Beautify an Enclosed Balcony with Plants

 

The very first thing I noticed at very beginning when I arrived at Troy is that there are few apartments. The apartment I mean is at least six floors. People lives here with villa or country house, which is quite cozy and has more space to garden. However, there many people including me lives in a solo apartment with enclosed balcony. Before I went to college, I and my parents lived in an apartment, but we didn’t give up gardening to beautify the room.

 

First, you have to understand enclosed balcony is a terrible living situation to plants. Because the sun light, wind, and rain and dew are limited, so you should start with indoor plants.

 

Then, you have to give up most of heliophile(sun plants). What’s even worse is that most flowers with bright showy color need full sunlight like rose, chrysanthemum, sunflower, etc.

 

Unfortunately, the apartment when I was a child lived with an enclosed balcony, besides that, it is a very small enclosed balcony. I asked my dad to measure it before I wrote the blog. The length is 3m, and the wide is 1.4m. But we have 102 pots of plants.

 

My balcony faces the south, so the sunlight of the balcony has three to four sunlight hours per day.

 

Planting at balcony depends on three elements, sunlight, wind, watering, which are hard to satisfy. Especially in summer, the strong sunlight speed up the transpiration, which means the flowers are easy to get spiritless. Plants rely on ultraviolet ray of sunlight to sterilize and to prevent disease. However, the glass can block 50% ultraviolet, and the sunlight through glass to the room is not direct light but the scattered light.

 

Then, the wind is the second necessary elements to plants. I basically open the window 24 hours. Plants can’t move, so it’s necessary to put them into fresh and running air. What’s more, they can let some parts of moisture through transpiration if they stored over water. If you keep your window closed, the room will like food steamer in summer and the germs dish in winter. The soil will be hardened in the long run.

 

The watering is the last part we should pay attention to. The principle is watering totally if the soil is dry. If you can’t recognize whether the soil is dry, you can check the surface of soil turn into white or not or the pot get lighter than before or not. As watering totally, which means you can see the water flows out through the pot.

 

The last tip I have is to use pergolas, and to choose the right and suitable varieties.