Help Wanted: Soda Drinker

Museo Pambata display

When diy projects are successful, we show off and take photos in all sorts of angles with varied backgrounds.  However, when a bowl made of magazine scraps result in what looks like a giant wad of chewed up gum, we toss the whole thing and forget it even happen.  And that's why you don't see any photos of that thing in this post.  Instead, here are photos of my new hanging "pot" made out of a soda bottle.  I got this idea visiting the Museo Pambata, (at right) a children's interactive museum in Manila, PI.  Since we don't drink soda, it took a while to acquire the one bottle.  I still have a few smaller plants outside enduring the temperature changes waiting for someone to come by and finish another bottle of soda.  In the meantime, the one strawberry plant is saved.


Materials:

• empty and rinsed soda bottle
• marker
• box cutter
• string
• drill

Procedure:

1. drill a hole through the center of the bottom of the bottle large enough to thread the string through
2. drill another hole through the bottle cap.   
3. thread the string through the holes.  cut the string to 2 pieces, and knot off each end to keep string from getting through the holes.
4. draw 2 large squares and cut out using the box cutter
5. fill the rounded end with soil and insert plant.
6. hang bottle up-side-down with bottle cap pointing down..

 I cut the string I'm holding and knotted it off to keep the string from falling through the holes.

bottom string allows the water to filter on to the next bottle (coming soon) or a planter.

Gardening Conquistador (Part 2)

My poor snowman I so carefully and painfullly (for 2 days after) scultped is now reduced to a stump.  Which means spring is right around the corner, which also means, time to get gardening.  Now, most gardening sites/magazines will tell you, you should be germinating your seeds at this time to ensure it's survival once you commit them to the ground. I always intend on doing this, but sometimes work schedules get in the way, or that darn procratination bug rears it's ugly head that by the time I actually get to it, it's full blown spring or even beginning Summer.  This time however, I'm really going to do it.  I will get my garden started before spring.  But before I get on about which vegetables I'll be planting this year, and showing you adorable baby photos of light green stems curling out of its seed in a wet paper towel, I wanted to catch you up on my life as a gardener so far.
The first year I had a garden (2009), all I did was commit a patch of land and turned the soil and pulled some cable wire roots (see previous blog).  That's it!  I didn't do anything - too busy to remember to stop by Home Depot to pick up seeds, too tired at the end of the day to garden, but mostly, too confused on what to do next.  I recall thinking to myself as I was digging out the lovely patch of green, "I'm really going to do this?  Every painsaking task will be done by ME?  EEEeeps!"  For some reason, I  thought planting involved more than putting seeds in the ground.  All my research talked of soil testing, arranging, planning, rows and columns.  The only thing that grew in my patch of dirt I indignanlty called a garden were the dandylions and other weeds taking advantage of the real estate I carved out. Until one (June) weekend, my parents came by with a small tomato plant and eggplant (uhh) plant and stuck it in my designated patch of dirt.  For a while, it didn't do much: no flowers, no buds, no obvious growth, nothing.  And so I left it alone, sure that it would eventually wither away and die before bearing any fruit.  At some point during the summer, my husband and I went out on vacation for a week. and when we returned, our designated garden area blew up in to a mini-amazon forest.  Motivated by the site, I got in there the following weekend and diligently weeded our garden.  Fortunately, my parents happen to visit again that weekend and stopped me from killing the plants.   Apparently, the tomato had taken to the soil and multiplied.  I probably pulled out about 5-8 large healthy tomato plants - oops!  Still, by the end of the summer and early fall, we enjoyed some hearty tomatoes and eggplants.  And it yielded so much that I had to give some away.


Last year, I was late again on getting a garden going.  Fortunately, a friend was staying with us for the summer and asked if he could plant some vegetables for an experiment.  This mad scientist friend decided to mix up a bunch of different seeds and sprinkle over the garden patch - in hopes to get some sort of hybrid vegetable (scratching head).  He watered it daily and  doted on it - much to my delight (better him than me) and doubt ("nothing's gonna grow" I said to myself).  A few weeks later, waddayaknow???? some seedlings came up.  Though we didn't see any tomato-squash, or cucum-peppers, a variety of plants did grow.  Throughout the summer, the weaker plants gave way to the more resilient types  namely:  squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers all tangled up in a lovely heap I proudly called a garden.  At some point, I had bought one of those pre-grown Basil with roots at our local grocery store and bravely stuck them in, and it GREW much to my surprise. It wasn't pretty, but at least we were able to harvest throughout the summer and the early parts of Fall.  AND more importantly - I learned it is as easy as literally throwing seeds in to the ground.


So ok, I've never been the originator of the garden, but at least I've maintained them.  Despite  my haphazard approach to gardening, it's become an important part of my yearly/seasonal  (dare I say) hobby.  Not only is it cheaper ($3/seed pack will yield a season's worth of food - can't beat that - unless you save your seeds from last season's harvest), I've also noticed the vegetables I conveniently pick right out of my backyard are heavier, juicier and flavorful than the store bought variety.  Afterall, "Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise" -Michael P. Garafalo.




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Gardening Conquistador Series

Confession time (already):  I am a procrastinator and a half.  My husband and I moved in to our house in 2008 and we still have unpacked boxes in the basement.  Or how about I started this blog almost two years ago and I am just now posting entries.  I did, however, draft an entry in 2009 (4/21 to be exact) but never finished.  It's interesting to see how scary the idea of gardening and composting was since I now maintain both, although not at a Martha Stewart level as I fantasized. Read on:


I used to think I was cursed with a black thumb. Every plant I've ever had always died. As a matter of fact, the more I doted on them, the faster they would die. Some well-intentioned friends and family would give me easy to care plants - guaranteed to cure my black thumb - to no avail.  However, something strange happened when I moved in to my home... house warming plants started to flourish, which inspired me to take on growing a vegetable/herb garden.

I didn't really know what kind of work I'm in for. I already had visions of a Martha Stewart-esque garden with neatly organized/sectioned plants of all variety, with minimal effort. However, I realized there's all sorts of stuff you gotta do before reaping the benefits of homegrown veggies. Most of my research tells me that it's "easy," but easy to me, means going out to my yard and throw seeds in to the yard in a "Jack and the Beanstalk" manner.

Anyway, the first thing we did is prep my garden, which requires removing existing plants already residing in my chosen site. Last weekend, my husband and I loosened the soil, and found a tangle of roots  and bulbs. Apparently, the previous home owner was a fierce gardener, complete with a compost pile (which sounds exotic to me at the moment). When we dug out a seemingly weak plant, we'd find a complex and well developed root system that ran across our lawn - like pulling underground cable wires.