Using Plastic Bottles In The Garden And Vegetable Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Wherever he turns his gaze on the streets of our cities and towns, in roadside ditches and on the outskirts of forests, everywhere he stumbles upon empty plastic bottles of mineral water or any drinks. And the dacha plots and the adjacent territories are literally inundated with this rotting container. It has now been determined that it takes at least 500 years to decompose one small children's plastic toy (to the molecular level due to the action of various natural factors and processes).

And yet, many gardeners and gardeners try to use these plastic bottles (large and small) repeatedly in their households so that they help preserve plants and grow crops, more often 1.5-2 liter containers are used.

Their application is very diverse. The lower part of the bottle is used indoors to prepare seedlings before planting in open ground. If you place the seedlings directly on the beds in a high and relatively wide plastic vessel, cutting off a little bottom and deepening into the ground, the bear may not get close to the roots of the plants, some gardeners believe (although this seems dubious).

In a funnel inserted into a glass, it is good to grow onions on a feather in winter. Very often, gardeners use plastic bottles as long-term drinkers: after filling them with water, they insert them with their neck down under tomatoes or cucumbers in a garden or greenhouse. As the soil dries up, water from the bottles will seep under the roots of the plants. This is how those gardeners who come to the country house only on weekends provide watering of vegetable crops.

Vegetable beds are enclosed in half bottles of 1.5-2 liters. A good funnel can be made from their neck, and if there is an urgent need, it is easy to cut out a convenient scoop from a single cylinder (in the latter version, the plug is not removed). Sometimes parts of large bottles are used to grow an additional root system in a tomato.

When planting plants, the ring is immersed in the soil to ground level. Seedlings are placed there and covered with humus, as the plant grows and strengthens, the ring is gradually raised and filled with weeded weeds and good soil. In such conditions, additional tomato roots grow rapidly. In this case, the "lengthened" root system significantly increases the yield. From a half-liter bottle (piercing the bottom several times with an awl), you can make a water diffuser on a watering hose: such a jet will not damage young (thin-stemmed) plants.

I had to observe the use of the upper halves, inserted into each other and fixed to each other, as a vertical drain hose for draining water falling on the roof of the house. The lower end of such a "hose" is directed into a barrel for collecting water.

Garlands of bottle necks, strung on a line and raised on poles, with their noise frighten off flocks of birds encroaching on the crop. An acquaintance of mine, who works as a trackman at the Zavaruyka station of the Pskov region, from the cut and stretched centers of plastic bottles fastened with wire, assembled walls for two rather large greenhouses - 5 m long and almost 1.5 m high. Out of several hundreds, maybe even thousands of plugs of various colors strung (through a hole) on a wire, he made a colorful fence around the house.

When they are engaged in cutting currants and gooseberries, it is advisable to cover the cuttings well-watered with water with a half of a plastic bottle. In such a closed space, the increased humidity of the air remains, which means that the turgor of the leaves does not decrease so much, the earth does not dry out longer. By the way, seedlings of many vegetable plants are better preserved under plastic cans. In addition, the cabbage fly, for example, does not have the ability to lay eggs near young plants.

Some gardeners scare off mice and other rodents by installing wind turbines made from a plastic bottle on long wooden poles in several places on the site. The impeller blades are cut with scissors from the lid of a can, and the body is cut from the wall of a plastic bottle or made from a flattened such bottle. The impeller axis is made of rigid wire, which freely fits into the hole of the long pole. The wind hits the impeller, it starts spinning and transmitting vibrations to the pole, and the latter "sends" these vibrations to the ground.

Sometimes, for the same purpose, other gardeners install the upper parts of plastic bottles (with a cut off bottom and without a cork) at the place where the water vole emerges or at the hole in the path of the mole (tear the mound made by it). Air currents, caused by even a weak wind, sweeping over the bottles, "draw" air from the necks and cause a low humming sound that spreads through the burrows of these animals, scaring them off the site.

A plastic bottle can save a swarm of wasps that have organized a nest next to an open country veranda, or when they eat the fruits of a sweet pear, from "revelry". The neck is cut off from the bottle, water is poured into its lower part, and the cut neck, like a funnel, is inserted into the lower one. Then they take a thick wire, string on it the pieces of apples and pears damaged by wasps, and this bait in this form is placed in a funnel. A day or two will pass and wasps will accumulate at the bottom of the bottle, which cannot get back. You can cut a plastic bottle so that the bottom is slightly longer than the top. Put a piece of raw meat on the bottom of the bottom part and pour it with a mixture of honey and water. Cover the lower part of the bottle with meat with the upper half turned upside down. The smell of food will attract wasps, which will rush into the bottle, but will not be able to get out.

From a polymer soda bottle and a three-liter glass can, you can make a unit for filtering water in preparation for spraying. The bottom of the bottle is cut off, 5-6 holes are made in the cork, a filter is installed in the neck - a layer of cotton wool. This "funnel" is inserted with the slightly unscrewed stopper down into a three-liter jar, and purified water is gradually collected in it. The upper half of the plastic bottle can be adapted as a fruit picker from trees; for this, it is put on a pole through the plug hole, and a flannel is placed on the bottom, where the fruits will fall.

In the fall, use the middle of the bottle, cut on one side and wrapped around the trunks of young trees for protection from rodents. Holes are made in the plastic through which a wire is passed to join the edges of this cut bottle.

The ends of the wooden and metal posts of the country fence are covered with halves of bottles, thus protecting them from the accumulation of moisture on them, which contributes to decay or the appearance of rust.

From plastic bottles, reliable protective (from rain and snow) caps are obtained for padlocks and wooden posts cuts, protecting the latter from rotting as a result of moisture accumulation. Closed with screw caps, polyethylene containers are characterized by a high insulating ability from moisture, therefore it is advisable to store fertilizers in them (especially those that are characterized by high hygroscopicity).

Some growers cut large oval holes on the side of the bottles to install them with water on the radiators of the heating system: due to evaporation in a room with dry air, where flowers or large indoor plants are kept, the relative humidity of the air rises significantly.

To prevent the greenhouse's plastic wrap from fluttering in gusts of wind, some gardeners throw a rope over the top of the greenhouse, and plastic bottles filled with water are reinforced at the ends.