After the main battles in the Great And Long War Against The Bugs had been fought (and smaller ones were continuing to be fought), it was time to do some research. I had the plan for the balcony now: more flowers, less leafy plants, a stand for the smaller pots, fertilizer (we speculated that maybe the reason why some of our plants died or were looking sad was because they didn't have enough nutrients), what kind of fertilizer, and the normal plant-care. It wasn't too hard, actually, to find all that stuff out. The hard part was choosing a plant stand that would fit in the "mote."
For some reason, plant stands — even simple ones — are crazy expensive or huge. Like, take-up-an-entire-wall-huge. Even the small ones were too big! That, or too flimsy and weird-looking. Eventually, though, we found one that would fit and got it. While we were waiting for things (the stand and the liquid fertilizer (best option we could find for a balcony garden)), we got another plant!
This plant is one of the few ones we know what it is — a purple shamrock! We got it from a friend, I think. Anyway. Purple shamrocks are pretty cool; they have butterfly-wing-like purple leaves that open or close depending on the sunlight-level. They grow from a bulb and start out small, but when they're happy, they're happy and bloom all over the place. Unfortunately, when they're sad, they're really sad, and don't look so good all the time.
For a little while, our shamrocks were happy. They weren't very big, but they were alive and doing well enough to flower (—> purple shamrock flower). That is until one of our friends wanted a shamrock and we dug up a bulb. The first bulb we dug up went sad and died so we dug up another. I'm not sure if it died, but it was sad. The main plat, though, it was really sad. It had few leaves, most of them were drooping, and no flowers.
After a while of no improvement, we decided to transplant the shamrocks into a new pot to see if it'd do better there. While digging it up, a bulb fell off so I put that one in a separate, smaller pot. To our relief and surprise, both shamrocks recovered and had a blast in their new homes!
Around here the fertilizer and the stand arrived. Everyone of the plants got a good dose of the fertilizer and, in a couple of hours, the plant stand was put up. Since we intended it to stay outside in the weather, we had to varnish it. The smell of varnish (which apparently translates to "wood oil" or "cat oil" or something like that) is horrible *shudder* but it worked, and now we have the stand! (<— plant stand and very happy purple shamrocks!)
All that is left was to get the new plants (mostly flowers). Mom did some scouting and found a nifty plant shop behind our market, so we put our heads together and picked out the plants we would like. Since we don't know many of the flowers' names here, we didn't have many ones we could pick out in advance. Still, we chose to try out orchids again and hopefully not kill them this time, a hibiscus, and two smaller flowers.
As a precaution for the orchids, we did some looking up and discovered that the ones we had were potted orchids, not 'normal' orchids. Apparently, 'normal' orchids don't grow in soil and instead grow around tree trunks in the jungle. Because of their higher ground and exposed roots, orchids can photosynthate with their roots as well as their leaves, so it's best to keep them in a pot with lots of holes. Pretty neat stuff.
Anyway, we are nearing the end of the balcony garden makeover and the end of the Great And Long War Against The Bugs. It all comes to a close in pt.4, where new plants are introduced and the final battle against the bugs is fought.
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