmushi said...

Hi Monica
Tks for your suggestion. I did think about that .... now maybe got to work on it :-)