Sometimes I have some really off base ideas. It occurred to me that there should be some way I could use the poly/blend tote bags which are found in almost every retail store in my town. They are cheap, sometimes only fifty cents, but usually are one dollar. I thought it might work to use them as planters. I had accumulated enough to experiment with them. So, I filled the first one with good potting soil and planted some year old seeds in it. I used white scallop squash seeds, often they are called "patty pan squash". I even put a date on a card with indelible pen and took a picture of this first odd planter. I was so pleased when all of the seeds came up. I had put in many more than I wanted as I did not trust them to be viable.
Encouraged that they came up so well, I forged ahead and prepared more bags. My neighbor volunteered one huge bag along with five different kinds of pumpkin seeds that she had saved from pumpkins the year before. They all came up and looked so healthy that I faithfully watered them and watched them travel out of the bag and onto the hillside. One of them now has a green pumpkin growing on the vine. It is small, about the size of a golf ball.
After a month had passed and I watered and watched, I noticed something disturbing. Two of the bags were disintegrating. I had a tiny white squash on the patty pan plant, but in time it began to shrivel. One of the pumpkin bags was disintegrating rapidly. It was literally crumbling. I began to pull on the bag and saw that the water was not getting down into the bag. We are in a drought and no doubt I had not kept up with the watering as well as I needed to. I had a decision to make.
The patty pan was not going to make it and the soil was still usable so I put the whole thing in my rubber garden tub and took it over to the healthy pumpkins which were traveling down the hill. I tore away the shreds of the bag and dumped the good soil all around it and gave it a good drenching. Hopefully it will be revived and still make at least one pumpkin. The other pumpkin bag was partly in the shade and seemed to fare better, at least enough to have a little green pumpkin on it.
I will still water these pumpkins for the rest of the summer, but my experiment did not prove to give me a good way to grow plants. It seemed like a good idea, to tote the plant around. I still have some hope for one of the bags which was in part shade. It is still intact and is showing promise. This bag is larger than the others and on the side is printed "Dalton Carpet.com". They do make good carpets in Dalton. It could be that this bag will last and there may be hope for my idea after all.
After I had started my experiment I received the May/June issue of Birds and Blooms. A reader had sent in a picture of a tote bag from the Wine Store. She had the same idea that I had for using her tote for a mobile planter. She had sent a picture of the bag with spinach (from the market) inside the bag. I knew it was not actually grown in the bag as it was mature and the bag was too clean. I am wondering how her idea worked out for her.
When things do not work out as I had planned with my experiments, I think of Robert Burns the Scottish poet. He was ploughing in his field and uprooted the nest of a little mouse. He wrote a poem about it called "To a Mouse". Lines from that poem have become known world wide. He felt really bad that he had disturbed the mouse's home as it was in the month of November and the mouse did not have time, or materials available to built another nest before harsh weather. The lines are "the best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry". Below is the verse of the poem in which the line appears.
But mousie, thou are no thy-lane, (not alone)
in proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice and Men,
Gang aft agley, (often go awry)
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
It is believed that he was comparing his own life to the problems of the mouse. He loved nature and was deeply hurt by what he had done to the tiny creature. No doubt he had plans in his personal life which did not turn out as expected, and was reminded of them by this event in his garden. My experiment not turning out well did not disturb me at all. I have plenty of other experiments in progress to make up for this failed one.
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