Water Gardening

By Wilma Ransom

If you can’t always get the soil you need for growing plants, you may want to try water gardening. Even if you have lots of soil, it’s fun to try something new.

You can use almost any kind of solid container for your water garden, but glass is most interesting because it allows you to see the growing roots. A hanging glass water garden in front of a window is especially nice.

Colored glass vases and small round fishbowls make wonderful water gardens too.

Fill container with water. If the water where you live is chlorinated, let it first stand overnight in a flat, wide pan so that the chlorine can evaporate. To keep the water from going sour, purchase some inexpensive charcoal from a garden or pet shop and put a handful of it into the water; then you won’t have to change the water more than once a month.

If your container has a wide opening, put some pebbles on the bottom to keep the plants from falling over until the roots are big enough to hold them up. Roots grown in water are different from roots grown in soil. Because it is much easier for plants in a water garden to take root in water, the roots are thicker and don’t have the thousands of tiny root hairs that plants in soil need to absorb the moisture.

You can grow almost any kind of plant in your water garden. If you know someone who has houseplants, ask him for a cutting with two or four leaves on it. Ivy is a good plant for a water garden, and so is a coleus.

You can also grow a carrot top in you water garden. Cut about two inches off the top of a carrot. Put the top on wet gravel. Keep the water level just at the bottom of the carrot or it will rot. The top will soon sprout into a very pretty fernlike plant.

Photos by Eldon Linschoten