Bottlerack gardening: the greatest idea in agriculture ?
On May 12, 2007, I published a message on my ideas about “Gardening in a bottlerack“.
MMC has been adding very interesting comments to it :
(1) Feb 11, 8:47 AM : MMC | libertyson11@yahoo.com |
“Regarding the bottles on a wall as planters, this is just simply excellent, out of the box thinking. There is a series of books on “square foot gardening”. You could write “square inch gardening” . Or I kind of like “Upright Gardening by the Square Inch”
It has so many benefits, such as not having to stoop, being able to label plants, their key dates, etc. Seriously, if you flesh out the many possibilities, this could be a major best seller, you could sell the hooks and things as a set.
A lot of people have wrote gardening books and go wealthy without the inventive genius in this system. Do you hear the thunderous applause echoing in the ethers?“
(2) Feb 11, 10:16 PM : MMC | libertyson11@yahoo.com |
“I don’t think its a prob. Few have heard of bottle gardens (BG).
It occurs to me:
-BG is far more effective than Square foot gardening
-The bottles on a wall is ultra-”raised bed” gardening”.
(3) Feb 13, 7:56 AM : MMC | libertyson11@yahoo.com |
“I am going to try the bottle rack this season. Here are my ideas:
-First, use a peg board instead of a solid board. With a pegboard one can actually use both sides. A pegboard can be hung with several circles of fishing string or twine from above.
With these methods, the old idea that a family needed one acre to subsist may be quite passé. It would be an interesting experiment to see how much food could be grown in the smallest space.
Hill potatoes- 50 lbs in 3 foot triangle
Doyle blackberry- 10+ gallons per plant
4 foot square with peg boards on 2 sides and one in the middle making an H shape. Plant in the ground and on both sides of each peg board.
With five foot high peg boards, that is 91 square feet of planting area, as opposed to just 16 if you use simple square foot gardening.
One could keep chickens or goats for milk with the tremendous amount of greens produceable.
I just think this is the greatest idea in agriculture.”
————————–
Thanks, MMC, for the appreciation and please inform us on the results of your trial with the peg board system, an excellent idea !
For clarification, here are the essentials on my “bottlerack gardening“-idea :
Already published on my desertification weblog on May 12, 2007
May 12, 2007
Being convinced there is a nice future for growing vegetables or other plants in plastic bottles, filled with a mix of potting soil and a soil conditioner like TerraCottem, I am continuously thinking about variants to enlarge application possibilities.
As in the drylands extreme drought, and thus extreme evaporation, is one of the main problems for agriculture and gardening, I suggest to limit this evaporation by using a plastic bottle to obtain a higher water use efficiency. Indeed, water can be stocked in a volume of potting soil, wherein a water absorbing soil conditioner can play its supplementary water stocking role. Please have a look at my former posting on this blog:
Mon potager dans des bouteilles en plastique / My vegetable garden in plastic bottles
May 10, 2007
This message contains info on how to transform a normal plastic bottle into an efficient container for growing all kinds of plants, even young trees (to be transplanted when reaching sufficient height).
Today, I present you an idea on a “bottlerack“, useful under different conditions :
1. In the drylands, where it can be interesting to fix the bottlerack against a shady wall (less evaporation when limiting direct sunshine).
2. Fixing the bottlerack on a wall protected from the main wind direction (less evaporation when less wind).
3. Fixing one or more bottleracks against a wall when not enough open space is available for growing plants directly in the soil.
Here are some drawings, made by my son Paul with the SketchUp program, to illustrate my ideas about such a bottlerack (with bottles prepared according to my suggestions in the former posting mentioned above).
1. A (wooden) board
2. in which the chosen number of screw eyes, each with a piece of rope (to fix the upper part of the bottle)
3. and the same number of square screw hooks are drilled.
4. The necessary number of prepared plastic bottles.
The way the bottles are fixed on the board:
1. The bottle will be put on the square screw hook (of which the hook points upwards), with the drainage hole sliding over the hook.
2. The small rope will be knotted around the upper part of the bottle and tightly fixed on the screweye.
This way, the bottle is firmly sitting against the board and all bottles are in an upright position.
The board should be strongly fixed on the wall with 2-3 hooks. Take into account the weight of the bottles with their content of potting soil, water and plants.
Please give it a try and let me know about your experience with your own version of THE BOTTLERACK (preferably with some pictures).
With my sincere thanks.
Willem
