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bonsaiTALK Craftsman
Join Date: Feb-2007
Location: Adelaide Hills
Country: Ausralia
Posts: 71
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Extreme conditions are fairly standard for our summers! The hot north winds can dry out pot plants in a few hours. In the colder months I would prefer the benches, for the reasons you mention, but in summer my more water hungry things need to huddle together in as much dampness as they can find. Slugs and snails are worse at ground level, but possums prefer to eat high up, so I can't win with pests. The frogs and resident lizard are probably eating the ground pests. I have the possums excluded for now, so things are actually surviving.
I'm actually cheating here, there are plants on wire benches, and another layer of plants below at ground level. They get less sun, but they still get a bit as it slants in from the north. Husband is building me another shadehouse, I got a space issue!
The benches are made of stainless steel mesh, which we got for free. At the far end I have a double sink, again stainless, which I use as my potting area. I keep an aluminium tub with about an inch of water in the bottom next to the sink, so I can plunge water my plants immediately after potting. Saves me from running off to answer the phone or change the baby and forgetting to water things. They stay in the water until the next morning, when I lift them out to drain and do my next round of potting.
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