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When grown in pots, orchids add tropical color to a room. Though many of these versatile plants are available for sale in venues from the local grocery store to specialty nurseries or wholesalers, the variety of species -- which number more than 30,000 -- can be overwhelming. When buying, potting and caring for your own orchids, choose species that thrive in your home’s specific light, temperature and humidity conditions, and create potting mixes using the most appropriate combination of ingredients for each type of orchid.
Making your own garden pots saves money while reusing materials that otherwise may have wound up in the trash. Newspaper pots cost nothing to make and have the added benefit of decomposing in the soil so you can plant your seedling straight into the garden. Make newspaper pots using black and white newspaper. Fill the pot with soil and plant the desired seeds. Keep the seeds moist while they germinate and then transfer them to their permanent location.
Perlite is a siliceous rock that is used in potting soil to help contain moisture and help with drainage. This soil amendment has the ability to hold water in its tiny crevices, so it is available to plants when needed. Adding too much perlite to soil results in excessive water retention.
Not very long ago, the height of classroom technology consisted of a piece of chalk and a chalkboard at the front of the room. Today, chalkboards are still popular in some places, and children absolutely love the size and scale of what they can create on a simple chalkboard. If you would like one for you office, classroom, or child's playroom they are easily constructed and relatively inexpensive.
Fondue cooking is an intimate and social way of preparing and serving food. The pot might contain dipping chocolate into which diners dip bite-sized portions of fruit or pastry, typically skewered on long fondue forks. Instead of chocolate, the fondue pot might hold melted cheese, for dipping vegetables and breads. Some fondue pots contain boiling oil, used to cook bite-sized portions of meat. Regardless of the fondue pot's contents, each pot needs a heat source.
A blue pea vine (Clitoria ternatea), also known as a butterfly pea, can go from seed to bloom in just six weeks. Blue pea is a tender, trailing vine grown outdoors as a perennial in U.S. Department of Agriculture zones 10 and 11. In other climates, blue pea vines are grown outdoors as annuals or in containers that can be brought indoors during cold weather. A blue pea vine blooms easily, provided its basic needs are met.
Although many new fondue pots use electricity as their heat source, traditional fondue pots were heated with a small open flame. The flame, provided by a flammable fuel or candle, must be monitored and adjusted so that the fondue pot's contents are kept at a consistent temperature. Your fondue pot's burner unit setup may indicate which heat source you should use or you may be able to use a variety of heat sources with your fondue pot.
Coffee beans -- like most other grocery items -- can be vacuum packed. Vacuum packing removes most or all oxygen from the package, which extends the life and preserves the flavor of the coffee beans. Many coffee roasters vacuum pack their products and you can vacuum pack at home as well.
Nothing tastes better than a tomato picked right from the vine. Most store-bought tomatoes are harvested when they are green and ripen during transportation. Growing tomatoes in your backyard is simple if you have a spot that gets eight hours of direct sunlight or more. Vine tomatoes need a trellis system to climb. A good trellis is at least 6 feet high and can support the weight of many tomato plants. This design is for a freestanding A-frame that can be set up anywhere in the garden.
Heavier is not always better. Using steel cans instead of aluminum cans make drinking cola very difficult. In the same way, lightweight cement provides a better solution for many projects. A lightweight cement called hypertufa contains sufficient strength. It provides a solution for cement projects which require less physical weight. Hypertufa can be made with various materials. Two materials used in hypertufa are peat moss and sand. Both of these materials are available at your local floral or hardware stores.
Fondue is a French or Swiss dish made from melted cheese and white wine, into which diners dip pieces of bread. Alternate versions include fondue bourguignonne, which involves hot oil-dipped beef, and chocolate fondue, into which cake or fruit is dipped. All these meals require the fondue pot to stay at a constant temperature to keep cheese or chocolate melted and oil hot enough to cook, but without burning the food. Cooks have developed several ways to accomplish this.
Hiding where you live is a challenge in this age of information. Most people's personal information, including where they live, is freely available to anyone interested in finding it. As a regular practice, you should ensure that your home address is shared only with family and friends and with your employer. If, however, you lead a high profile life, securing information about your address is more important and can entail additional measures. Furthermore, those with indications that their safety is possibly at risk should contact law enforcement immediately.
Of the three elements critical to plant growth, the one which gardeners have the greatest control over is soil. Sunlight and rain will continue to operate independently, but gardeners can have a significant impact on the growth of plants by providing the appropriate growing medium. Palms, especially when grown as house or patio plants, have soil-content demands that must be met for successful growth. Learn to make your own palm-plant potting soil, and watch your tropicals flourish.
If you like to cook, you understand the irritation of opening brown sugar only to find it has become as hard as a rock. A slice of bread can help keep brown sugar fresh, but it also can leave messy crumbs in your sugar. Even air-tight containers will not keep brown sugar fresh for long. One tool that many people overlook is a sugar keeper, a small disk you can make from terracotta. When the sugar keeper is moistened and placed in your brown sugar, it prevents the sugar from becoming hard and stale.
The coffee beans you use to brew your morning cup are actually the seeds of a coffee tree. These trees can reach up to 50 feet tall if left unpruned, but are usually trained to 4-foot heights for ease of harvest. In the home landscape, a coffee tree provides both greenery and shade, as well as a small crop of beans. The coffee seeds are encased in a fruit called a coffee cherry, with two seeds per cherry. Seeds can be sprouted for up to four months after harvest before they begin to lose viability.
Strawberry pots are usually terra cotta or some other type of clay pot that is tall and has several small tray openings for plants around the sides of the pot. Unless you are a master potter, chances are you will not have much luck crafting one of these vessels on your own. You can still make a hanging strawberry pot that will grow up to 8 lbs. of red, luscious strawberries free of slugs and snails.
Yard debris and food waste represent just over one-fourth of the municipal solid waste stream, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Instead of sending your share to the landfill, put it to work in your yard, garden, flower beds and flower pots. Composting produces a rich, powerful soil amendment that feeds your plants naturally and inexpensively. Follow simple steps and you can start improving your landscape and the rest of the world at the same time.
Create your own hypertufa cement planting pot at home with a few easy-to-find supplies. The pots make great accent planters for flower and rock gardens. Purchase and organize all supplies prior to starting the pot-making process since the cement needs to be worked with quickly to prevent it from drying before you are finished. Make sure to wear old clothes, lay out a drop cloth, and work in a well-ventilated area as the project can get messy.
Bromeliads are tropical plants that are frequently grown as houseplants. These are easy-to-grow disease- and pest-resistant plants. They do, however, need to grow in a medium that is humus-rich and that drains very well. Buying a packaged growing medium specifically for bromeliads can be rather pricey, though. It is much cheaper in the long run to make your own potting mix for bromeliads. You should be able to find all the ingredients at your garden center.
Being locked out of your home is an aggravating and inconvenient problem that happens to most people at least once in their life. Hiding a key outside your home protects you from accidentally locking yourself out, or provides access to your family members should they need to enter your house when you are away. You must carefully consider the dangers of hiding a key outside. A poorly hidden key provides easy access to burglars who may be aware of times you are not at home.
A plant stand is used to elevate or hold a potted plant above the ground. Plant stands can be used outside to raise sun-loving plants over other potted plants that may be blocking light, or to add height and dimension to a plant display. Stands in the home provide a place other than a table or dresser to store plants, offering a more decorative arrangement. A simple plant stand design is easy to make with basic tools and supplies.
Polishing cloths and solutions can get expensive, especially if you have to purchase different products for each surface or material that you want to polish. Homemade polishers work just as well as the store-bought varieties and require the same and occasionally less effort from you.
Fondue is a cheesy or chocolaty dip used for fruits, veggies and bread, and is often traditional for New Year's dinners and romantic date nights. While buying an expensive fondue pot can make the experience romantic, it is also possible to create your own fondue pot with common household items.
Cacti are genetically engineered to hold water in their tissues because it is scarce in the sandy soils in which they grow. A potting soil mix for cacti must be well-drained to mimic their native soil conditions. Use indoor potting soil, as it is sterile and contains no weed seeds or fungi, which could potentially be fatal to your cactus.
Shelling out for bags of new potting soil each year for container plants and seed starting can add up. With the soil already in your garden and a few other ingredients you can make your own potting mix. The key is to kill the weed seeds and bacteria present in outdoor soil and to lighten soil to improve drainage and lessen the changes that it compacts and hardens in your plant pots.
Most garden furniture is designed for leisure, but a potting bench is designed for the constant task of maintaining container gardens or houseplants. It's also not a bench. A potting bench organizes materials and raises the tasks of repotting and propagating existing plants, saving your back muscles for the larger tasks of the outdoor garden. Build your own potting bench with six two-by-fours, a dozen one-by-fours and an assortment of joinery hardware to provide a convenient outdoor work space.
Save money, ensure your garden is organic and really go green all at the same time when you make your own potting soil! Besides, it's just good clean fun! Well, okay, maybe not clean.
