Those Amazing Grow Pots!
From the Garden Patch
Photos are the property of Freedom is Knowledge. com, 2012
Necessity is Still the Mother of Invention
Last year my wife, who is retired and in her very early seventies, had experimental knee surgery last year. It was an elective procedure, our having to pay for retrieval of her stem cells because Medicare wouldn't pay for it, calling it unproven.
While our decision saved Medicare around forty thousand dollars, there would be no reward for being good stewards with the public's money. The procedure, provided by an wonderful surgeon with the Christian-based Park Ridge Hospital in Hendersonville, North Carolina, is the preventative step in avoiding a permanent metal-knee replacement.
The procedure allows the patient to keep their natural knee and its extensive movement that is not available with an implant. It was rough going for awhile, but now one year later she is off her pain pills and walks with very little limp. The procedure is designed to get her body to re-grow cartilage behind the knee cap, stopping bone on bone movement. As she enters her second year of recovery, we are encouraged the knee will continue to improve.
To that end, our small home had vegetable gardens around where my wife had to walk on slopes, our being retired living in the mountains of North Carolina. Having only 1/3 acre of land with an in-ground pool, there was no other area that was flat enough for growing a garden that you didn't have to walk at an angle to the land.
But the pool had concrete and stones all around it, with greenery around that to the edge of the high fence. So there was no place to plant a garden.
That was until I discovered Grow Pots from the Garden Patch. But where to put them so my wife didn't have to bend over to pick any growing vegetables was the question. That is when I came upon a idea for a standard picnic table off the side of the pool that would be covered with a tarp to prevent the wood being constantly wet from watering, growing mold.
I purchased 10 pot sets, which is the Garden Patch's best deal in quantity for free shipping. I investigated gardening stores along with Lowe's. There were no long growing pots priced at $29 each. And there were zero pots that were designed in two sections, one to hold the dirt and one to hold the water.
Lowe's delivered a pre-assembled picnic table to the house. I brushed all with wood with preservative and added a few bolts to provide extra support for the anticipated weight. My wife didn't know why the table was in the pool area, as it was all a surprise. 10 grow pots suddenly showed up from UPS, her asking, What are these?
Soon she found out, her using the burlap printed square pieces to cut areas in the cloth based on seeds she was going to plant on the Garden Patch's recommendation. I then married the top and bottom of the the ten pots, bought the recommended dirt needed to wick up the water from the dirt towers, and placed eight of them on the table, six on the top and two on the bench for the best sun. One pot went in front of the table on the pool area rocks while the last was placed on a longer white plastic summer table, as you can see in the lead-in photo.
I also purchased four stand kits for helping to keep the plants over their pots and not spreading into the open space, such as for tomatoes and beans. The dirt in the pots is said to be good for three years while the stand kits, which are aluminum and plastic, can be used again and again.
We put tomatoes, beans, cauliflower, spinach, lettuce, squash, and cucumber seeds and waited. The burlap cloths sat on the top of the dirt of each Grow Pot. Attached to the center bottom of these cloths were long plastic tubes of fertilizer, the tubes dissolving with the first rain. We were instructed to leave them alone to allow the fertilizer to slowly make its way into the soil over the coming summer months.
Once the plants began to grow, they grew larger and larger using more water. But we discovered how easy it was to water the bottom of the pots through the planned opening without disturbing the dirt or the burlap cloth. It wasn't long before we could no longer see the picnic table, as shown in the photos. Then we took long thin soda bottles, cut the end of the necks off along with the bottom, and used them for placing in the Grow Pot's watering slot since the plants got so big you couldn't see them anymore.
Eventually we started to get cucumbers and squash, the cucumbers trying to take over the bench and other plants, producing so many cucumbers my wife had to fill jars with special vinegar based brew for storage, later eating as a side dish for many dinners.
We had many zucchini squash and tons of beans that she froze for later dinners. We had spinach along with so many salads with garden-grown lettuce I can't remember the count of bowls they filled. Then the cauliflower grew its bunches with huge leaves.
As of this writing we are finally getting tomatoes from huge plants, along with what you call cherry tomatoes, (Tommy Toes down here), my wife picking one hundred in the last few days. The larger tomatoes are just starting to turn red, our giving a few to a friend who loves green-fried tomatoes.
The photos speak for themselves, my wife only having to navigate around a picnic table to gather the fruits of the Grow Pots. Next year we will put the beans next to each other since the poor green peppers could not inch their necks out of the forest of bean leaves above them.
Then we can put the lettuce and spinach in front so the bean leaves don't keep the sun from getting to these smaller plants that grow close to the top of the Grow Pots.
Finally we will put the cucumbers next year behind the picnic table and let them go for it, keeping the squash in front only growing zucchini
Next summer we will only need to buy 10 burlap clothes with new fertilizer tubes attached, everything else a go.
Oh, one other comment. Because we are directly watering the pots and not the ground around them as in a regular garden, out water bill has gone up only $10 each month.
That includes watering optional round pots located in other areas around the pool.
So if you have weak knees but still want to garden, I can highly recommend these Grow Pots from the Garden Patch.
And why not if you want picking as shown on the right of cucumbers and squash, one cucumber as you can see was hiding for awhile behind those huge leaves.
Best regards,
Photos are the property of Freedom is Knowledge. com, 2012
