Using Netted Produce Bags in My Flower Pots

I save the large netted produce bags in which onions and sometimes oranges come packaged. I set them aside in my gardening cupboard and use them as I find need. I've used them to create a barrier at soil level in pots to prevent squirrels from digging up tulip bulbs. I've used them for making gigantic tea bags to make compost tea. And today I use one large bag to make screens for the bottoms of my two flower pots for the front porch. 

When my pots have single large drainage holes I like to use some sort of screen to prevent soil from washing through the drainage holes after watering. A screen covers the hole, holding in soil, while allowing excess water to pass through. A screen will also discourage many insects from taking up residence in my plant's pot.

Plastic mesh screens, cut to fit the bottom of flower pots, can be bought from Amazon for about 30 to 50 cents each. By folding a section of a netted onion bag, fourfold, I can create a screen that has fairly small holes and is effective at holding in the soil.

This afternoon I potted my "new" green pots with fresh potting soil and a trio of coleus plants. I filled the pots on the deck right outside the kitchen door (in the pathway to get in and out of the house). 

I laid the folded over netting on the bottom of the pot , covering the hole, and held it in place while I began scooping soil into the pot. When the netting was covered, I poured in the rest of the soil to fill the pot. After planting the coleus, I moved the pots from the deck to the front porch. The deck where the pot had been sitting while filling was clean, no little circle of potting soil under the pot's drainage hole. The netting prevented soil from leaking through the hole.

I watered the two newly planted pots once moved to the front porch. An hour after watering I checked under the pots to see how much dirt or dirty water seeped through the netting-covered drainage hole. While it was clear that water had drained through the hole, running down the slope of the porch, and there were drips of water still under the pot, no dirt was on the paving. 

I wish I'd gotten to planting these pots last month. I hope my small plants grow quickly. But I can only do what I can only do.

Growing Food for Free

Although I buy seeds for most of my vegetable gardening, here are two foods that I'm growing for free this year. This is truly free food. I use parts of foods that I've purchased in spring that are deemed waste, such as inedible seeds or root ends. I plant these bits into ordinary garden or yard soil mixed with home-made compost. 

Green Onions

As I've been using grocery store green onions this spring, I've cut off about 1 inch of the root end and popped that part into some soil in a planter just outside the kitchen door. I didn't do anything special with the onion ends, just made sure the roots were intact and there was enough of the onion part (about 1 inch) to regrow. I can now see they are beginning to push up some new green growth from the root ends. I hope to have green onions for cutting in about a month.

Some folks prefer to start their green onion ends in water. I've had success planting directly into soil, provided it's kept watered (not a problem in our rainy spring weather) and likelihood of frost has passed.

What I like about growing green onions from the root end of purchased onions is that I would have otherwise just composted that root end. So I'm using a part that is basically a waste product from the green onions. In addition, you can begin harvesting from these green onions that were grown from roots in about 6 weeks after planting. Which means, I can be planting onion roots way up until early August and still have time to harvest some green tops before our weather changes in fall.

Bell Peppers

I have 6 pots of bell peppers (2 plants per pot) that I started from the seeds from a grocery store red bell pepper. As many of my neighbors do, I'm growing these plants in black pots in a very sunny spot of our yard. The seeds were free. We had the pots already. And the soil is a mixture of the soil from our yard and home-made compost. My experience with growing peppers from saved seeds from grocery store red peppers has been fair in the past. At the lesser end of harvest, I've gotten 1 or 2 small green peppers per plant. At the greater end, I've harvested 2 medium green to red peppers per plant. In all cases, the plants have been free, and I've grown them in soil from our yard/garden. If I get just one pepper from each plant, that will still be 12 free peppers for our meals or adding to homemade pickle relish.

What I like about growing peppers from the seeds collected from store-bought red peppers is this is totally free. I don't use the pepper seeds for any cooking purpose. I would otherwise add the seeds to the compost. And since it's a totally free endeavor, I'm willing to take a chance on the plants not producing as well as if I'd purchased seeds that were designed for my area. Because this is what I'd call risky gardening, I am unwilling to use purchased soil for these pots. But I will give them several drinks of my free compost tea this summer. Keeping my fingers crossed that this is one of the better years for my peppers.