Who has started inside sowing yet?

yes - yes - THROW!

both will do well here - look, they grow in the gravel by me. So they will happy in a meadow setting - lots of room to stretch.

I love the eggshell planters. Very cute idea. I'll have to try that too.

Summer, the eggshells are great! With Easter comming up, I can see a little dish of painted shells with little green sprouts in them sitting on the windowsill!

I very carefully cracked the top off of some brown eggs this morning and asked my dh to do the same. He is game for at least a dozen little eggshell planters! Summer, this is the cutest thing since sliced white bread! Thank you so much for sharing it! You should never, ever be shy about sharing a creative idea on this forum. We are all very creative thinkers here (reference the tinfoil hat competition) and enjoy all kinds of things that others might not enjoy.

I also love for things to be both beautiful and functional. But there are times when i find beauty in the sheer functionality of something like a perfect seed tray that fits together with perfect engineering. I guess beauty comes in all forms. Still, the egg is a thing of perfect beauty on all counts. Form and function.

we did this in Kindergarten - it really works well, unless you want to germinate large seeds that will take over the allotted rootspace.
I must confess that when I accessed the thread, and prior to clicking on the picture, it looked like SK had found a new use for doughnuts. Glasses really clarified the situation...

Everything Katye needed to know, she learned in kindergarten!

Now, did you kids do anything creative with doughnuts?

Too bad you don't live closer, summer....I have friends whose chickens lay blue and green eggs. One question, however......I refrain from putting egg shells in my compost as they seem to take a long time to deteriorate.....have you actually planted your plants outdoors later and, if so, how long did it take for the roots to break through the shell?

They break through immediately because the shells are quite weakened by having been cracked & being damp. Of course, if in doubt you can further break the shell as you plant it. That usually happens to me anyway.

indeed, SK. This is why I prefer playing in the soil to other common pastimes.....

You can use it to flavor soups, you know.

=:0° culinary soil?

Oh gosh, how in the world did I do THAT? I meant to post that in the fungus forum, about witches' butter.

Please disregard.

I am relieved, so very relieved.

Yeah, soil's only good for coffee.

Or vice versa.

We all know that the years spent in kindergarten are the best spent, if the teacher is good. My teacher pinched my nose when I had a nosebleed, so I'm not sure I learned everything I should have. Come to think of it, her nose was rather pointy.

Chickens that lay colored eggs! I love it! I wish I lived closer. That would be so cool. My dh has wanted chickens for years, but i don't want more animals to take care of at this point.

Here is an open question: Does anyone grow Euphorbia marginata 'Summer icicle' and, if so, does it reseed itself here? I have a few seeds and want to know if I can sow them directly.

I have 6 eggshells filled with coconut fiber 'dirt' so far. I think I will plant them with Marigold 'Julie'.

hmmm - makes it crunchy?

Pix - I sowed them inside early, using heat mat. No seedlings the following year.
Not sure if they self-sow, germinate well or have good vigor.
But the perennial Euphs seem to do REAL well in this department...

This is so funny, everyone with their eggshells. I feel like Martha Stewart, as in the time a dozen years ago that I had a party & made some enticing-sounding drink from her magazine that involved a couple of tablespoons of vodka. It was not a hit. My colleague Darel from the Chicago Sun-Times sniffed & said, "Yay, Martha Stewart. She has housewives across America measuring vodka by the tablespoon."

Too funny, Summerkid, because I almost said something about your being the 'Martha' of the group with those eggshells! Then I thought, well, maybe not. Apparently I was correct in my first assessment :)! Still, I could see someone from her staff doing this idea and it ending up in her mag as an oh-so-easy way to recycle. I did measure my coconut fiber with a tablespoon. Maybe that counts.

Katye, too true. I have plenty of some of the euphorbias, but not all of them. One called 'Red Martin' seems to be a little too prolific for my taste, but not really that bad. I think my soil stays wetter than yours must over the winter.

Martha would have perfectly matching egg-shell containers, probably with scalloped edges.
I still think that picture looks like doughnuts without my glasses. Reminded me of planting in tires.
Stack 'em high!

She would cut vintage paper doilies with pinking sheers and carefully glue them around the edges using a fine tipped horsehair brush.
I took my glasses off and it all looked like a blur to me. I will have to eat a few eggs in the next day or so. I wonder what color Rachel's chicken's eggs are. Maybe I should just color some. Turquoise is nice.

Thanks,, summerkid. All I need is another project.

Okay, I must admit that I, too, saved shells from this morning's breakfast, rather than putting them in the worm bin. There just something so school-crafty about that.

Kate, I looked at the picture again - I'm with you on the doughnuts.

Another one bites the dust. In 6 weeks we will all post photos of our little eggshells filled with plants.

I am so thrilled.
This is cracking me up.

Hahahahahah crack-ing me up . . . get it?

Groan.

please - do not egg her on.

eggcellent use of shells.

ok i promise: no more.....

I may try stackable doughnuts, sort of like little Michelin Man planters.



This message was edited Feb 8, 2010 8:20 PM

And very eggciting. Hope I have eggstra seedlings when we're all done. Okay, now I'm groaning . . .

Arrghhh.... rolling on the floor in brain pain! Uneggceptable!

Eggzactly! I had to have eggs over easy tonight in order to add to my collection of shells for this little endeavor.

Hey, don't make fun of tire gardens :) I used to grow tomatoes in tires when I was about 23 years old, in the Texas desert. It's all I had. best tomatoes I ever grew! Who knows what chemicals ended up in my body through those tomatoes?

Pix - one thing is for sure - you've got lots of tread left!!!

That's why I have never used old tires for growing containers, even though they were reported to be very helpful in creating a warm environment for the tomatoes. Definitely a cheap way to create mini raised beds though.

I admit, though I have been lurking here, I have not managed to plant anything yet. Next week I have a vacation though, and I will be a busy beaver. It better not rain all week.

Hmm, I'll take that as a compliment, Katye! LOL! Fortunately, I probably didn't eat that many tomatoes back then. If there was one thing I didn't need, it was extra heat in the desert. It was more an attempt to hold soil above ground level. It was already plenty hot. I probably fried more tomatoes than I ate. Those were the days.

Doh!! That wuz a good one!

Pix, we've probably inhaled worse.

The method that has had my attention the past few years is using straw bales. Their weight & size was a factor, but now with my little blue toy truck...

I've tried them, Kat, and found that they are desirable only if something (disability, tree roots) prevents you from gardening in the actual dirt.

Last summer there was a photo/journal article in the newpaper in Tacoma about a woman who had surrounded her city house with straw bales and was growing vegetables. Now on the one hand, she was quite successful at growing vegetables, planting the plugs directly into the bales and allowing the decomposition heat to encourage growth. On the other hand, it was really unattractive and not likely to do much to encourage people who want pretty landscaping to 'grow their own', as it were. One has to wonder what she is going to do with all the partially decomposed straw as the bales begin to fall apart in the winter. We're talking a LOT of straw bales here. I bought only two bales of straw to build my little cages for tender plants, and I have plenty of straw laying around trying to decompose. I plan to simply cover it with tagro, but she probably had at least 100 times as much.

I am more interested in straw bales in terms of building. When we moved into this house, I really wanted to do a straw bale studio out back as a project with my son. But it was just too big a project to tackle for just the two of us, and my dh wasn't that enamored at the time. Maybe it was the whole 'working a full time job already' thing. But I was homeschooling andrew, so it would have been a fun project.

No, they are not attractive, even if you spraypaint them blue like I did.

Nor do they hold water or fertilizer very well.

I think it's a fad.

OK guys, I just did a 1' raised bed along the south side of the house, and am going to use small chicken wire, then build a lasagne bed for it. Its my wifes, for veges, that I can't seem to get interested in. Because we are just waiting on the economy and house prices to stablilize to move, it is out of untreated lumber. But its going to get 5 big pots of tomatoes off the deck and who knows what else in my belly?

I have read about cloches to keep seedlings warm and moist. This raised bed seems just the ticket. Si?

Yes, raised beds tend to warm up faster than regular ground.

Other than that, the lasagna stuff is intended to rot for a year, depending on what you use. You have to be really careful not to create impermeable layers.

Can you post some pix?