Indoor Stunt Gardening

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post on The Garden.

First...some backround.

I live in a nicely sized hi ceiling apartment with my lady-mate in Brooklyn.

After living in the city for quite a few years we started to get the serious itch for nature that only the most densely populated urban area in the USA can give you. We didn't want to move out of the city so the only logical option was to bring the woods (and sometimes jungle) to our apartment. The biggest snag there was that while we have large bay windows covering an entire wall of the apartment, our 5 story apartment building is surrounded by 25+ story office buildings so we don't really get any direct sunlight.

This being the case I rigged up an el-cheapo grow light system consisting of 2 normal-socket 150 watt grow bulbs, two basic light sockets with small aluminum hoods, an electrical timer, and a few extensions cords. One of the bulbs shines on the ficus tree while the other shines over a shelf with a big something plant and a few other smaller something-else plants. They all seem to be doing well except for a small fern which is brown and out.

This small improvement on the nature situation has helped. We also setup a big freshwater community tank that is going wonderfully and that helps but it's still not enough!

Now I want to move onto a bigger plant pet project that i get some pro consultation on and put a little money into.

This is where posting to yawl bout it comes in ;)

I have a few ideas but I'm not sure what's the easiest, cheapest and least dangerous. Due to the fact that we get zero direct sunlight i assume that additional lighting will be needed. Maybe you guys could comment and tell me just how rediculous my ideas are.

1. An indoor arbor for the living room made with small low-profile planters at the bottoms of each arbor post. Probably use ivy or wysteriaish vine. I could also do something similar in the bedroom i.e. a living canopy bed.

2. A wall of bamboo. Long slim planter or water tray along an entire wall. Long flourscent light overtop. Dense enough to cover most of white paint behind it. Constricting limbs seems like it would be a problem.

3. Medium-Scale apartment vegetable garden. Tomatos, basil, small peppers, herbs, (do they make short corn?) etc. Probably plant in a large modified outdoor planter. We have a long wide hallway that could occupy this. We cook like crazy and the produce here is terrible. This is probably going to become a necessity.

4. Serious hanging garden suspended from ceiling over dinner table. Would also serve as the light fixture for the table.

And that's just a few.

I'm hoping that maybe projects like this will one-day lead to a permanent "apartment stunt gardening" thread.

I'm also hoping i can pull one of these ideas off.

So...what do you think?

Well they are interesting ideas. I will be curious to see how you do them. I can think of ideas sometime but it is harder to plan them out. Keep us posted.

(SIGH>>>>)
Bay windows and no direct light....that's a bummer!

Wow....sounds like work!

I think you have some great ideas, but you need to do some research on the plants you're wishing to grow.

Bamboo, for example.....IMHO, it *needs, wants, has to have* natural light....I just don't see fluorescents maintaining it.
Some plants are just like that....they just plain won't flourish in artificial light.
On the other hand...there are many plants that *will*.

Spider mites might be a problem with the indoor vegetable garden....but I don't doubt that it's been done in NYC apartments...so there must be a way......I wonder if there's a 'gardening club' in NYC for apartment dwellers that you could consult on that? I would think so.

I doubt that Wisteria would grow well indoors, either, and Ivy are famous for their demise (usually from spider mites) indoors without a location that's both cool and bright.

I certainly don't want to discourage your venture....I think it sounds wonderful! But I do believe that you've got some research to do.

Good luck to you....hope those dreams come true!