Tuesday, May 31, 2011

ghetto aqua globes

Backstory for this post:
Last year I had an herb garden with a tomato plant in a raised bed in our backyard.  My eldest son, Josiah despises tomatoes and so, as soon as he saw the little green tomatoes, he promptly picked them all and threw them over the fence.  I think I ended up with 3 tomatoes off that plant.

Fast forward to this year.  Most of the garden is over at the Thornquests (and is looking very good, I might add) but I still wanted some tomato plants and herbs in my yard. Given the miserable tomato harvest of 2010, I thought I'd try planting tomatoes in hanging baskets on the back porch.  There were several benefits to this plan in my mind:
1. They would get enough sun
2. They would be out of reach of my boys
3. I would pay attention to them because they're right out my back door and I have to look at them every morning.

One and two are working smashingly.  Three, not so much.  I'm a notorious underwaterer (is that a word?), and this is compounded by the soil in the planters that is more like a sieve than anything.

So, a few days ago I was over at Jen T.'s and saw these ingenious devices:


Hmm...maybe that would help my tomatoes.

The next morning, I walked outside to feed the chickens and noticed that the tomatoes were on the verge of dying from thirst (isn't it ironic that my last name is Gardner?). I remembered the aqua globes but, as I was trapped at home alone with my three small boys and a shopping trip was out of the question, I realized desperate times call for desperate measures and went and grabbed some empty beer bottles out of the trash.


They don't look quite as nice, but they do the trick.

I'm thinking about patenting this...

jen g.

5 comments:

  1. Plus it gives the husband a good reason to keep drinking more beer…

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  2. Yes, he is more than willing to help out ;)

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  3. hahaha i love it! Ghetto ingenuity!

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  4. as suggested from Mr. Madsen, the patented name should be "RedNeck Aqua Globes." That is just plain Idaho Redneck ingenuity. . . leave the Ghetto out of this. After all, I am a California girl :)

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  5. Love this post!! What a fantastic way to RRR

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