More Plant Works and Planting Tips (Indoors)

I've been told often that we have house plants at home so I can do woodworking projects out of them. Half-guilty as charged because the other reason is the benefit home owners get from indoor plants that are clearly better at air cleaning, purifying and absorbing airborne chemicals, giving off oxygen in exchange for the carbon dioxide that we, including indoor pets, exhale. Plants also act as humidifiers in homes that could get dry from both air conditioning and heating (during winter). And plants do not have to be plugged in.  Little watering and minimal fertilizing are all they need.

1. Cloning Indoor Plants (Propagating from Cuttings)

We all have plants die on us, me included. But it is also well known that many species of plants can easily be made to multiply with very little effort. Cloning a favorite plant is quite fulfilling and a money saver when propagating your favorite plant or plants that are proven to do well in your home. Time - two weeks at the most - will root so many different cuttings with very little fuss.

"Mother-in-law's tongue" (Sansevieria trifasciata or snake plant) is an ideal plant for indoors because not only is it a great oxygen generator, it is easy to grow, very resilient, and above, all easy to propagate. Stick one leaf in the soil, allow for a few weeks, water regularly, and an entirely new plant will emerge.  Sometimes, the clone may even look differently from the parent plant. What is amazing about this plant is that when it takes carbon dioxide, it keeps the carbon like all plants do but it keeps the oxygen throughout the day and releases it only at night. It also conserves water that way.

 Photo below, the new cluster of leaves that came out look so different from the single parent leaf on the left.

A week to 10 days of soaking in water are often enough time for roots to come out. The cuttings are then ready for the soil.

  

This prolific plant not only clones easily, it is very low maintenance and quite water-tolerant. Note the roots fully developed while still in water.

Non-draining plastic planters work

2. Ivy Climber Part 2

I think the photos should be self-explanatory. Perhaps it is worth noting that I took the time to use a metallic primer before painting to insure the stem buried in the soil is rot-proofed.

3. Non Draining Planter

Using non-draining planters is ideal for house plants because of the minimal watering that is required. And there all kinds of options on what you can use. For example, below is half of what used to be a convection oven before the top cooking element failed. Instead of throwing it away, I used it a non-draining planter. A punch bowl you don't like anymore will work too; any large glass bottle, flower vases, any clear wide-mouth tall glasses will work as well. Clear sides allow for checking water level.

Any glass container will do

Flower vases make good non-draining planters (shown here by the kitchen sink)

4. Some Wood Works and a Narrow Glass Planter

Below, the spider plant, is what NASA picks as the plant to accompany future astronauts during extended space travel for its high oxygenating efficiency, easy and fast prolific grower. 

Plants return so much more than they require from us.

Ivy Climber

God created the ivy for every human being born without a "green thumb". That is not to say, however, that everyone who has ivy in their garden or as an indoor plant has no green thumb. Call it God's infinite wisdom but we all know the ivy can withstand neglect and is very hard to kill. Yet, it is the perfect plant indoors. We all know that plants are the ultimate air purifiers and particularly good at absorbing carbon dioxide and providing human and pets indoors with oxygen in return. Ivy is very good at it and it demands very little. But what has it got to do with woodworking? Very little. However, what little a woodworker can do is the least he or she can offer the humble ivy.

An array of ivy in various vases and plant stands are a way to show them off.

Ivy can be coaxed into climbing a "scaffolding"

Ivy will do well in pots or on a tiny indoor plot in our home.

Ivy love to climb. I've used sticks - several if needed - as scaffolding for them to climb. 

Sticks for ivy to climb are good because they don't take up too much of the soil but they're not very good to look at. A branch or tree trunk will look good specially once the ivy takes up root around the circumference. The downside is that the stout trunk or branch will take up a good chunk of the soil to bury it in. And it will be prone to rotting from the water or moist soil.

 A friend gave me this one really seasoned fence post - probably mesquite - that will make a great climber post for ivy. It is a solid hardwood, not easy to cut, drill or plane or ripped into work pieces but I was determined to make it a woodworking project and to showcase an idea. I thought of using a "spike" to "plant" the climber without burying any portion of it into the soil, thus avoiding the moist soil directly, to avoid rotting. The solution: (a) drill a 5/8 in hole; (b) insert and glue a 5/8 inch dowel rod; (c) sleeve a PVC pipe that has a 5/8 inch inside diameter through the dowel; (d) "Plant" the post into the soil with the spike. Photos below should explain how. This idea will work on pots too.

Ivy is a creeping plant on flat soil surface but loves to climb or hang downwards. In a few weeks or months the ivy shown here will "fill" the entire circumference of the post.

Wooden I-Beam

The Wooden I-Beam

Steel - the most common material used in building or for reinforcing man-made structures is itself a fabricated material; by adding carbon to naturally soft(er) and pliable element that is iron. Once infused with carbon iron is now steel. But the one attribute that cannot be avoided is its weight, specially on "long span" applications. So, to counter the sagging effect of weight to strength ratio over long spans, the I-Beam was invented. The I-Beam allowed for countless structures to be created with less weight and material - from railroad tracks to steel frames for skyscrapers to long-span bridges, even to car chassis, etc.

Timber and wood are also one of the most widely used construction materials and technology also caught up with their development along the path taken for iron. Modern engineered wood begun with the creation of plywood and laminated wood. Today, wide plywood boards laminated with narrow boards along opposite edges make for a very rigid material that resist bending with a lower weight to high strength ratio.

In a much smaller scale, this is my version of the I-Beam made from the most common wooden material - stock lumber from the home center and plywood construction sheets and glue. I think the photos are self-explanatory enough except for a few notes on certain tips.

First, 2 X 4 stock lumber ripped to witdh and cut to length.

Stacked dado blade cut the 1/2 inch channel along the length of the work pieces cut to width.

Narrow strips of 1/2 inch plywood ripped to desired width.

Tip: Sometimes lumber, stripped to narrower widths, might warp or curve. Next two photos show two thicker, more rigid flat lumber used as backer boards from which clamps are anchored during glue up.  When the glue dried the finished I-Beam will have been relatively free of any significant curving or warping.

Had a similarly-dimensioned lumber been used the span will at first be straight and appear stiff, but once weight is added it will over time sag towards the middle.  This I-Beam construction, using only two spans and lighter than solid pieces of the same or even thicker dimensions, will remain straight and rigid. This has potential for other construction applications, such as work benches and heavy duty shelves.