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Post by 12540dumont on Apr 25, 2013 12:25:57 GMT -5
John helped me with the carrot trial. Although he didn't want to!
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Post by 12540dumont on Apr 29, 2013 22:28:52 GMT -5
www.globalbuckets.org/p/grow-bags.htmlOkay, so I really had a use for grow bags, and after staring at one, I said to myself, OMG this is the same bag I'm using at the grocery store. They cost a small fortune at the nursery (come on folks $14.95 each, that's ridiculous.) So I told my husband, it's the same darn stuff I use for interfacing, and the same darn stuff our bags are made of. I went to look it up and found this site, which is very cool. And then I found out this: "One note on reusable shopping bags: I'd been experimenting with some reusable shopping bags we had lying around the house but recently found an article online about high lead contents in said bags - thanks Tomatoville Garden Forum ( www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?p=199465)! Here's the link to that article www.consumerfreedom.com/downloads/ccf_bag_report.pdf. I didn't find the lead content of the bags I used but transplanted my blueberry bushes into porous feed bags instead just to be safe." Well, lead in grocery bags. Ain't that sweet? So, I went out to the barn, and gee willikers, Leo had set aside a dozen or so feed bags. So, what was I using them for? Seems the birds love that coir matting that I use for my hanging pots. I wasn't about to buy coir for blue jays...much as I like the buggers.
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Post by bunkie on Apr 30, 2013 10:11:50 GMT -5
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Post by 12540dumont on May 1, 2013 16:33:30 GMT -5
So I took three 40 lb seed bags of sunflowers and cut the tops off the bags. These didn't ravel and when I filled them full of water, they drained at the sewn seam. One type of chicken food bag ravels when you cut it. I'm pretty sure they cut it with hot knives when the sew them. So I replaced the coir with these plastic bags, as you can see, refilled them with potting soil and repotted the begonias. They aren't as visually appealing as the coir, but the coir is $5.95 a wee circle here now, and I have to redo it every year. So, I thought why not re-use these feed bags? Feeling very proud, I promptly spent $15 on an Elderberry bush. So I still don't have $15, but at least I didn't feel like I wasted it. I may give potatoes a try in these next season. I wonder if gophers would chew through plastic? Attachments:
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Post by 12540dumont on May 1, 2013 17:11:43 GMT -5
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Post by steev on May 2, 2013 0:28:24 GMT -5
My sense is that gophers aren't inclined to chew through plastic, and I've bet 60+ runner bean plants on it. Depending on results, I'm planting out my artichokes as I did the runners, when I set them out next year. I'm starting to think I can container-raise trees and shrubs to set out this way, instead of messing with wire baskets.
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Post by 12540dumont on May 2, 2013 16:39:52 GMT -5
Well, I'm going to give it a try. I do get so tired of making new baskets!
I have hundreds of feed sacks in the barn.
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Post by raymondo on May 2, 2013 17:04:36 GMT -5
My grandmother lined her baskets with the bark of a Melaleuca, not sure which one. Their common name is Paperbark. You can peel the bark off in sheets.
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Post by billw on Mar 6, 2014 21:50:21 GMT -5
This thread really paid off for me. I read it last year when I was trying to figure out how to expand our root & tuber storage. Previously, I used a chest freezer converted to refrigerator with a temperature controller. I wanted to quadruple the space and adding a bunch of freezers seemed like a pain. But then I read about the Coolbot! This week we completed conversion of a 160 square foot room in our storage building to a cold room. The AC barely runs at all and it easily maintains 38 degrees. We'll see how it does in the summer, but our summers aren't really much warmer than our winters. All told, about $1000 for the Coolbot, AC, and a bunch of insulation. We already had enough lumber on hand to build out the walls, floor, and ceiling, which saved a few hundred more.
No more pulling everything out of the packed freezer to find that one thing down at the bottom! And no more moving boxes of tubers from the cold room (where they can sometimes freeze) to the warm room (where they dry out) and back every time there is a major change in the weather.
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Post by steev on Mar 6, 2014 22:55:55 GMT -5
Space to spread one's wings is such a comfort.
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