Miniature Dish Garden Care and Maintenance

Miniature dish or container gardens are gardens with tiny accessories, structures and living plants. They are a wonderful way to celebrate the great indoors or outdoors and enjoy the environment in a miniature form. These tiny bits of diverse greenery occupy very little space and bring beautiful areas of interest in the workplace or home settings. Miniature gardens are always growing, changing and evolving just like our life size gardens. Personalized small scale gardens also make a thoughtful gift for friends and family members.

Maintenance of dish garden involves giving the best possible care to the plants. Although care and maintenance may slightly vary depending upon the plant types you choose. Dish gardens thrive in a variety of temperatures, but each plant must carefully be selected to match the environment.

Caring for a Dish Garden:
* First make sure that your dish garden has sufficient light. Light helps to keep the plants compact.
* Make sure that you don't put your garden in a dark area for most of the day. They need the brightest position that suits the plants’ needs.
* Most foliage plants and many of the succulents survive their best with some direct morning sun or bright indirect light.
* Also, make sure that you rotate your dish garden regularly, so that all plants receive equal amount of sunlight and grow upright.

Fertilizing
* Fertilizing is another crucial factor to keep the plants in good condition.
* Do not over feed your dish garden, because you want the plants to remain in a reasonable size for the container you choose.
* Always use sparing amount of fertilizer infrequently, because over fertilizing may cause the plants to outgrow the dish.

Watering and Humidity
* The amount of humidity required by the plants, in the dish garden, varies. For example: most succulents and cacti survive better with average house humidity, while ferns and other foliage plants may benefit from daily misting of their leaves.
* In most of the dish gardens, drainage doesn't exist and the success of it depends on proper watering.
* Allow the soil in your garden to become nearly dry before watering, but never allow the soil to become too soggy or too dry.
* If the container has drainage holes, water slowly and evenly until some water runs out of the bottom. Allowing water to pass through the medium helps to prevent soluble salt build-up that can damage the leaves and leave a hideous crust on the container rim or soil surface.
* Place the dish garden on a tray with water and gravel to improve the humidity level. Misting the garden every day will also create the same effect.

How to Maintain a Miniature Dish Garden:
* Pruning: Prune-off dried or damaged leaves and deadhead flowers as they are easily noticeable in a miniature garden.
* Replacement: Over time, some plants may descend in quality more rapidly than others. After a year when the soil nutrients deplete or the plants have outgrown the container, repot the plants.
* Cleanliness: It is always important to remove the grime and dust in your garden; else it destroys its beauty. Check and cleanup thoroughly and regularly when watering. Wash the leaves of the foliage periodically with water to repress insect pests.

Emotional and health benefits through dish gardens: Plants not only fill a home with burst of color and give the gardeners something to nourish, but also they elicit a spirit of serenity or peacefulness. The utter presence of plants in our surroundings brings a feeling of rejuvenation and can even lift productivity at the workplace. Plants in dish gardens can filter out toxins in the air leaving your indoors fresh, which helps to promote relaxation. They can also aid in removing air borne pollutants and adding humidity to the air making breathing healthier.

Dish gardening takes up a small amount of space, seldom demands much care and if it dries up or if plants grow over the dish, it is replaceable. Dish gardens with tiny succulents may last for several years. Hence, taking a few minutes a day to care and maintain the miniature garden can help to extend the life of dish garden.

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