Ligaya Gardening Tips #10 microclimates

We often get asked for gardening tips, so have decided to do a weekly post describing things we do to keep our garden going well with little effort.

I’ll collate them on this page.

Here’s this week’s…

These hanging plants are on the back wall of the house to capture the light and warmth of the morning Sun. The brickwork holds the heat for a while and helps the plants to grow, or at least to survive the Winter.

I decided to experiment a bit and placed them in slightly different positions. The one on the far left gets all of the Sun until it has passed over the house. As you look further left in the picture, the plants are in deeper shadow earlier as the Sun moves across the sky. The width of the set of plants is about 1 metre.

In total, on a sunny Winters day, the plant on the far left receives 2 hours more light and heat than the one on the far right. That’s the only difference, watering and feeding are the same for all plants.

Tiny differences in location and position are called ‘microclimates’ and by paying careful attention to the small differences, you can improve plant health and growth a lot. You can even have species in locations where they shouldn’t be growing.

Microclimates can be caused by light and heat, moisture (in the air or soil) and wind. They could also include non climatic things like soil drainage and pH.

I’ve talked about them a bit before in Tip #7

So if you’re having trouble growing a particular plant, or you have some growing too well, the area around them could have it’s own microclimate.