How to Cut a Glass Bottle to Make a Planter

 How to Cut a Glass Bottle to Make a Planter

Warning! Use safety glasses and gloves when doing this procedure.
 
1. Soak a piece of yarn in nail polish remover

2. Tie around bottle.

3. Light with a lighter.

4. Let burn all the way around for about 10-15 seconds.
5. Dip in a bowl of cold water. It should break on the line where the was.

 

6. Fill the bottom piece half-way with water. Place both the top and bottom pieces to the side.

7. Cut a square or circle out of screen or cheese cloth materials. Enough to cover the bottom of the top  piece.

8. Tie some unused oil lantern wick or a strip of cotton string or cloth in a hoop knot and thread both ends through the center of the screen or cheese cloth.

9. Feed the wick through the inside of the inverted bottle neck (top piece) and gently pull down until the screen/cloth touches the beginning of the neck.

10. Fill the inverted bottle piece with growing medium like potting soil.

11. place the inverted top piece inside the bottom piece with the wick touching the water.

12. Sow seeds or plant a small plant of your choice in the soil.

 

The title and instructions for this project have been revised. Click here for the original source.

Our Seeds Are on the Way!

Our order is in for the heirloom, non-GMO seeds, we are sowing this spring, from Seeds Now.

"To me, gardening is also an art. Nobody does art like Mother Nature! Mother Nature designed all these plants. The garden is another palette, another canvas, and now you are using plants to paint that canvas and shape it the way you want to do it." - Ron Finley
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-wasson/learning-los-angeles-ron-_b_6043370.html

Russians Proving That Small-Scale, Organic Gardening Can Feed the World

When it's suggested that our food system be comprised of millions of small, organic gardens, there's almost always someone who says that it isn't realistic. And they'll quip something along the lines of, "There's no way you could feed the world's growing population with just gardens, let alone organically." Really? Has anybody told Russia this?
On a total of approximately 8 million hectares (20 million acres) of land, 16.5 million Russian families grow food in small-scale, organic gardens on their Dachas (a secondary home, often in the extra urban areas). Because growing your own food happens to be a long-lived tradition in Russia, even among the wealthy.
Based on the 1999 "Private Household Farming in Russia" Gosmkostat (State Committee for Statistics) statistics, these Dacha families produced:

• 38% of Russia's total agricultural output
• 41% of the livestock
• 82% of the honey
• 79% of the sold cattle
• 65% of the sold sheep and goats
• 59% of the milk
• 31% of the sold poultry
• 28% of the eggs
• 91% of the potatoes
• 76% of the vegetables
• 79% of the fruits

If Russian families can manage such production in their region's very short growing season (approx. 110 days), imagine the output most parts of the world could manage by comparison. Unfortunately in just the US alone, lawns take up more than twice the amount of land Russia's gardens do (est. 40-45 million acres).

Credit: ReclaimGrowSustain.com "Russians Proving That Small-Scale, Organic Gardening Can Feed the World" http://reclaimgrowsustain.com/content/russians-proving-small-scale-organic-gardening-can-feed-world

Gotham Greens Rooftop Farming | Built in Brooklyn

Detroit Community Gardens

The exodus of residents of Detroit has left the city dotted with crumbling buildings and empty lots. Many of those lots have been turned into community gardens like these outside of Downtown


 


Photo credit: DailyMail.com Article: "http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2875525/The-tiny-urban-island-downtown-Detroit-Aerial-pictures-city-s-skyscrapers-surrounded-abandoned-homes-housing-plots-mansions-sprawling-countryside.html"

Help Feed Yourself

This vintage garden ad from the U.S. Department of Labor really gets the message across.

This is exactly what we all need to be doing.