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Methos AlHazred ([info]alazif) wrote,
@ 2009-05-20 20:03:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
On gardening with crap you can find around the house
Just thought I'd share some tips and tricks that I've learned over the years:

For tomatoes, bury a cup of sugar, epsom salts, and a banana peel. It makes great fertilizer. Also, the squishy, half-rotten tomato, toss it outside. Next year, you'll have a bunch of tomato-plant sprouts.
I bet, that if you get a red bell pepper, and do the same, you'll have pepper-plant sprouts. Red, green, yellow and orange are all just stages of ripeness for the fruit.
I also bet that you can do the same with any hard-shelled squash. Though, if you don't have a lot of bees, butterflies, or similar things, you'll have to take a paintbrush to the flowers in order to get fruit.
You can sprout garlic from a clove of it that you got from the grocery store.
You can also sprout potatoes from ones you've gotten at the store, but it's not reccomended. However, seed potatoes at local farmer's markets are pretty cheap.

A great bug-spray/fertilizer takes one cup bio-degradable dishsoap-- Ivory's a good one, one cup mouthwash-- something like Listerene, and a cup of "tea" made with chewing tobacco, in a hose-sprayer. Spray your plants. It keeps things away and nourishes your plants.

Also good for nourishing plants: tea with sugar, tea-leaves, coffee grounds, egg-shells, old newspapers, and other "organic" garbage-- barring dairy or meat products. Dairy and meat products are bad for gardens.

A LOT of plants we refer to as "herbs" are actually European weeds.
Mint is a notible weed-- it spreads *everywhere* and is notoriously hard to kill. The suggestion is, to put the mint in a pot before putting it in your yard. They're also pretty easy to grow from cuttings: just put a cutting in a bit of water in a sunny window and leave it alone for a week or so.
Chamomile is an annual, but it re-seeds itself pretty easily, if you don't remove all of the flowers for tea.
Garlic, chives, and onions are perennials in Ohio. All it takes is one clove of garlic to grow a whole new bunch. Chives and regular onions are like any other bulb-plant: if you leave 'em alone, they'll multiply by themselves.
You can make a gourmet, flavored oil by putting a chive-flower in a bottle of olive oil.
Horehound, basil, and roses are great companions for tomatoes.

An old fork and spoon are invaluable gardening tools. You can also start a compost heap by drilling some holes in an old trash-can, and burying the bottom part of it.

Are there any other tips/thoughts/ideas that others want to contribute?


(Post a new comment)


[info]lawton_anime
2009-05-21 05:14 am UTC (link)
lmfao all of this applies unless you are living in southwest Oklahoma, then more than anything you must pray for rain from the great spirit and do the Choctaw rain dance!

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[info]alazif
2009-05-21 05:23 pm UTC (link)
Or invest in a hose and a high water bill. O^; The rain-dance is what we did at band-camp when we didn't want to do marching practice.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]lawton_anime
2009-05-21 10:44 pm UTC (link)
lmao we already do that one about the water bill :P our city did one really bad thing, they decided to put in electronic watermeters, and when they started putting them in the ground and everything a year ago, they made very bad mistakes. and so now residents who are saying that the meters are leaking and everything like that (of which they are), the city turns its head and says, "its not our fault, fix it yourself mr resident" and yes they literally did (the city management office) tell residents that it was not the city's fault and that it was the fault of the residents.

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[info]alazif
2009-05-22 05:11 am UTC (link)
Holy crap. Can they get away with that, legally?

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[info]lawton_anime
2009-05-23 03:18 am UTC (link)
This is Lawton, Oklahoma, they determine law here sadly due to their control as a good ole boy's association =_= its hard to force them to do anything they don't want to do. Did I ever tell you about what they tried to do to the praire dogs a couple of years ago?

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[info]alazif
2009-05-23 05:04 am UTC (link)
:o! Do I want to know?

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[info]lawton_anime
2009-05-23 05:15 am UTC (link)
the praire dogs for years had been multiplying like rabbits and the city council didnt know what to do, finally they decided on, gasing them. so one fine morning residents out along Ferries Avenue found many dead and dying praire dogs on the street and in the park, but of course the city got away with it, they get away with everything. but they couldnt kill them all off, many lived and so the city was forced finally to remove many of them to the wildlife refuge the correct way: suck them up into a vacuum cleaner vehicle and deposit them out there at the refuge

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[info]alazif
2009-05-23 06:43 pm UTC (link)
And neither PeTA nor the ASPCA jumped on their ass?

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[info]lawton_anime
2009-05-24 03:15 am UTC (link)
no the nutcases still to this day never found out as far as I recall, although the city has taken on millions of dollars in damages due to their lack of concern about the condition of our water treatment plants and water lines, the mainline leading from the lakes into Lawton busted one day and for a while the whole eastern half of town was without good water, and then they found the water treatment plant had a leak in the bottom of it (it is many many years old) and so the water leaked into the Medicine Park creek, killed off almost all the fish, and well... our city is just bad

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[info]alazif
2009-05-24 04:54 am UTC (link)
...can you tip the nutcases off? As well as the EPA for that last blunder? It might be kinda entertaining to see the publicity. Perhaps, some serious, negative press would stir some changes for the positive? (Jeez, and I thought our governor, Carty Finkbiner, was bad. Though, I'm convinced we kept Mr. Make the Deaf Live Near The Airport around for the entertainment value.)

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[info]lawton_anime
2009-05-24 05:45 am UTC (link)
the EPA was the one that slapped them with the massive fines :P oh and negative press is not possible, both the KSWO station and the Cameron radio channel and the Lawton Constitution are controlled by the same good ole boys association.

lmfao that airport deal is nothing compared to us! a while back the old drag racing strip outside of town was getting good business, suddenly imbeciles started moving in around it... and started complaining about the sound, well hmm retards move the hell away! but the city agreed with the retards and forced the place to close down =_= kind of the opposite sort of case from yours :P

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[info]alazif
2009-05-24 05:54 pm UTC (link)
I was thinking, if a group could raise enough stink about it, it might hit national news. I know this sounds kind of weird, but the situation in your town reminds me strongly of some of the politics "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?"
e
XD; Well, we can't really close down the airport. Toledo is still a port city-- not to the importance of Detroit or Cleveland, but still a port.
The airport noise comment was only a minor issue. Mr. Finkbiner has also gotten into fist-fights, and induced a heart-attack in one gentleman. :D! He's been an entertaining mayor, but ineffective and many of the city's inhabitants were working on a petition to get him impeached, but he's on the last leg of his term, so it's kind of pointless.

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[info]lawton_anime
2009-05-26 03:38 am UTC (link)
that and the saying, 'all politics is local' :P

lmao fist fights!

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]okura_chan
2009-05-21 10:56 am UTC (link)
That's very interesting. I don't have anything to contribute though.

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[info]curiousvenus
2009-05-21 04:20 pm UTC (link)
These are really interesting tips but too bad I live in a relative concrete jungle.

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[info]alazif
2009-05-21 05:25 pm UTC (link)
Actually, you can do this in pots, too. Darius always grew a big pot of tomatoes on her porch, and also put sugar, epsom salts, and bananas in the soil before planting or tossing her old rotten tomatoes in. O^ I know I use tea-leaves and stuff as fertilizer on my own potted plants.

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[info]lawton_anime
2009-05-21 10:44 pm UTC (link)
jungle! :O

(Reply to this)(Parent)




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