How to Save Water in Gardens and Small-holdings: the Scrooge Bottle.

The world is warming. Resources are dwindling. Clean water is in short supply. Recycling is ever more important.

Inspired by a trip to the Eden Project in Cornwall, this is a neat trick to save water in your vegetable garden, especially plants growing in pots and troughs, which dry out more quickly. You can get specially-made ceramic widgets, but this is my version made from recycled materials.

I call it the Scrooge Bottle.

Step 1: Materials and Tools

For each plant or pot you want to water, you need a bottle, and something absorbent to fill it with, such as cotton wool, old socks or the off-cuts from your jeans.

No matter how many plants you want to water, you need a knife, a pin and a pair of pliers.

Step 2: Perforation

The water needs to get out of the sides your bottle, but the bottle isn't porous. Hold the pin firmly in the pliers, and have at the bottle. Please, try not to perforate your hand.

Step 3: Absorption

Now the bottle is riddled with holes, the water could pour out instead of just oozing slowly. The bottle needs something to slow down the water's exit. That's what the absorbent stuff is for.

You could use the knife to shred the fabric so that you can get it through the neck of the bottle, or you could cut the bottle in half and stuff the fabric in easily. When the bottle is stuffed, wedge it back together. You may find it easier to wedge the halves back together if you put a small cut in each half of the bottle so that you can scrunch them up slightly to fit together.

Step 4: Using the Bottle

The bottle's function is to get the water close to the roots of the plant and not waste it in the rest of the soil or to the atmosphere. The best way to do this is to plant the bottle close to the young plant, such as when you plant your seedlings out, with just the top of the bottle sticking out of the ground.

You water the plant by pouring water into the bottle. You can use a funnel or a watering can with a narrow spout. If you live somewhere particularly dry or hot, you can save the lid and replace it between waterings to stop evaporation.

As the plant grows, its root system will grow around the bottle, all the better to absorb the water, plus any nutrients you add. This may reduce the roots' ability to support the plant (because they're all bunched up around the bottle instead of spread out to catch "wild" water), so taller plants may need supporting somehow, possibly with canes or netting.

If your plant has a limited lifespan, the bottle can be dug up and used again, but you may want to wash or replace the fabric inside the bottle to prevent passing any infection from old to new plantings.

Comments

[lbrewer42]

Good idea - I a trying to find ideas for watering and this might be just what I want! Thanks for posting.

One other thing though ... I am sad to see important facts dying away. Last year a Russian hacker published private emails from a British university which was a main center for the global warming theory "research." The facts caught the researchers with their pants down and forced them to admit they fudged the data. One of the documents even had a researcher saying they could not account for the lack of warming. It is a dead, non-scientific issue as science and history BOTH have disproved it. Greenland - check its history - the vikings farmed areas of it that we cannot farm today b/c they are under ice! It was warmer back then!

The global warming tool is only pushed by those who are sorry their political tool has been exposed as the farce it is. The politically controlled news media has been trying to force feed us for years knowing that if they talked about it enough, it would "become" fact. In the late '80s they openly called it a theory. A few years later it as pushed as fact. These were the times when they were saying the temperature on Lake Erie shores in PA would be hot enough to grow palm trees by the year 2000. Obviously this did not happen.

They also - pre 2000 - had their precious proof-because-of-the-hole-in-the-ozone crumbled - the hole closed! You never heat of this anymore b/c, again, science proved them wrong. However, in its day, you the ozone hole was all the rage in the media - you could not watch TV without the subject coming up at least 3 to 5 times an evening.

Their succesive failures, but political agenda and media support, forced upon them a subtle change... the name of the theory changed from "Global Warming" to the now more politically correct term of "vlimate change." People were questioning why the hotter temps were not evident - in fact things have been cooler (as they are at present when i write this). So they decided to come up with a way to explain they still were correct by saying that global warming would could cause global cooling. In other words, they were covering their backs that no matter which way the weather turned, they could claim they were right.
Convenient... very, very convenient.

Climate change, aka global warming which brings cooler yearly temperatures as the media tries to brainwash and tell us not to believe our senses - we are actually warming up (Orsen Wells 1984) is a dead scientifically - so lets all please let it rest.

You can still, I m sure, access online all of the documents that were hacked and read them yourself. You will also find places like Wikipedia are slanted slightly to try to deny the facts -- so do some more-than-surface-level research. As with most media outlets, I am sure Wikipedia's slant will increase as time goes on until they totally deny the truth that this theory is nothing but farce. Who knows, give it 20 more years and they might totally deny the even ever took place.

Sorry for the book - but as a science teacher, I hate to see this fallacy as it leads to everyone swallowing more government control such as the ridiculous, and unneeded "cap and trade taxes" that they wanted to force on our society. It is nothing but bureaucrats making a larger power grab and robbing more money from "we The People.".

[votecoffee]

Although yes, the global "warming" you talk about is misrepresented by the popular front for climate change, the fact that our earth is heating up is not a farce. The big indicators are really ice sheets in the arctic ocean and the changes to the antarctic ice cap. By the time we see real temperature changes it will be too late. We watch these early indicators that act as reserves or buffers so that we do not reach a tipping point where we can no longer do anything.

Also, not all climate change is related to heating and cooling cycles that effect global weather patterns. One of the big ones we are dealing with is ozone which effects the amount of UV light that penetrates our atmosphere. That is something we can already measure the effects of and is a very serious problem.

The argument you are fighting is a strawman version of the real issue put forth by big business and those who support their interests. The government is not out to get you. The EPA is not 'over regulating' the world's industries. The issue at hand can not be so ignorantly dismissed. I'm sorry that unscientific people such as yourself who approach science only through the eyes of FOX news are able to teach in our school systems.

[lbrewer42]

You make a big assumption which smacks of an ad hominem response (please look this up - it saves a lot of time and effort). This would, therefore nullify your very position. So be careful you are using science and not letting the discussion become an emotional one.

You assume I approach science only through the eyes of FOX news. The fact of the matter is I do not even watch FOX news. For that matter, I do not watch ANY media news. For 20 years I have been teaching science as it is defined - OBSERVATION and collection of data - resulting in hypothesis (which are NOT in themselves science, but scientific THEORY) - leading to experimentation to DETERMINE the validity of the hypothesis. Note that too many people nowadays use their data to "prove" their proposed theory - in other words they make the data fit their idea (and a lot of this is done without them thinking it over). However, the global warming scientists admitted they fudged their data. Theirs was not even an honest mistake - and they, themselves, said so!

At maximum, I believe actual scientific research has shown there may have been a .6 degree change during all of these years the theory has been touted. This is nowhere as severe as history records actual, natural, pre-industrial revolution warming trends to have been.

As to the ozone - thank you for explanation, but I am well versed in what the ozone is/does/et cetera. In fact, as a requirement for one of my upper level courses in college required a rather in depth study into atmosphereic gases, especially ozone.

I remember vividly back in 1988 when this warming theory was started. I was in the baltimore MD area. Every morning during that excruciatingly hot summer, a fog appeared each morning. The newspapers were reporting/quoting that scientists as saying this fog was due to global warming and it actually was composed of a chemical "identical in composition and structure to ozone, but was not ozone." WHAT??!

This was also the year it was "general knowledge" that all summers from then on would be as hot as it was in 1988 and palm trees would grow on the shores of Lake Erie by the year 2000. Um.... yeah.

BTW - these years were also the time when the newspapers were not ashamed to report that the actual derivation of the global warming theory was a political move towards creating globalism. At the time the papers were saying that the only issue that was thought could initiate a global mindset was an environmental one. Hence the birth of this theory.

Whatever had caused the ozone hole - which we now know had nothing to do with this theory - is now not working since the hole shut by itself. It was offered as proof of depleted ozone and global warming. It was one of their main babies to support their ideas. Now it is gone. They were saying how the whole earth was going to fry (which it would) since the ozone hole was actually ... growing (oops - another goof). The only ozone problem I ever heard global warming theorists talking about died when the ozone hole closed (embarrassing a lot of "scientists" and causing the media to take it off of prime time and tuck it under the carpet). What other threat have they now proposed to take its place?

As you can see, and this is just the tip of the iceberg when some in depth research is done, there was ample reason to be skeptical when the theory was born - and there is more than ample reason - especially since some of the top "scientists" who were promoting this theory from the beginning have admitted they lied! These are tangible facts which can be obtained/observed. This is science.

As to the government not out to get me. Here again is a supposition of motive smacking of an ad hominem response. However, I will let you know i do not cache food and weapons or belong to any secret societies :)

The fact of the matter, right now, is this theory is political at the highest levels. Congress reviewed the facts enough to say the Cap and Trade taxes were not valid since there are too many valid scientists who say global warming is not scientifically supported exist to ignore the fact that this is just theory. Add to this the admissions of the main people caught with their pants down and congress did not, thankfully, see it as valid enough to take even more out of our taxes to combat it..

So now comes the political part. The president, therefore, decides to spit in the historic processes set up in our Constitution and bypass congress by influencing the EPA to work his agenda on it instead. If this is not a classic case of politics - then what is?

What I have prided myself on from the start of my teaching career is not to let politically, or pseudo-scientific matters become the "doctrine" of the classroom. Unfortunately this is exactly what is happening in most schools - people cave into the pc theories of the day. My students have always been presented with evidence from both sides of an issue and told to THINK for THEMSELVES. This is a big no no in a lot of today's educational circles. I will not brainwash children into one position or another. however, when the scientific facts also overwhelmingly show a cow cannot fly, despite what the majority of the populace believes, I am not going to propose to them that they believe cows can fly just because everyone says they can. They need to examine the facts and see for themselves. I also encourage them to look up the background of the facts and people who were proffering their facts.

There are just too many cover ups, admissions of altering data, refusal to share collected data (only give out hypothesis), and outright political involvement in the global warming camp for it to be science. I do not see this on the other side of the issue. All I can find is history and theory based on unbiased observation and data collection.

[votecoffee]

Honestly I won't even read a nonsense rant this this long. The points I did read aren't even true. No admission was ever made to altering data. Collected data is commonly available. I'm not sure where you're getting your facts from. Maybe if you want to actually debate this you could post some links to the research you've done or are referencing? Otherwise I'll have to dismiss you as the last bulwark of scientific reasoning that you seem to be purporting yourself as.

[lbrewer42]

ad hominem - by definition you have admitted you are wrong.

[votecoffee]

That's not how logic works.

[lbrewer42]

Accepted rules of debate dictate otherwise. The problem is that ad hominem responses come from those who are letting their emotions dictate their thinking process, hence the response is deemed invalid. This is the definition. These people ignore facts and simply state their desired position. However the people employing this self-invalidating technique are rarely even aware of it and, normally , have never heard of it..

[Fawkes881]

I wish I could downvote your misinformed garbage.

[wrand]

It is good that you teach your students to examine the evidence themselves and not fall victim to selective bias. But you seem to fall prey to that yourself.

Greenland may not have been as green as legend has it (might have been some marketing to get more immigrants) but some greening was probably a result of a period of warming during the Medieval period.

The ozone layer rebuilding is actually a great testament to environmental laws helping to undo damage humans did to our own environment through bans on CFCs and other ozone reducing chemicals.

Several investigations of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia found no deception on the part of the researchers.

And there is no question that observation of our climate has shown a unusual increase in global temperature.

[lbrewer42]

Like I said - if someone tells me a cow can fly - I certainly am not going to be one who falls for it. The certainty of global warming being a farce is just as certain as a flying cow (sprouting wings and flying) - especially since the researches have admitted they made up their data! From what i understand, the the people at this research center were some of the first proponents of the theory in the first place! And THEY say they altered things to make themselves look correct!

As to the ozone, the ozone hole closed at the very time they experts of the day were touting the CFC's would be reaching the upper atmosphere to deplete the ozone. For some reason in the 80's they were telling us we would not see the ozone DEPLETION make its major impact on the ozone layer until around the year 2000. Guess what? instead the ozone hole shut itself at this time rather than being depleting and opening wider! No, nature showed us man's evil dealings had nothing to do with anything the "experts" positively KNEW was going to happen. In fact the ozone layer more than did this by thumbing its nose at the experts and instead of being depleted, it closed. People back in those days would fight to the bitter end that the ozone hole was absolute, scientific, dogmatic, no-way-around-it, unquestionable, undeniable PROOF of global warming and how dare anyone think any different? I was debating this with people back then about all of this. Yet after 2000, the major cornerstone of their theory now crumbled, the egg-on-their-face theorists and media just quietly stopped stop talking about the ozone hole without even making a major deal about the fact it was gone. This should have been front page news, and after the amazing way they shoved this ozone hole in our faces everytime we turned on the TV, should have at least required a major mentioning in the media that it was gone. But this never happened - it was not politically correct.

And you say there is no question as to an unusual increase in global temperature when during the last couple of years, especially, actual recorded temperatures have dropped and stayed lower for longer periods of time. Unusually cold temperatures are outside the window as I write this. Just like last year and the year before the locals are wondering where their warm temperatures are.

Yes - most certainly is a question as to whther or not warming is taking place. Otherwise this discussion could not have been started.

I personally believe one main problem we even have this theory still with us is that like any other area when dealing with humanity. Objectivity is lost b/c we hate to admit when we have been duped. in fact we attach too much emotional desire behind what we want to be true. As I stated in a previous post, anyone who has shown true scientific fact denying this theory have not had to admit they faked anything and neither have they had to claim political motivation for their data. in fact, if they publish their theories, a lot of the time they have been laughed at by those who are on the side of the personally-admitted-wrong researchers. Some of those hacked emails were from these same researches talking about ideas of how to ridicule and silence people in opposition to their ideas. This kind of person has no business claiming to be a scientist since they have been tainted by their personal desires and inject them into the data. They have left the realm of pure science.

In my postings I have cited factual happenings and evidence. All I have seen from the other point of view is mentioning opinions of media stations and other "facts" that last year had to be retracted from the people who proposed this theory in the first place. From what I understand, the researchers who were exposed fell victim to this hacker were some of the ones on the ground floor of proposing the global warming theory at the very start. They hatched the idea and last year had to admit they were unscientifically changing the data so it would meet their own predictions and support their theory. In other words, they fell victim to their own pride not wanting to say they were wrong -- until they were forced to come clean by having their private emails exposed thereby giving undeniable proof they new their theories and actions both had been wrong.

If it were not for them planting the initial seed, then we might not have heard of this already admitted-false by the perpetrators theory. There most likely never would have been other studies by other people trying to prove the theory correct. And, BTW, the wording of that last statement is important. Too many people nowadays seek to prove something they want to see as true rather than exercising pure science and researching to see what the evidence shows.

How did the oceans retain their temp. when everything else that influences global temps has supposedly risen? How did the ozone hole close at the time when it was supposed to have been receiving the worst damage from manmade CFC's? Why are areas of Greenland the Vikings used for farming presently under ice if it is so much warmer now due to mankind's intervention? Why hasn't anyone who has results showing global warming to be a farce been caught and exposed as faking the data?

Yes, as with most politically correct, media-propagandized concept nowadays, these factual happenings are ignored or pushed aside ad blanket statements are made such as "there is no question of the fact of global warming." And this is supposed to solve everything and be the final "scientific" word.

Science is observation and collection of data to form hypothesis. In the end, to say something is scientifically sound the process/objects/etc. in question must be able to show the same reproducible results. This is far from the case with the global warming theory. In fact just the opposite - again, as cited by those caught with their pants down - is true of this theory.

If I ever DO see legitimate scientific evidence to show global warming has some truth to it, it will have a lot of things going against it to try to disprove first. If this was ever don, i would GLADLY embrace the idea. Why? Because I am one of those weird people who would rather know the truth than worry about whether or not I am right or wrong on an issue (might explain why my friends used to always call me Mr. Spok). To me the emotional aspect is nothing but added baggage that hides the truth. However, the more research and data that comes to light, the more facts there are to show this farce for what it is. And we have not even gone into the purely political advantages and favors that have been paid out to companies, politicians, universities etc. by the propagation of this theory.

I still find it amazing we live in a day where researchers admit they made up their own data, they have lied, and people will still defend the very theory researchers/producers admitted was false. As i get older the fact that man never changes is slapping me in the face more and more. i was told when i was a child we were in an enlightened age where scientific truth would lead us to a whole new level. Yes, our toys have become amazing, but the facts are that the name of science has been misused for political agendas and has held us back from even where we could have been.

[wrand]

Again, the researchers did not admit they made up data. Several investigations into their emails came to the conclusion that they did nothing wrong.
Here is one investigation initiated by Sen. Inhofe:
http://www.oig.doc.gov/OIGPublications/2011.02.18_IG_to_Inhofe.pdf

And I would be surprised if any scientist actually conflated ozone depletion with global warming. I was young at the time it became a hot topic (ha!) and I remember understanding the possible consequences -- none of which related to warming.

Global warming is also a wider phenomenon than the weather outside your window and the change in temperature over a couple of years. There is an overwhelming amount of information to go through but here is a good starting spot:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/

[lbrewer42]

Actually it was only within a few days of the leak that the researchers didi admit their wrongdoing. However, as i predicted, the media and others were not happy with this and it has become buried in a mountain of "professional" studies on the emails etc. Read the emails youself. I do not need an expert to tell me that when someone says they were not seeing their desired results, so they faked it, and then admitted to it, that the researchers knew what they had done was wrong.

I downloaded the entire 60 M that was leaked the day it happened and started reading.

Also, Penn State may have cleared their prof of the Hockey Stick - but he never released his data for others to review. Again, this is is not science.

Anyone can find links saying global warming is valid. The problem is that the data seen is based upon the very things the reearchers said they faked.

Again - the water temps staying the same etc - something they will not touch.

[VagsmaCutter]

Ahahaha...you're on the moon buddy.

[votecoffee]

Although ozone depletion does not significantly cause global warming, it is effected by climate change (though the main culprit in recent history is almost due entirely to CFCs). Coastal hypoxia, for example, changes the biological processes of an ecosystem resulting in a fairly significant increase in nitrous oxide output, which can make its way into the upper atmosphere and deplete the ozone. I believe coastal hypoxia currently accounts for something like 5% of all nitrous oxide, natural and man-made, that enters the atmosphere.

[lbrewer42]

The ozone hole was used by the global warming theorists of the last century to say it was positive proof of global warming. AS in my former post, the CFC theory had to be wrong also b/c when the CFC's were to hit the ozone layer and then make the most damage was when the ozone hole closed. Someone, somewhere needds to revise their thoughts on these issues. i do not think the ozone hole was intelligent enough to take sides on the issue so it could not have repaired itself out of spite :)

Again though - how do we know any warming trend which might someday happen is not just another natural cycle? We have no idea why they occurred in the past (well - there is theory relating them to cycles of sunspots) so how do we know any one that might occur is not just nature again taking its course? We don't and we can't!

[votecoffee]

Debunking climate gate:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/debunking-misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html

[lbrewer42]

Note there is no mention of the admission by the perpetrators that they falsified the info. Read above comments.

[votecoffee]

Here's the international publication on the physical science behind climate change:
https://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/wg1-ar4.html

Here's a summary on what id discussed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report

Here's publicly available data sets from NASA:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/

[lbrewer42]

This data you list was available at the time the researches admitted they falsified the data - what does this mean?

If the data was factual, again I ask how we can tell it is not just another natural cycle such as the recorded ones in past history?

[votecoffee]

Because the cycles are changing towards instability and not stability and it is happened at a rate inconsistent with past historical data, ie much more rapidly, and it is also correlated pretty well with man caused events.

Also, the scientists did not admit to falsifying data. See the other links provided.

Also, did you even read the data and report?