If you want to start a garden one of the cheapest ways to do so is to start your own plants from seeds. You can go out and buy a mini-greenhouse but why do it when you can make one. All you need is a plastic container (I'll use a soda bottle) some potting soil, and some seeds. The seeds you can buy or collect it doesn't matter.
You don't need to use grow lights with this method either as we'll take advantage of the free light the sun provides. It's a really easy and cheap way to start plants for a garden that's either there for your enjoyment or for growing your own food.
After you've grown your seeds you can use it to beautify your home, or do some guerrilla gardening, donate them to charity or sell your plants for raise money for your favorite cause.
Who doesn't love plants?
(that was rhetorical)
You can see more stuff on one of my blogs.
You can also check out this as the seed starterseed starter blog entry. Check out the comments section for a couple of cool links to other people using this method.
You don't need to use grow lights with this method either as we'll take advantage of the free light the sun provides. It's a really easy and cheap way to start plants for a garden that's either there for your enjoyment or for growing your own food.
After you've grown your seeds you can use it to beautify your home, or do some guerrilla gardening, donate them to charity or sell your plants for raise money for your favorite cause.
Who doesn't love plants?
(that was rhetorical)
You can see more stuff on one of my blogs.
You can also check out this as the seed starterseed starter blog entry. Check out the comments section for a couple of cool links to other people using this method.
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In this example I used a soda bottle but you can use anything around your house. It's a good way of recycling plastics. You need scissors, a soda bottle, soil, and seeds. The seeds you can buy or save the seeds from foods you eat and give them a try.
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or is your head still buried in the sand?
notice that no one shares your view?
"well-it's been 2 years now, have you looked up this topic yet? "
Begging the question.
"or is your head still buried in the sand?"
Ad hominym"
"notice that no one shares your view?"
Argumentum ad populum.
Heirloom seeds are just hype same with organic farming. Neither are safer. Neither are better for you, and in many cases they're actually worse for you, IE carrots (many heirloom varieties have much less betakaroten). And in blind taste tests there is no noticeable pattern between heirloom, organic, and conventionally grown fruits and vegetables.
In other words you are the one who needs to open you're mind.
aside from taste or quality, its important to protect the diversity of our produce, its a better idea to grow unique vegetables, like herlooms, just to keep the strains going. monopolizing produce strains could be detrimental to our food source (potato famine)
at any rate, sweet instructable, i'm gonna use this idea. thanks!
There is validity to what princessbunnyrooroo is saying: hybrids often don't reproduce, due to shifts in the genetic code. Further, many companies hold patents on their hybrids making it illegal to attempt to harvest seed, regardless. My local nursery has many, many plants whose hang-tags specify home propagation is illegal, for example, and Monsanto has been suing people for saving seed.
Beyond those bits, there are zones for which growing seasons and climates vary wildly, making some seed-starting projects doomed to failure before beginning, and others that might be considered invasive or foreign to your particular area (example: I grew up a few hours from my current location - and one of my favourite plants from home (lantana, if you're interested) was a perennial there and struggles where I am now, because the climate is not right).
Plants are very strong-willed! *laugh*
Now companies can patent what they do, a strain of plants, a posses, they can't however patent a gene that exists in nature. Again we're talking hype. It's not illegal to plant a store bought fruit's seed.
As a side note, I grew using the term jerry rigged,to describe ingenious use of minimal materials to create a needed item.
I picked it up from Tom Swift Jr. novels that where dated when I read them.
It was not used pejoratively, in fact the ability to do much with little was presented as a skill to be admired.
Much later in life I became an industrial electrician, and became acquainted with the terms Afro-Engineering and N!gger-Rigging.
Being born into the 70's and Black, I was not unaware of racial slurs, but,hadn't heard these particular ones.
The Afro -Engineering term was used pointedly, repeatedly,with intent to harm. The N!gger Rigging term was used in an off handed manner, the user was immediately ashamed and apologetic and embarrassed.
One of these men I was able to trust to have my back, despite the differences in our back ground.Guess which one?
I say this to suggest that we not look for offense when none is intended.For example, It was only after decades of use that I became aware of one possible etomology of the term Jerry-Rigged entered my awareness.
Wiki says it better than I:
"The folk etymology is that "Jerry-rigged" was employed by World War II British troops to refer to the German use of scavenged parts to keep vehicles and weapons functional, from the use of "Jerry" as a pejorative term for German soldier"
Huh.Mind you I have been born and raised in a city that claimes to have the largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany, but of even so Germans in Cincinnati don't think about their German heritage everyday.
After all, their forefathers had the German crushed out of them.
Again Wiki says it better, but just a link this time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Over-the-Rhine#Economic_Decline
Do I still use Jerry Rigged?
Yeah.No one seems to mind, and frankly, I feel a kinship with this idea of a minority population struggling to do more with less.
That is a skill to be proud of.So even though I didn't grow up in ghetto of any kind, I cherish this one positive connotation of the word, and practice it every chance I get.
It is fascinating how words can shift and have different meanings. For example, one uncle visiting from California kept using "Mickey Mouse Job" as a way to describe shoddy construction/ home remodeling attempts. I didn't think much of it, just figured it was a verbal tick. Then I went to visit family in California last summer and learned that just about all of them refer to cheap/poor construction as a "Mickey Mouse Jobs." How did the name of a cartoon character become a description for bad craftsmanship? Who know.
Keep on posting and remember your right to freedom of speech.
Good job!
Look at mine ^^ (still have to cover the earth)
and whatever the eariler 20th century "connotation" refering to "jewish ghetto"
it has taken on a different meaning now referring in a negative manner to black people and their culture.
its not a neutral term NOW, if it ever was and by claiming that it is intellectually a little dishonest.
Key identifying features.. Little yellow-white cylindrical pendulums in May; dark purple to black berries in August. This is the tallest of the cherry breeds.
Common name.. Black cherry
Scientific name.. Prunus serotia
Mature height.. 70 to 80 feet
Mature spread.. To 30 feet or wider when grown in open, sunny, moist soil locations.
Form.. Spreading, irregular crown.
Where are you located, btw? I'm in Arizona, and while, with work and care, you can get cherries to grow (despite popular belief) and even blossom, they will not come to fruit. We've had the same cherry trees at the high school I went to for about twenty years, never fruited. And they go full bloom every spring.
Adding a bit of glucose to your water might aid in growth. This works for almost any plant.
I found in grade school that vitamin E seems to do well for plants too, though I couldn't give you any directions on how much to use, and you'd want to cease use at least a month or so before removing the plant from the greenhouse, as it will be a bit sunlight sensitive. It was an experiment that I never took any farther than 'what might work'. I used one E gelcap per day with water.
http://www.krepcio.com/vitreosity/archives/2007_03.html
perhaps more art than structure, but certainly bottle walls :)
Not to disappoint you but if you try Apple seeds they won't come true from seed. Meaning the tree and fruit you eventually get (years from now) will not be or taste like the Apple you got it from. But you can go ahead and grow it anyway but it will need "stratification"
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bot00/bot00503.htm
(sorry I couldn't figure out the links here and when I tried it ate my post)
that should last a couple of months. If you don't have a real winter in your area you could always stick the seeds in the freezer in a ziplock baggie filled with sand or Perlite. And then sow them after they've had a long enough cold period.
If you decide not to do the Apples because of the above info. Check out your garden centers like Home Depot. The seeds for this year are on the displays already. Try something easy if it's your first time. Or get something like heirloom Tomatoes from a farmers market.
Stay away from stuff that's hybridized if you want to get seeds because they won't come true either.
sterile????
i've opened up a good number of regular, hybridized, commercially-grown fruits and vegis, to find seeds inside the food already sprouted. planted them and they grew. but of course, some items do not come true to where it came from, but so what. lol
in fact, right now, i have a good number of apple seeds that sprouted inside the apples and planted them...nature takes it's course...apple seedlings.
sterile...tch..reaaally. :D
Also i just started a gardening group . . . want to join? Add this instructable please!
http://www.instructables.com/group/reapwhatyousow/