By Lois Taylor
Friday, October 4, 1996
Bob Chisari's plants get only a brief peek at Kaneohe Bay before they are arranged in acrylic trays and taken indoors to grow.
Photo courtesy of Bob Chisari
Chisari, who lives on a steep hillside above a historic fishpond on Kaneohe Bay, has a miniature forest of tiny plants growing indoors. They are arranged like gardens in clear acrylic trays about 5-by-2 feet.
Never, ever call them dish gardens.
"A dish garden is a dreadful, helter-skelter arrangement of ill-matched plants that you put on your coffee table where they promptly die," Chisari said. Instead, he composes tiny gardens of African violets, begonias, ferns and flowering plants found in mainland gardens.
They grow under halide lamps that are left on from 11 to 13 hours a day, and they never see the great outdoors. Chisari will offer a practical demonstration of indoor gardening at the Honolulu Orchid Society's Annual Orchid, Plant and Flower Show Oct. 19 at Blaisdell Center.
Chisari's plants are nearly all grown in living sphagnum moss, which he considers the finest medium for many indoor plants. "It comes in from New Zealand. All sphagnum moss inhibits fungal and bacterial growth, but the living moss works even better. It is horticultural gold."
The sphagnum moss can't be soaked in boiling water the way the preserved moss is. Instead, he soaks it in tap water for 24 hours. For each quart of moss, he mixes in slightly less than 1 cup of finely crushed oyster shells. To this he adds a dozen crumbled dolomite pills from Longs Drugs, meant as a calcium supplement for humans. "Take a couple yourself," he says. He also gives another dose to each plant every couple of months, crumbling five tablets into each 6-inch pot. Use more for larger pots.
Dolomite can also be bought in 20 pound bags from garden shops, but the indoor gardener would need 25 years to use up that much. If you can find smaller quantities, use about 1/2 cup to each quart of moss.
The garden in its tray is then placed under the halide lamp. "The essential thing now is to be sure that there is good ventilation. It will grow to perfection in air-conditioning, but otherwise, find a comfortable place. I do this by sitting for 15 minutes where I plan to put the garden to be sure there is air movement," he said.
Thereafter, Chisari waters only with distilled water. It keeps the moss from breaking down, and it keeps the surface of the box clear. "If you use tap water, you will get salt deposits and stains, and the planting medium will break down in 18 months. If you want a system that never needs changing, use distilled water."He waters when the medium is dry, and he sprays every day or two with distilled water. ("You can cheat once in a while if you run out of the bottled stuff, but not too often," he admitted.)
After every 10 sprayings, he adds a dilute solution of Peters Peat Special, a 15-16-17 formula made for peat moss and orchid growers. "Don't use regular orchid feed, though, because it has too much nitrogen, which increases the acid balance and will rot the roots," he said.
Double or triple potting is a technique sometimes used by orchid growers to contain roots. Using this practice on potted houseplants maintains a steady soil temperature, important to plants growing in a confined space. Because moisture collects in the outer pots, the system also maintains the humidity necessary for healthy plants.
Two other bits of advice Chisari offers are never to overpot (using a pot too big for the size of the plant) and never to leave standing water in the saucer under the pot. Both are destructive to the root system.
Chisari says that Dr. Charles Lamoureux, director of Lyon Arboretum, shares his enthusiasm for sphagnum moss as a growing medium and a conservation measure.
"I learned from him that a European foundation is working to eliminate the use of peat moss by gardeners," Chisari said. "It takes 2,000 to 3,000 years to grow, and they say it shouldn't be gathered for trivial purposes like planting mix.
"Sphagnum moss grows easily and replaces itself. There is a variety that is endemic to Mt. Kaala that is protected, and it also grows from Glenwood to the Volcano on the Big Island, but that can't be gathered, either. It could be a whole new cash crop here for growers at higher elevations."
Chisari starts most of his plants from seed, and cultivates them in an outdoor hillside garden which he thinks of as an experiment station. "This is where I start mainland ornamentals, particularly those with blue flowers that have become a hobby. I have many successes, and lots of failures. I've probably killed more plants than most people have owned."
What: Indoor gardening demonstration at the Honolulu Orchid Society annual Orchid, Plant and Flower Show
