Why Tightwad?

Like I said yesterday, I don't have unlimited resources so I make due with what I have. 90% of the plants growing in my yard I either grew from seed, grew from a cutting or division or I rescued it( someone thought it was dead and was going to throw it away and I brought it home and made it into something really nice).

I started by growing my seeds in little dixie cups in my utility closet. It wasn't bad but I had to make sure they got the right amount of water, light, make sure they stayed free of bugs and mildew. It was a lot of work with a success rate of only 50%.

In the last year I have tried a new method that has worked so much better with almost no work. I found several ideas in books and online that I incorporated into one to come up with a better way to start seeds.

From all of those ideas came the self watering seed starter. consisting of a recycled 2 liter bottle, cotton rope and a certain type of growing medium i have had about a 95% success rate with everything that I grew this year.

I had about a dozen 2 liter bottles that I used to grow everything in my yard this year, flowers and vegetables. Sometimes it got a little crowded and I would have to weed out the weak plants, I already ave about 60 bottles saved for next season. About once a month I would have to add water to the bottom part of the 2 liter, it works like an old fashioned oil lamp because the cotton rope hangs down in the water and absorbs the water up into the top part to keep the soil moist. It never got to wet or to dry, but stayed constantly moist and the plants did really well because of the consistent source of water.