Green Living Library
  • Welcome
  • Blog
  • The Sustainable Life Shop
    • 16 oz. Stainless Steel Insulated Drinking Cup
    • 4 Piece Silicone Bowl Covers
    • Silicone Storage Bags with Slide Closure
    • 10 piece set of bamboo handled toothbrushes with nylon bristles.
    • Dental Floss Holder with Compostable Dental Floss
    • 33 yards Eco-Friendly Dental Floss Refills
    • Stainless Steel Drinking Straws with Cleaning Brush
    • Plant Based Scrub Sponge 8 Pack
  • Green Living with a Kid
  • Lifestyle
    • All Natural Health
    • Books Worth Reading
    • Composting
    • Green Documentaries
    • Green Transportation
    • Green Landscaping
    • Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
  • Food
    • Organic Farming
    • Composting
    • Extra Resources
    • Food Storage and Preservation
    • Gardening >
      • Companion Planting
      • Seed Starting
      • Weed Control
    • Soil >
      • Soil Health
      • Soil Science
      • Soil Building
      • Soil Tests
  • Home Building
    • Adobe and Earthbag Building
    • Cob
    • Log
    • Rammed Earth
    • Straw Bales
    • Heating and Cooling >
      • Home Heating External Links
  • Frugal Living Library
  • Renewable Energy
    • Solar Power
  • About
  • Contact
  • Green Living Photo Gallery
  • Product
  • Welcome
  • Blog
  • The Sustainable Life Shop
    • 16 oz. Stainless Steel Insulated Drinking Cup
    • 4 Piece Silicone Bowl Covers
    • Silicone Storage Bags with Slide Closure
    • 10 piece set of bamboo handled toothbrushes with nylon bristles.
    • Dental Floss Holder with Compostable Dental Floss
    • 33 yards Eco-Friendly Dental Floss Refills
    • Stainless Steel Drinking Straws with Cleaning Brush
    • Plant Based Scrub Sponge 8 Pack
  • Green Living with a Kid
  • Lifestyle
    • All Natural Health
    • Books Worth Reading
    • Composting
    • Green Documentaries
    • Green Transportation
    • Green Landscaping
    • Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
  • Food
    • Organic Farming
    • Composting
    • Extra Resources
    • Food Storage and Preservation
    • Gardening >
      • Companion Planting
      • Seed Starting
      • Weed Control
    • Soil >
      • Soil Health
      • Soil Science
      • Soil Building
      • Soil Tests
  • Home Building
    • Adobe and Earthbag Building
    • Cob
    • Log
    • Rammed Earth
    • Straw Bales
    • Heating and Cooling >
      • Home Heating External Links
  • Frugal Living Library
  • Renewable Energy
    • Solar Power
  • About
  • Contact
  • Green Living Photo Gallery
  • Product

DIY 2 Liter Bottle Greenhouses

4/2/2015

0 Comments

 
Have you ever had trouble starting seeds in the spring or fall or maybe in the middle of winter if your crazy like me. Well I know I have and I have been searching for a long time for effective seed starting methods that don't involve purchasing something custom made for the job. Items like the Jiffy Greenhouse or the Hydrofarm Germination Station are wonderful tools but they don't provide the versatility I like.

Picture
These days when I purchase a product I find myself thinking how many different ways can I use this before I throw it away or recycle it. In this quest to find as many uses for products as I can I find myself becoming a bit of a hoarder. I kept cereal box's, plastic bags, yogurt cups, tin cans, milk jugs, two liters bottles and the list kinda goes on from there. Needless to say my apartment at the time got a bit crowded with these items. But in all that clutter I found my imagination just ripe with ideas on how to reuse all those items. For the sake of this post I am going to focus in on the humble two liter pop bottle. Over the past couple years I have found a few key uses for those bottles that I find particular useful. My first thought was of course fill them with water for water storage. But that was too simple to elementary for my liking so I tried them and milk jugs as dumbbells. While the two liters were only four lbs and milk jugs eight lbs that added up with repetition especially when holding them up and away from your body while playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) at the same time. Those songs may only be one and half minutes long but that is a great workout for this out of shape couch potato. After a while I abandoned that idea because they were proving to be to cumbersome and hard to hold.


The next thing I did was use the two liters as ice packs. They work great for coolers and can be frozen and thawed with ease. I also attempted to use them as air conditioning units in a homemade air condition similar to one in the video to the right. I don't not claim any ownership of this video I am just using it to illustrate my point.


My attempt was not nearly as refined as this one so that is why it failed so completely. My latest use of the two liter bottle is as a single cell greenhouse for growing seedlings to place in my Topsy Turvey Planter. I am using these bottles as mini greenhouses and they are very successful so far. I am currently growing one cherry tomato, two green pepper plants, cilantro and basil to be placed in the Topsy Turvey planter when they are large enough. It is my hope that this system will give me some fresh vegetables to enjoy over the winter months that haven't been shipped from the southern part of the US or even another country. The amount of fossil fuel energy that goes into growing food these days is astonishing enough without including the transportation energy. I do realize that the Topsy Turvey system will not provide me with enough to make a dent in my food requirements but it is a step in the right direction I feel plus I love a good experiment.


Now to make these bottle greenhouses is fairly easy.

  1. Obtain empty two liter bottle of pop


  2. Rinse out and remove label


  3. Cut bottle in half using a sharp knife or scissors


  4. Fill bottom half of bottle with desired potting soil


  5. Wet the soil using either gently poured water or spray bottle


  6. Insert desired seed into the center of the bottle to the indicated depth on seed packet.


  7. Press soil firmly around seed in insure good seed soil contact


  8. Cut 2-3 inch vertical slit in bottom of the top half of bottle


  9. Place top half over the bottom half of bottle


  10. Place bottle with screw on cap removed in either sun or darkness depending on what you are growing.


  11. Wait patiently for something to grow.





I have currently only used this technique to start tomato, peppers and herbs but I would imagine it would work equally well for many other types of plants that you want large seedlings.


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Hello my name is Josh Larson and I am the creator of the Green Living Library.  Here on the blog you will find updates to content found in the Green Living Library as well as stories from those living the sustainable life already.  

    Archives

    December 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015

    Categories

    All
    Climate Change
    Companion Planting
    Composting
    Cover Crops
    DIY
    Documentaries
    Financial Independence
    FIRE
    Food Forests
    Food Preservation
    Gardening
    GMO
    Green Cleaning
    Health
    Heating
    Home Heating
    Homesteading
    Human Population
    Industrial Agriculture
    Kids
    Mulch
    Organic Food
    Organic Matter
    Passive Cooling
    Permaculture
    Plastic
    Pollution
    Recycling
    Renewable Energy
    Reuse
    Seed Starting
    Soil
    Soil Compaction
    Solar
    Solar Power
    Species Extinction
    Tillage
    Trees
    Trellis
    Tweaks
    Urban Agriculture
    Windbreaks

Photos used under Creative Commons from andrew_ross, Scrap Pile, USDA NRCS South Dakota, mikecogh, mikecogh, rmkoske, UnitedSoybeanBoard, naturalflow, Rennett Stowe