Hang The Gardening!

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

It has been a long cold winter, but it is going to have-bean a better spring.

You will need one or more 2-litre plastic pop bottles. The smaller size, to the right, are too small. They lack the volume to hold a critical mass of soil sufficient to raise a semi-serious vegetable.

The 2-litre pop bottles are 12 inches or 33 cm tall.

The paper bag is optional. You can slip one over the bottle to act as a sun-shield, if you want.

Planning is Everything!

Starting at the right, I sketched my goal. Cut the bottle into two parts, slip one inside the other, a wick to draw water up from the reservoir, holes around the rim to suspend the whole thing.

A set of holes to let me adjust the depth of my reservoir (I think of everything, eh?)

A bit of arithmetic. The “common” chunks of bottle will have 13.5 cm in common.

I’m so clever!

So I marked 13.5 cm up the bottle, cut it, and dumb thing that I am, found that I had forgotten to add the 2 cm or subtract the 1 cm, or whatever.

So much for clever!

Never mind; it is still a good experiment.

I used my (t)rusty leather punch to punch 10 holes around the rim, one hole every 3 cm or so.

Nothing fancy; I’ve learned my lesson.

Poor photo, but you can see that I have threaded a double string in and out of the holes.

I figure that the string (I could have used wire) will take the weight, and I can use tiny S-hooks to suspend the string belt from chains.

I cut the hem of a piece of cloth into three strips.

I will have one wick that branches out three-ways inside the container.

I used a large (quarter-inch?) drill bit to drill three holes in the cap.

After all these years I still get so excited that I forget to use a piece of scrap wood and now have three tiny dimples in my desktop.

Here is one end of the wick, stapled together because I didn’t want a bulky knot sitting in the water. I’m not sure why …

Here is the pot, inside the reservoir, the cap and wick screwed on in place.

The view from above before I start loading the soil.

I have draped the wicks up and over the rim.

I added about one-third the soil, then snaked the wicks across the surface.

At the two-thirds full point I draped the rest of the wicks.

I don’t want the wicks too high because I want the roots to go deep.

On second thoughts, that’s what we want outside in the garden. Inside I want the roots to maximize their use of the nutrient-bearing soil.

Hmm!

Here is a side-view at two-thirds full. I am about to top up with soil.

The pot is topped up pretty well to the brim.

Here are four broad beans from a packet of seeds I bought at the friendly Home Hardware in Sutton earlier this year.

Before I add the beans, I take some time to drip water onto the soil.

The water percolates through the soil and quickly passes out of the bottle.

This is a good sign because it means that the water will have a free (but not so fast) passage back up the wick as the soil dries out.

The damp soil having settled a half-inch or so, I press my four bean seeds into the soil, then top up the pot with more soil from my beaker.

A plastic bag over the lot and now let’s wait for the beans to sprout!

Monday, May 02, 2011

I had hung my bean-gardening next to the bulb garden and forgotten about it.

Which just goes to show something about Nature and the Force-Of-Life.

Three bean plants have loomed up out of the murk.

It’s very easy to see how the story Jack and the Beanstalk got started!

I watered the device and will keep an eye on it each time I go for a coffee.

Search