Search Results for: label/self watering containers

282 results

Polyculture

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Permaculture
14 Comments
...s, but it has been very successful so far, meaning no pests, no weeds, low watering, and tons of salad. This bed was started in October, as soon as the weather had decidedly shifted toward the cool. In LA, it makes sense to grow tender salad greens and the like in the winter, when the the sun is low, the climate is gentle, and our only rains fall. Lettuce loves that kind of thing, and hates hot sun. If you plant lettuce in LA in the summer you are...

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Bucket Crapping

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Humanure, Preparedness
Those ubiquitous five gallon buckets we’ve used to make self-watering containers are good for another purpose– an improvised crapper. When the shit hits the fan, you’ll need a place to shit and thankfully the fine folks at the World Toilet Organization have come up with a clever design for an improvised flush toilet using just a five gallon bucket, a coat-hanger, and a plastic bag. Now, not to be too graphic, but thanks to the Sierra Club we’ve h...

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Why I’m Growing Vegetables in a Straw Bale

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Gardening, Straw Bale Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
10 Comments
...dening guru with a book: biointensive, biodynamic, raised beds, pots, self-watering containers, straw bales and just plain old by-the-book science-based, extension service advice. Results have ranged from moderately successful to moderately tragic–mostly moderately tragic. Over the years, our vegetable garden has shrunk from ambitious proportions to a tiny 3-foot by 8-foot raised bed filled with tired and expensive potting soil. This past winter (...

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Tomato Review #2 Banana Legs – it don’t look like a banana and it don’t got legs

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Gardening, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening
6 Comments
...ato we grew last year, Power’s Heirloom. We grew our Banana Legs in a self watering container (SWC) and it produced a respectable amount of fruit. With a sunny balcony, folks in apartments could do the same. For our container we used a repurposed storage bin and we’d recommend the largest container you can find for tomatoes or sticking to tomato varieties specifically bred for containers. As soon as the large root system of a tomato plant gets dow...

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A garden that looks like a meth amphetamine lab

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Self Watering Containers
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...to start growing food everywhere we can. There’s an ugly concrete patio just off our back door. We could have spent much money and effort to jackhammer it and replace it with a yuppie entertaining deck but instead we’re growing food on it. We built some self-watering containers (for instructions on how to do this see our earlier post) and we’re growing collard greens, tomatoes and southern highbush blueberries, so far with great success. It looks...

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