Milk jug container gardening

What have you grown in a re-purposed milk jug?

Cruising Youtube and came across milk jug planters. Very clever, but frankly, kind of ugly.

The video said tomoatoes did not do well in them. Nor did cucmbers although beans and herbs did okay. I am wondering why a tomatoe would not do well? My tomatoes do not make very big root balls, although they do seem to send out little feeler roots that spread outward over a large area.

Also...aside from lack of sunlight, encroaching roots are a huge problem for me. My few gardens boxes are built on ground that was sort of scraped with the bulldozer to shove off the wild shrubbery. Wild shrubbery, it turns out, is not so easily shoved off and over the years roots from nearby willows and other weedy plants have pushed up into the garden boxes, making a solid mat of tangles. I removed these tangles twice, which takes days of hand removing soil and CUTTING these tangles out with shears. Last time I put raised bottoms in the boxes and I lost soil depth as a result, but so far (knock on wood) the roots have not returned.

Question: do you think those rubber matts that you put in horse trailers and such, would they work in a box bottom to keep out roots? Or is there some sort of chemical in those recycled tires that you would not want in your garden? I wonder about what might be released from both the milk jugs and the rubber mats, or if they are inert plastics. Yes, milk jugs are food grade plastic, but they are also not intended for exposure to sunlight. They are intended to be in closed, dark, cool areas. Would sunlight and air exposure change thier chemical behaviour? WOuld a rubber mat, exposed to the action of microbial soil efects release something negative into your garden soil and affect your plants or is it pretty impervious stuff? ANd since the deer eat most of what I manage to grow, should I be watching for a spike in two headed, hunchbacked deer? Wondering aloud.

Uno using rubber mats is an interesting idea. I get small ones at Home Hardware for around $7. They used to be cheaper and I dicker with them a bit when I go in, I use them for a lot of different things! They are small enough that I can man handle them myself.

Right now, Uno, I'm growing potatoes FROM SEEEEEEED. Not from seed potatoes, but seeds, like tomato seeds, but potato-y.

They work well for that. Keeps the cats out and the light in. I would suggest something like a heavy mulch instead of the rubber mats... Just because it'll keep everything down while bio-degrading it.

In Australia I would use about 5 sheets of newspaper and then build a raised bed on that. Kept weeds and things out and then did finally break down like Sweeteded said. Won't keep roots and other very vigorous things out though. The only way to keep roots out would be something like the mats I would think. You would have to make sure you had some good drainage some other way I would think.

Bedrock would keep out roots. If only Uno had some...

coopslave wrote:In Australia I would use about 5 sheets of newspaper and then build a raised bed on that. Kept weeds and things out and then did finally break down like Sweeteded said. Won't keep roots and other very vigorous things out though. The only way to keep roots out would be something like the mats I would think. You would have to make sure you had some good drainage some other way I would think.

What about, perhaps, drilling small holes through the mats for drainage?

Ba ha ha Fowler, ever so funny.

Let me tell you about bedrock. It is an interesting material. It runs along in huge seams, undulating upward and downward again like a massive snake coiling in and out of the ground. UNder snow what looks like HUGE brush piles pushed together with bulldozers is actually bedrock bursting skyward. No, you will not burn that when the snow melts off. You will drill and blast for days and days and thousands and thousands of dollars.

And while one would think that rock is a solid block, and in many places it is, the nearer the surface, the more likely it is to be 'rotten'. Rotten rock has been exposed, for centuries, to the effects of weather freeze/thaw cycles and erosion. It is no longer a cohesive mass, but has shattered in small slivers and layers down to pieces small enough for a large excavator to remove them, like the size of a VW Beetle. And into these cracks and fissures the root systems of shrubs and trees have travelled, looking for nutrients.

If you live in nice, fertile, loose soil, you maybe able to grasp a plant, pull it out and have the roots come with it. This is not the case in this rotten rock that shows up here. While you may shave off the top growth with a bulldozer and yes, it requires a bulldozer, you will NEVER remove the tangled mass that winds and twines down into the earth like evil blood veins. And when you place a little 2x6 box with fertile soil on that barren rock THINKING that all is well, you will be fooled! BEcause those hidden roots are like sharks to the scent of blood and up they come, from below and coil like ropes in your garden box. They never break the surface. You never know they're there! Not until crop after crop of plants fail despite all your watering and fertilizing and you put a spade in one day and it sinks in 3 inches and stops hard. WOody roots as thick as your thumb wrap and coil and twist and knot in a MASS and you wonder...where the heck did these come from? From hell. They came from hell!

Watch out Fowler, people such as yourself have been accidentally struck on the head by falling bedrock. Having been hurled at you by some disgruntled gardener all the way over here in BC!

uno....I think you need to start a rock pit, or gravel pit. Sell the stuff and eventually you will have flat land.

Or get someone in to blast an area away from the house etc. and flatten it out somehow, then put cardboard boxes down, manure, then more cardboard, manure, newspaper and then layer with manure, like a lasagna.

Don't know why, but the plastic milk jugs don't seem to work with much? But you can put one in the soil, beside your plant, then water and fertilize that way.

Put some rocks in the bottom, so the water doesn't flow out all at once. Then small holes in the bottom of the milk jug, this way you save water, and don't flood the plant.

Good Luck.

Lady Leghorn, in fact there are several stakes claimed in this area and people are indeed blasting and removing rock. Not as gravel but as road base riprap and decorative landscape boulders, the BIG rocks you make retaining walls with.

This bedrock is a pain in the pookey, try fencing! BUT...the foundation for our house has not shifted one milliemetre since the day it was poured, on bedrock.

Hmmmm...wonder. Plastic milk jugs, the size of a gallon, in warm or hot sunshine, that deems heat and lots of heat. Most plants really like their root system to be warm, warmth means wonderful growth. But I picture any plant that is raised in a milk jug would be exposed to some very hot, hot temperatures and may cook the roots. I do exaggerate a little here, but you get the picture. Many garden plants would not do overly well in such a smallish container, roots like to ramble and when they are constricted, such a a hot milk jug, I think you may be in for some trouble. There are many plants that have very short, short root systems and might do well. But besides being ugly as sin itself, I could think of some much nicer looking objects to plant any type of plant, be it vegetable or flower in. Maybe I am too picky about esthetics, but to me a garden should look pretty as well as being functional. Just my take on it. I find even in the huge black plastic pots, like the 12 gallon ones, here anyways, that the soil gets so warm that plants don't do overly well in black containers. Just my take on what I have observed in our area. I would never use plastic milk jugs, too uuuuugly. Have an awesome day, CynthiaM.

While we don't have bed rock we did have to adjust the placement of our foundation due to a HUGE rock that was the size of a VW bus. Tried to move the rock and couldn't without the costly blasting so we moved the foundation over. I would not wish to fence in bedrock..... nope not at all!