Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Pot

This photo is called "Tom Thumb" (CC), the photgrafer is called Mykl Roventine, you find more of his photos and his profile here.



The other day I harvested my last carrots. They were pretty small. Like a thumb, more or less. And then it occurred to me that this carrot is named "Tom Thumb". Duh! I didn't expect the name to be so close to reality. But it's good to see, now I know this kind fits into smaller containers. I'll be able to save up on soil and to look out through my windows.

Containers are my biggest problem right now - or perhaps my own stingyness. Up untill now I made my own selfwatering containers using plastic boxes from IKEA. One advantage with them turned out to be them being transparent, which makes me able to see the status of the soil and the minor roots through the walls och the container. On the other hand I have to pay precious money to get them. In our storage I have several 'real' selfwatering pots gathering dust. If my carrots grows into 'thumbs' why not use them?

Experience tells me that soil in those pots turns into spongy yuck in a few months - probably because I can't see if water is needed and overwater the plants inside. I'm a notorious overwaterer. But my stingyness is whispering to me
"It'll turn out okej this time. After all you've been growing things systematically for over a year."

This is where I'm stuck, between a rock and a hard place - or perhaps between plastic and pot.

2 comments:

Sue Swift said...

Do you not put drainage material at the bottom of the containers? pebbles or clay pellets? If the containers are transparent you should be able to see if the water is dripping through.

However, as I'm another chronic container overwaterer, maybe I'm not the best person to be giving advice ...

Rosengeranium said...

Yes I do, in my home made containers and they work fine. But the 'real' containers (ie. factory made) I keep in the storage are not transparent. That's probably why I kept overwatering them when I used them - I couldn't see the water level inside, and the little 'paddle' provided to check it out are not always accurate.

When I put it that way I realise it's not a big problem to solve; I've decided to sell the factory made containers off at Tradera (swedish ebay, more or less) and buy some more IKEA boxes instead.

Thanks for your kind words! We overwaterers should keep together :-)