Marvelous email to share! This totally rocks…
“Hi George,
I’ve been following your site for a couple of years. I really appreciate your mixture of humor and doom – especially the really bad puns. Quite a few bring a range of responses from a simple smile to a full body guffaw. I’ve gotten quite a bit of good information from your readers. Now, I finally have something to share.
One of the things you’ve been stressing in these uncertain times is preparedness. Find the weak point and work on that area. Once that is solved, move on to the next weak point. Unexpected events can change the landscape, so it is necessary to reevaluate frequently. It is a constant battle.
I live on the outskirts of Portland, OR, so I have 7 months of wet, 2 months of semi-wet, and 3 months of mostly dry weather each year. Our winters aren’t too severe; however, we usually get enough cold weather to keep coconuts from growing. It keeps the killer bees and tropical diseases in check. Nonetheless, the dreary conditions can exact a toll on the spirit. There is nothing like a bunch of fresh vegetables to lift the spirits when the gloomy weather sets in. At some point, they may not always be available at the local grocery store.
Last year, I built a Solexx Conservatory Greenhouse http://www.solexx.com/solexx_conservatory_greenhouse.html. After spending about 3 months researching, I settled on this one because of the size, the light diffusion, easy cleaning, and insulation. Looking back, it is a bit larger than I need and a bit expensive, but I’m mostly happy with it so far – insulation could be better and it needs external power to get adequate ventilation (fans) in summer time; otherwise, it gets too hot on long sunny days.
Here’s the crux of this e-mail. I needed to have pots for my plants. I had lots of 5 gallon buckets available and thought that they might fit the bill. The problem is that they have a big volume and small growing top surface, therefore limiting the plants per bucket. I had seen the topsy turvy planters https://www.topsyturvy.com/ and wondered why things wouldn’t grow out the sides as well. I experimented with drilled holes first in a few buckets; however, it only worked (and minimally) with pre-sprouted seedlings. Big holes allowed too much dirt to flow out and little holes were too difficult to plant. Then, I wondered why a flap wouldn’t work better. After a bit of experimenting, I came up with this design …
I use a drill to make the two holes at the top and a jig saw to connect the dots. The flap can be pushed back to expose a small garden area – large enough for a couple of beans, a strawberry plant, lettuce, etc. The drilled holes act as stress relievers to keep the flap from tearing further into the bucket. A few more drill holes in the bottom of the bucket for adequate drainage and I’m in business. It works quite well. Here are some photos I took in mid October inside my greenhouse.
Here is a Home Depot bucket that I planted green beans into. The beans have been producing all summer and are finally going dormant. You can see the typical flap pattern. There are 3 rows of 8 flaps on this bucket. On this bucket, the flaps are about 3″ wide. I think that 2″ wide would be sufficient. Because the flap size was a bit large, some soil eroded out during watering.
This is a bucket with the same hole pattern as in the bean bucket above. It has everbearing strawberries (Tristar) growing in it. They are as good as they look! The plants are still blooming and producing berries, but the lack of sunshine and high humidity inside the greenhouse are encouraging mold to grow on them now. Always something to work on.
The yellow bucket has Swiss chard and the bucket on the left contains beets. The greenhouse was usually 30+ degrees warmer than the outside temperature. It would regularly get above 120 degrees in there this last summer. Cool weather crops like this don’t respond well to excess heat. Now, after a few weeks of cooler temps, the Swiss chard and broccoli are really taking off. Again, quite delicious. The buckets don’t work too well for root crops, but the beet seeds were cheap enough to experiment with.
These buckets are cheap! Lots of fast food places get pickles in these and will give them away if you ask. You don’t need to pay more than a buck for each bucket. A large heavy duty clear garbage bag over the top will turn these into individual patio greenhouses. Bird netting or chicken wire will keep most pests at bay. My biggest headache this year was watering. Because of all the plants per bucket, these had to be watered every other day or they would show severe stress.
I used a soil mixture of half worm compost, a quarter perlite, and a quarter mineral sand. I added a little dolomite lime and gypsum to increase the calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. Potting soil will work too, but I had most of the ingredients so made my own.
The world is a giant class room.
[name withheld - Portland area]
Is this cool, or what? Of course, the reader’s jig sawing skills are a lot better than mine and maybe yours…but you get the idea, right?
Violence Against Bankers
Worth reading: “As foreclosure nightmares increase, will more homeowners play off their bankers in violence?“
When this first popped up in the predictive linguistics it sounded almost far-fetched – with visions of “lamp posted bankers” and such. But now, well, seems to be arriving.
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A number of readers have been asking “Where’s that predictive linguistics stuff about building tensions that’s supposed to be going on now?” Oh, tensions are building and events like Fort Hood are signs of ‘release’ of tension in the form of ‘outburst of violence’.
I’m just kicking back watching events unfold.
The Mindless MainStreamMedia
Still, a reader asks:
“Can’t find a motive………………….?
Have I lost my mind? Or is everyone in the media brain dead? This is insanity.”
No, this is Monday.
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Send your comments to george@ure.net
The UrbanSurvival Mall:
Peoplenomics This Week
The Single Person’s Marketing Plan
Common economic wisdom is that a home is the most important investment most folks make, but I respectfully disagree. I’d suggest it’s the partner you choose to put in the home that is really the biggest investment you make in Life since you can lose money faster than any market in history through the mechanism of divorce. Half to 65% net worth – or more- can disappear in an instant. And you thought stocks in the ‘pink sheets’ were risky? See this divorce rate chart. A number of subscribers who are single have asked for advice, so I thought it might be useful to apply some basic marketing principles to finding a significant other. This may seem a little irreverent here – and to be sure the line between sociopath and social butterfly is a thin one – but it won’t be the first time one of these in-depth reports has stepped over a line or two. Such is the danger of inquiry.
More For Subscribers Subscription Information
“Live on $10,000″ A Year
With another round of layoffs due to start later this month…a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades…might I suggest a preemptive tactical move? Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we’re all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California! A good starting point, at least if you’ve still got $10-bucks is my e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”
It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left… Click here for the index and details.
MyGroPonics
My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It’s an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few ‘dollar stores’ and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space – like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It’s just $10 bucks here…
No, when you tell your browser to ‘empty your cookies’ of web sites you’ve visited, it probably won’t get them all. Why? Because there is a whole class of ‘browser-independent’ cookies that will gobble up space on your hard drive, but more important is they will sneak out information about you without you being aware of it. Ever week I get emails like this one:
“Thanks again for the Maxa Tools recommendation, I never knew how much additional garbage gets attached every time I browse. “
Test drive it free by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will be $35 bucks. Is your privacy worth it?
Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive ‘non-browser specific’ cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster. I’ve taken 1,000 37,970 41,837 cookies off my machine now. It’s just amazing. (I might ask their CTO to add one more digit to the “Total deleted till now” window…)
Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world….so far. Given Jens and the other engineers time…
Pass It On
The business model of this website is base Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list…Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh? Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course….
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Last week’s report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)