50 Times People With A Green Thumb Shared Some Awesome Gardening Ideas

Cut pieces of pallet slat to 40″ and attach to the legs for the front and 16″ for the sides. I originally used a brad nailer, but some of the wood started to warp when wet and I went back and used 1 1/4″ screws. Spacing the holes about every 6″ or so. Now the fun part, planting the flowers. These flowers are Wave petunias that I got at Costco, you can also rotate the flowers between regular, cascade and wave petunias. You need good potting mix and you need to add Soil Moist to help retain water. I put a layer of weed guard down on the bottom, because I had a few holes. You may have a little dirt wash out for the first little while, but once the plants start growing this will stop. Add the first row of flowers, then cover with soil. I realized that the box is kind of large and is going to use a lot of dirt (2 bags). I remember reading somewhere that you can use packing peanuts as filler, hope I remember that right. I put them in the far back where the flowers wouldn’t be planted. Then cover with more dirt. Add the third row of flowers, fill with dirt and plant flowers on top. You need to water the flowers everyday, the holes let the dirt get dry. I usually water until the water leaks from the lower holes. I also fertilize 1/week.

The pool was in disrepair when we bought our property. It hadn't been used for ~10 years, the fence wasn't built to current standards, the tiles needed replacing, the pumps didn't work etc etc. We don't live in a great climate for a pool either - it's too cool most of the year and the size made it impractical to heat with solar (the previous owner used solar + a gas heater). Rather than spend money repairing and maintaining a pool we'd rarely use we decided to explore other options. We'd always wanted a large veggie garden, and the pool area looked like the perfect sunny spot for one. We originally considered just filling it in, but there's no access for machinery and doing it by hand would have been impractical. We came up with the slightly crazy idea of putting a lid on it and using the space underneath as rainwater storage. I sketched up some ideas, we approached an engineer and before long we had a workable design. Cleaning was lot of work. There was about a foot of accumulated sludge in the bottom. After many hours of pressure cleaning it was starting to look better. It's a huge pool, about 10m long and 2.2m at the deep end. We thought about sealing it with a paint on sealer at this point, but we can always do this later if leaks are a problem. The solution we used for the lid is called "Speedfloor". It uses steel joists spaced ~1m apart to suspend a concrete slab. It's commonly used in multi-story carparks in Australia. You can also see the submersible pump feeding into the pool from what was originally the overflow point. The pump provides mains pressure and is plumbed to the house (via 2 filters). I have two of these 500L tanks catching water from both sides of the house. Both downpipes have first flush systems and the tanks act as settling tanks to improve the water quality in the main tank. They both gravity feed into the pool via underground pipes. At this point we had 80,000L of clean water storage and were running the whole house from rainwater. It had taken ~1 year to get to this point - about 6 months of effort getting the plans approved by our local council and another 6 months of preparing the tank and organising builders for the slab (and changing builder part way through when the first went bust!). We had a slab party and a well deserved break. Back to work assembling the raised garden beds. We fit 9 total, each about 2.2m long and 1.2m wide. They each have a liner to stop soil washing out and gravel base to aid drainage and keep water off the slab as best we can (even though it shouldn't matter with the grade of concrete used). We tried out wicking beds made from IBCs but were concerned about the extra weight the water reservoir would add. We've grown almost everything you can think of - permanent beds grow raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, rhubarb and asparagus. Other things we've tried include tomatoes, pumpkins, zucchini, squash, turnips, beetroot, broad beans, string beans, snow peas, various chilies, artichokes, spring onions, garlic, capsicum, kale, lettuce, spinach, loads of herbs etc etc etc!

1. Eat your purchased lettuce, cutting the leaves at about 1 inch from the bottom. 2. Place remaining stem in a shallow dish of water (about 1/2 inch). 3. Place on a window sill or under grow lights. 4. Change water in bowl every 1 to 2 days. 5. Watch your lettuce grow. It is truly remarkable how quickly the new shoots start. You may also notice that roots will start to grow on the bottom. 5. After 10-12 days, your lettuce is going to be as big as it will likely ever get. It’s not going to be a full head of lettuce, it’ll just be enough to top a sandwich or make a small salad. But how cool is that! 6. If you leave your lettuce beyond this point, it will become spindly and bitter as it attempts to produce seed. It won’t be pleasant to eat at this point. You’ll know it has reached this point when the leaves start turning a blue green color and/or the main stalk shoots up and leaves become less dense. Trust me, eat it when it’s like the photo below.

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