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Posted by martingodliman (U13761957) on Friday, 14th May 2010
Bit of a shaggy dog story.....my neighbour who are Indian got in 'a man' to cut down a lot of trees and shrubs that to some extent cast a lot of shadow over my plot.
Well he was on old guy of 68, I say old advisedly I'm 60 ! thin but fit as butchers dog and spoke not a word of English. Any way I got him to cut down and old defunct pear tree in my garden that also shadowed my plot. He did a heroic job as well as removing a lot of the main roots resulting in hole, into which he in the spirit of tidying up buried all my carefully and much recycled bucket of crocks saved from all those now rare pottery pots
What can I use as a substitute ?
I just use a hand full of small stones,you only need enough to stop the drain hole from blocking.
Bless, how kind some people are, even if the result is not quite that which yiu might have desired.
Broken up bits of expanded polystyrene whcih has been used as packing material, or the loose 'chips' that parcels get packed out with these days - though I imagine the corn starch ones would just diappear so not so good, all are good in pots for 'crocking;. but not best for big pots as they don't have the weight to stop pots with top heavy growth tipping over in the wind. Stones, broken tiles, earthenware, anything really that will help drainage and stop the drainage hole getting blocked with compost. Dome of the best I used was broken breeze blocks = the softer lighter ones rather than the ones you build houses with - though I suppose they would work just as well.
Thanks every one I guess the answer is pretty obvious, really many things will do.
Not quite so easy to collect these days, I was rather attached to my old crocks .....buried alive, a cruel fate
Oh dear, I would be sad at the loss of my fine collection of crocks too. I've dug up two beds in my garden this spring and have found lots of fine stones to add to the collection.
I have also been collecting the tops from plastic bottles to use as crocks, a tip I think I read about on here.
Now that is a good idea, you always have to take the tops off bottles when you recycle them, sounds like another small container in the kitchen coming up - and some education of the family to put tops in there.
It might be worth asking at a GC for crocks, one near me offers them free.
That's a good tip about using bottle tops. The only trouble is that we've been asked to keep the tops on as the machine that picks out the plastic bottles has spikes that pierce the bottle and it works better if the bottle doesn't collapse as it's doing it.
How about wine corks? I've used those in the past.
My local garden centre always has a box of broken bits of pots and they let you take as many as you want.
Last year I had a bit of luck. I bought some scallop shaped concrete edging to stop the soil from a flower bed ending up on the path. I had measured the length I needed and found that I would have to cut one in half. I checked the box of broken pots and found half a length of the same edging in there.
I like the idea of the wine corks they are at least eventually biodegradable (the real cork ones that is)
They take a long time. None of mine have rotted yet and they've been in the pots for years. They are real cork too, not plastic.
I imagine, nature doesn't want cork to rot easily.
Alot of wines now come with either screw on caps or plastic corks.
I have to say it is the nicer more expensive wines which come with a proper cork or wine bought abroad, if you decide to collect corks as crocks can I suggest if in France visit a wine co-operative very nice wines with proper corks now there' a good reason to drink more wine, I'm collecting crocks
I find if you buy Dao (Portugese) or Rioca they more rarely have synthetic corks, I guess that's because it's where the cork oaks live......And I like Rioca
Try upturned plastic flowerpots 2inch ones work well for me
My local Homebase had sacks of polystyrene packing by the door for people to help themselves. They have a constant supply so ask somewhere like that, they've probably got piles of the stuff out the back.
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