Growing Strawberries in a Self Irrigating Gutter (SIG).

...vestrong articles) on PVC and growing food please leave a link. Generally, plants do not take up toxins into fruit so I’m not losing any sleep thinking about eating a few strawberries grown in my small PVC SIG. I might think twice about eating greens grown in PVC. The other issue is the use of peat moss as the growing medium. Peat moss is unsustainably harvested (see Horticulture professor Linda Chalker-Scott’s article on this). Coconut coir, in m...

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Straw Bale Gardens

...can linger in organic matter for a year or two, stunting the growth garden plants. (See Killer Compost). Despite this risk, we’re going to go ahead and grow some food in bales anyway and see what happens. We’ll also be testing our straw. So, off we go into another gardening adventure/research pit! So have any of you tried, or are considering trying, straw bale gardening? How did it work? Some resources on the topic: strawbalegardens.com–the websit...

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Hornworm meets alien!

...in order to overcome the caterpillar’s defenses, mama wasp injects a virus before laying her eggs. How do you create habitat for Cotesia congregata? Adults feed on nectar producing plants and, of course, you need to make sure you keep a few hornworms on hand! Thanks to Jeff Spurrier for posting this video in Facebook....

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