Transform Your Deck Into an Alternating Flower Garden.

Intro: Transform Your Deck Into an Alternating Flower Garden.

All of us want a beautiful deck, and one easy way to enhance a deck is to add flowers. By using a specific group of flowers, and limited supplies; you can easily transform your deck into a flower garden. By day, it will display one type of flowers, yet by night it will show a completely different type of flower.

This is my first insturctable, please rate and provide helpful criticism. This is my entry for the Get In The Garden Contest

STEP 1: What You Need

The amount of supplies you need depends on your preference. The plan is to plant Morning Glories and Moon Flowers in alternating pots across the rail of a deck. Depending on the size of your deck and how dense your want the flowers to be, the amount of supplies will change.

My deck is about 25 feet across and I placed the pots about 3-4 feet across. Based on my deck you will need:

• Morning Glory seeds
• Moon flower seeds
• 8 6 inch pots
• soil

Remember: change the amounts based on your preferences

Warning: Moon Flower seeds are poisonous if ingested.

STEP 2: Add Soil to the Pots

The easiest and most obvious step, adding soil to the pots. Simply fill the pots about 3/4 full with soil and shake the pots to level the dirt.

STEP 3: Planting the Seeds

Now its time to plant the seeds. Using your finger, poke 3 holes in the soil about 1/2 inch deep. Drop 1-3 seeds in each hole and cover them. You need to put Morning Glories in half of the pots, and Moon Flowers in the other half. It is easiest to separate the pots into rows to do this.

STEP 4: Arrange Your Plants Upon the Rail.

Take your pots and place them on the rail in an alternating pattern. Starting at one end of the rail, if you put a Moon flower first, then put a Morning Glory next. Keep doing this all the way down the rail.Put the pots about 3-4 feet apart. If you want the flowers to be closer together, move them closer.

STEP 5: Water the Plants and Wait.

Now just water the plants regularly and wait. Both these flowers are very easy to grow and don't need much maintenance. Simply keep the soil moist and protect them from any severe weather. After a week or two the plants will start to grow vines. The vines will wrap around your deck rail and flower. The Moon Flowers have buds that open at night, but close at dawn. The Morning Glories have buds that open at day, and close at dusk. Thus half your deck has one type of flower by day, and a different at night.

They will take a while to grow, they sprouted about a week after i planted them. After about a month and a half, they should start to grow vines. It takes a total of about 2-3 months to grow them completely from start to finish. I planted these 1 week after the contest was announced. The are not yet done. I will add pictures as soon as they are done.

Comments

[AmyLuthien]

Morning Glories will germinate better if you soak them in warm water for 24 hours before planting. They'll come up in a day or three depending upon the temperature ;)

[dana-dxb]

i love ur flowers ill grow moon too thanx 4the share

[geelindblom]

Great idea! I can envision these vines dangling from my deck rail. Suggestions: clay pots dry out quickly, so submerge them in water for 15 min. (or more) before planting (plastic pots don't require soaking, duh); dampen the potting mix before planting the seeds, then water lightly after planting; finally, add saucers beneath the pots to collect the excess water. (If you can elevate the saucers with three or four small rocks, you can protect the wood railing from rotting.) Another tip: place a coffee filter in the bottom of each pot to prevent the soil from leaking out of the drainage holes (your pots must have drainage holes!). The coffee filter disintegrates in a couple of weeks.

[sunnymeadows]

that would be so pretty to have flowers by night and day! Great idea.

[ChrysN]

What a neat idea, that would look really cool!