Mostly Plants

With a shout out to Dancinglights, and Inside Urban Green for the idea, I have been hard at work making planters out of repurposed soda and gatorade bottles, and takeout containers.

I’ve been asked for pictures, so here they are, using a gatorade bottle as an example:

Materials:

I used four tools that I had lying around to make the planters:

• A pair of scissors
• An X-acto knife–I wouldn’t use one with a metal handle!)
• An old, 15-watt soldering iron.  A higher-power soldering pen or wood-burning iron would work better
• A small, hand-held butane torch.  This produces a 2400º flame and is powered by an ordinary cigarette lighter.  It makes me happy.

If you have a wood-burning pen with a hot knife tip, you can dispense with the knife and torch.  Alternatively, you could use a gas stove to heat the knife.  If you don’t have a gas stove, a torch, or a wood-burning pen, you can do this with a pair of scissors and a ball-point pen as your ownly tools.  It will just be less elegant.

Besides the tools, you will need a 1-litre or bigger plastic bottle, some soil, and something to plant in it.

Technique:

First, remove the label.  Hot water inside the bottle will dissolve the adhesive so it’ll come right off.  Just don’t put boiling water in a soda bottle–you will shink the bottle and possibly burn yourself!

First cut the plastic bottle.  For the gatorade bottle the picture shows where to make the cut.  If you are using a soda bottle, Inside Urban Green has tips on where to cut.  This is where the hot knife comes in–it’s easier to make the first incision with heat, but you could do it with an unheated knife and some brute force.

Click on the photo for a bigger copy–it’s cut right below the curvy bit.  The gist is that the curvy bit, upside-down, should fit in the other bit so that the lip of the bottle just touches the bottom.

Next, it’s time to poke some holes in the curvy bit.  These holes allow the soil to drain excess moisture, and there’s some suggestion that humid aeration is good for the roots.

Here I used the 15-watt soldering iron.  This is an old iron that barely gets hot anymore (I think there’s some corrosion impeding thermal conductivity), but a better-working or hotter iron would do the trick.

Finally, the planter needs a wick–this will irrigate the soil by capillary action from below.  Or in simpler terms, it will suck water up into the soil!  A scrap of fabric from an old pair of jeans works marvelously!

That’s it–I just scooped some potting mix into the planter and added a few mustard seeds–they should germinate in 4-10 days.

Tags:   garden · locavoracious · process oriented · things that are shinyNo Comments