Gardening Notes

I can now officially add gardening to my list of hobbies.  If you don't think gardening is cool, you don't know Candide.

One of the biggest problems with gardening is all of the time spent bending over at the waist.  My solution to this problem is to engage in raised gardening where the materials I need are placed roughly waist high so that I can work with them while standing up.

Start at the Roots - Mixing Potting Soil
I have found that for my purposes, Miracle Grow Potting Soil should not be used straight out of the bag.  Instead it is helpful to add perlite to it in a 5-10 parts Miracle Grow to 1 part perlite to achieve the optimal potting soil.  Measuring and mixing potting soil can be a problem.  I envision building something similar to solve the problem:

Sadly, Leonardo is still winning the better looking sketchbook contest.
On another note, I watched a recorded lecture on Leonardo da Vinci
recently, which correctly pointed out that he can be called Leonardo or
Leonardo da Vinci but never da Vinci because that just means
of Vinci, which is not a person's name.  But I digress...

I've seen a similar system to what I have crudely sketched above in place for adding packing peanuts to shipping boxes where instead of a trash can there is a large plastic bag used as a hopper with a hose and valve attached to the bottom.  When someone opens the valve, packing peanuts flow out until the valve is closed.  I also want to build one of these for a shipping station at work that could allow us to more quickly package boxes for delivery.  The components used for doing this with potting soil will just need to be a bit more sturdy.

Do Your Homework

Read up on gardening here.

Know Your Place

If you live in the United States and don't know your USDA Plant Hardiness number, click here and find it.

Get Inspired

I'm pretty sure I need one of these.

Here is where you can get one of these things.