1. Light
• Depending on the sun that the terrace receives due to its orientation (East, West, North, etc.), you should choose plants for sun or shade.
• Plants with flowers, in general, need more sun.
• It is good to regularly turn the pots so they receive the same light everywhere, otherwise you will find crooked and depopulated plants on the one hand and with less flowers.
• Never expose one that has been in shadow to the direct sun of blow and bump because the leaves can be burned; you should accustom her progressively. This is the case, for example, when the plants that have spent the winter in the interior are taken to the terrace.
• The pots in the sun become very hot (more if it is dark in color).
• Below 0 ° C the mud cracks and can break. Uncooked clay containers and glazed ceramics should be insulated with burlap sacks, bubble wrap, tarpaulins, etc. to protect them from frost, or to place them in protected places. Clay pots with small cracks can be arranged by surrounding them with a wire.
Lack of light
Do your plants bloom little?
Do they have an elongated growth?
Are they leafy and leafless on the bottom?
They are symptoms of lack of light.
2. Wind
The cold north winds.
The warm winds that dry the plants.
The coastal wind that carries salts that are deposited on the leaves and burn them. Protect the plants from all this.
In difficult conditions of strong wind, choose hard species.
3. Humidity of the air
Spray the leaves with water in dry weather without wetting the flowers, since they would last less.
Other methods to increase the humidity are:
Grouping them together to create a humid microclimate.
Put the pots on a plate with stones and water but without touching the bottom of the pot.
4. Substrates
• Buy quality substrates for pots. There are very good and very bad.
• Do not use garden soil because it contains a lot of clay, it compacts, it carries fungi, weeds.
• It is highly recommended to mix perlite with the substrate you buy. It will provide aeration and more water retention. Another good material to mix in substrates is coconut fiber. An example would be: peat + fiber + pearlite, all three equally.
• If you do not find either pearlite or coconut fiber, use thick, washed river sand or chopped white cork to aerate the substrate.
Any of these four materials (pearlite, coconut fiber, sand or cork) provides aeration and also save money since they are cheaper than peat or mulch to make volume.
• Do not forget to deposit in the bottom of the pot or planter, over the holes, gravel, expanded clay, pieces of pottery, etc. And if you have pots in the window, put a layer of gravel on the ground so that the rain do not splash the crystals.
5. Watering of pots
• Frequent error in the cultivation of plants in a pot is the excess of irrigation that rots the roots. The lack of water is also fatal, although it is always better to stay short than to go.
• If you are dying, look first at how you are watering and check if the container has clogged the hole in the bottom where the excess water comes out.
• To know when to water, the best method is to introduce your fingers in the substrate and check if it is wet or dry. Other methods are:
• Take the handle of a knife and hit the pot. If a clear or clear noise is produced, it means that the plant needs water. The dull sound indicates that it is full. Try it in a pot before and after watering, you'll see how it sounds different.
• With practice you can notice when taking the pot in weight if you have more water or less.
• Moisture meters that are punctured. It also orientates.
• It is good that between watering and irrigation the earth dries a little. It is not the same a wet earth that soaked.
• More watering if it is in the sun and more if the drying wind gives it. With hot wind in summer, watering pots and planters practically every day.
• If you have clay pots, remember that the walls are porous and lose water around. You will need more irrigation than plastic or enameled water.
• Water early in the morning or at dusk, not with the sun in full height.
• If you can, install an automated drip irrigation system on the terrace. In summer, when it is watered almost daily, you will realize how comfortable it is.
• There are also self-watering planters with a tank that supplies the water as needed.
• In the season that the plants stop throwing flowers, it reduces the irrigation frequency so as not to saturate them, since they need less quantity.
• To try to recover an excessively watered plant, carefully remove the root ball from the pot and wrap it in several layers of absorbent paper towels. Leave everything like this for 24 hours. If the leaves are soaked, add new ones. Then return to put the plant in the pot and do not water it for several days.
• It is essential that the lower orifices drain well. Cover them inside with pieces of pottery from broken pots better than gravel and will not clog.
• If you put a dish under the pot to collect the excess water from the irrigation or a flowerpot, empty it after a short time (for example, 30 minutes) since stagnant water can rot the roots of the plant.
Tips to save water
1. Use drought-resistant species (you have to water them less).
2. Cover the surface of the substrate with fine-grained pine bark, Chinese, gravel, expanded clay pellets, etc.; this will protect the moisture from the substrate.
3. Shade the species most sensitive to heat.
4. Group the plants to create a wet microclimate.
5. Irrigation in the early morning or at dusk is the best. It loses less by evaporation and the plant takes it better.
