Whine into Water

So, I swear not all of these posts are going to have to do with gardening, because my current garden is on my 5x10 balcony. There just isn't that much I can do out there. That did not, however, stop me from producing this (the strawberry, the penny is just for scale. In my defense, the first strawberry to come off the balcony was, like 1/4 this size):

Or rather, to be more accurate, stop me from purchasing the plant that produced it. Which I almost killed because I have a strict policy of Benign Neglect when it comes to my plants. Which doesn't work so well since I forget to water them for days on end.

Problem: Plants dying because they would probably get more water in Arizona than they do on my balcony
Solution: Water Globes! You know those pretty round glass things that you buy and stick in potted plants that slowly leak water into your soil as it dries out?
2nd problem: Paying money for them seems like a waste. I mean surely, I can find something that will work just as well lying around my house, right?
My solution: Booze.No, really!

Materials:

Empty wine and cider bottles. If you don't partake, any glass bottle will most likely work, or you can just sneak into your neighbor's recycle bins.

Method:

1. Water your plants first. Otherwise they'll just gulp the water out of your bottles and you'll need to refill, like, immediately.
2. Rinse bottles
3. Fill them with water
4. Go outside, quickly invert bottle and shove into soil of plant. I find that if you act like you're screwing in a lightbulb, it works a little easier.
5. Neglect away!

Caution:

If the water in your bottle is all gone in about 2 hours, either you didn't water the plants well enough to begin with, or the bottle wasn't shoved in far enough. Once you've gotten the bottle to a good depth, it should be easy to refill and re-insert in the same spot in the plant.

The wine bottles last a few days in a large plant. I use the cider bottles for flowers and smaller pots, they last a day or two. There is some debate on the Internet that you should somehow cap the bottles and make small holes in the cap, such that it's more of a drip-irrigation thing. I found that just leaving the tops off and making sure the bottles are firmly inserted works just fine, and is easier to refill. I don't actually enjoy getting dirty, so this is an important feature.

Good cages make good tomatoes

Or so I have been told. And this year I am finally heeding the advice. In previous seasons, I always grew patio or some other compact variety of tomato that looked cute but only yielded about 10-15 tomatoes total. This year, I decided to get adventurous and grow two regular-size Roma tomato plants (I was suckered in by the Heinz label! I could make my own ketchup! Curse you, Home Depot!) in two of the pots that I brought over from the old apartment.
When I bought these darling little things, I wasn't even thinking about how to support large, luxurious limbs heavy with fruit, I was mainly trying to keep them from death-by-sandbox at the hands of my daughter. They beat the odds, survived, and got big enough that they started to list. Being that storm season is upon us, it occurred to me on the way home from Sesame Place yesterday that they needed a cage, which I do not own. I thought it through as mile after mile passed and finally settled on coat hangers. It could work. It should work. I could twist them and bend them into something totally usable with adorable curly-ques and then paint and distress them so they look like something you'd buy in a store in Old Towne called Ye Olde Farmhouse Crappe and I would be a DIY goddess.
Well, one out of four ain't bad, is it?

Materials:

• 6 wire coat hangers (the full wire ones, not the cardboard tube ones. Extra points if they are all the same color)
• Regular pliers (I'm sure they have an official name, but mine came in a tool kit from Ikea. "Ikea pliers?")
• Needle-nose pliers

Here's a shot of my supplies spread out on my couch, where I sat comfortably while creating this masterpiece.

Method:

1. Untwist all of the coat hangers and straighten them as best as you can. Step on them, pull them, use the pliers, a mallet, a hammer, whatever makes you happy. You're going for relative straightness here, don't worry about it too much.
2. I used the needlenose pliers to curl one end of three of the hangers. I was hoping for attractiveness here, but the real goal was to keep my kid's eyes from getting poked out when she invariably smacked herself in the face with one.
3. Using the same three hangers, about 12 inches down from the curl, I used the needlenose pliers to make a small loop, and then another loop about 12 inches down from that. (This sounds nice and simple on paper. It actually involves some elbow grease and a little swearing. I recommend, as with most DIY project, a glass of wine or a bottled adult beverage of your choice.)
4. With the remaining 3 hangers, try to form them into something of a circle. I freely admit that I skipped this part, and other than unwinding the hangers, basically left them to their regular triangular shape. You will see the results later. Do the circles if you have the time and/or patience.
5. Make a curl on one end of each circle with the needlenose pliers.
6. Lay your three long hangers (that you added curls and loops to in steps 2-3) next to each other, with the loops and curls all facing the same way.
7. Thread the non-curled end of each circle (that you made in step 4) through the bottom loop of each straight hanger. 
8. Using your needlenose pliers again, curl the other end of the circle, and then "link" that curl to the one you made in step 5. This should complete a circle that runs through all three bottom loops of the straight hangers.
9. Repeat steps 7-8 on the middle loop and top curl of the three straight hangers.
10. Go outside and spread the three straight hangars out such that they form the points of a triangle. Holding each straight wire near the bottom, shove them into the ground around your plant. The circle hangars should keep the upright straight ones stable enough to support the whole contraption, unless you are growing  watermelons or something.

And here is my hot mess finished product!

Conclusions:

I think the next time I will actually make the circular hangars actual circles vs. warped triangles. The reason for this is that the straight hangers tend to drift until all of them are in one corner of the "circular" ones (which are actually "triangular" because I am "lazy") and that...just isn't helpful. I've had to do a little retro-fitting with my pliers.

So, there you have it. Not gonna make it into Ye Olde Crappe Shoppe anytime soon, but hopefully they will give the plants the support and encouragement they need.