i got to thinking about this, and realized you could do the same with less work by using gravel instead of pvc. that's p much how i have my toad enclosure set up, so that the soil is never dry (toads are less sensitive to dryness than frogs, but they're still amphibians) but also never wet enough to give the round boi a sickness. the fern, palm, and bamboo in the enclosure are thriving. no reason it wouldn't work on vegetable planters too.
I have seen people try it with gravel or part gravel and part pvc, which I intend to experiment with. However detractors say that this is the WRONGEST WRONG way to do it and point out that gravel a) doesn't actually aid in wicking the water b) that it displaces the water instead of forming a reservoir and c) it's much heavier if you ever need to move it. I want to try a combo drainpipe and gravel anyway.
Cleaned up the perennial herb & fruit garden and put down these seed mats which should contain creeping thyme seeds. In theory they should become a ground cover that creates a living mulch and will still be edible culinary thyme.
We hit the hardware store for seeds! Seen here hanging out with the snow boots, bc the ground is still frozen ofc. Couldn’t find any patty pan squash or seedless cucumbers so I must remember to get those online.
Woof, did a lot the last couple weekends. Potatoes are in fabric pots, onion starts are in the ground, carrot and radish seeds are planted between them. To the side of that, I've sown lettuce, peas and rainbow chard. Ground is prepped for broccoli and cabbage and they're hardened off, but I ran out of steam this weak (bad pain flare up that made me miss two days of work and then got a cold from the tiny+period both ganged up on me on Saturday).
Okay so those aren't shopping bags, they're fabric pots, but you can grow potatoes in shopping bags! Well sort of. The plastic grocery bags you get from a store aren't sturdy enough on their own. It's just like growing potatoes in any other container otherwise. Here's a pleasant Scottsman and his cute border collie Molly explaining it, but basically you take a large (at least 5 gallon but larger is better) pot or bucket and line it with a plastic grocery bag. You can pull it out of the pot to check growth and harvest off smaller potatoes over the course of the season and put it back without disturbing anything.
That is awesome! I linked it to my mom (who likes to grow potatoes, among other stuff) and we'll see if she thinks it's a technique worth trying this year.
ooh neat, thank you! those fabric pots look just like the reusable shopping bags the local co-op keeps giving me, i have like 20 of them. :P
Broccoli is in the ground with more onions! Gotta pot tomatoes peppers up to the next stage again because they still have 3 or 4 more weeks before they can go out, and next week I'll be starting the cucurbits indoors. Garden is repidly hurtling toward May Days and being fully planted out!
http://www.greencastonline.com/tools/soil-temperature soil temperature map! could be very handy for judging when to plant stuff. i would not have thought the soil temp here was 55f right now, considering there were still patches of snow in the shade two days ago. but apparently i could've planted peas last week.
i made an impulse-terrarium after watching a bunch of terrarium vids on youtube and taking a walk in the woods! technically a mossarium, because it just has moss the moss came with a tiny snail!
Overheard the other day, as my parents were examining the seedlings that my dad has been tenderly nurturing: Dad: "Do any of these look like pot plants?" Mom: "Nope, they look pretty tomato-y." Dad: "Damn." (They grow their own pot, and share it with some friends.) Mom thinks the potato technique is worth trying as an experiment, since otherwise potatoes take up a lot of room.
heh, one of my neighbors was convinced i'm a pot grower because i had a tomato plant under a gro-light. tomatos and cannabis are playing silly buggers.
Conundrum: half the damn lawn is either dandelions, red dead-nettles or sweet peas. I would very much like to be rid of them, but weedkillers are bad for the environment, right? And occasionally we let one of the cats explore the yard (supervised) so I wouldn't want to hurt her, too. Any ideas, or do I just gotta accept that I can't walk barefoot lest I get rashes from the little nettles?
