Recycled Strawberry Planters



This was an idea that I saw on the Internet somewhere. It looked fabulous and the more we thought about it the more the idea began to grow.

Here in Casinos in the summer months it is just too hot for the strawberries to survive. These planters allow the water to evaporate  but it then condenses on the top of the bottle again so the soil stays moister for longer.

What you will need.
3 plastic bottle
Scissors
String
Compost
Plants

Take a plastic bottle and cut a hole in it.

Fill with compost to make the bottle stronger

Tie string around the fat end and double knot

Tie another piece of string to it and double knot

Join it to the second bottle string

Tie a piece of string to the neck of the bottle and run it to the second bottles neck

Take another piece of string, tie to the bottle top and at the end make a loop to hang it with

Repeat at the fat end of the bottle...this will be the top bottle

Should look like this

Next we hung them and then tied on the third bottle

Always double knot or more

You can now plant whatever you want to in your bottles. We put in strawberry plants and hung them outside on the wall.

We are planning on using this method for all our strawberry runners as we can fix yogurt pots to the bottle while the runners root and then plant straight into the bottles.

Home-made Furniture Polish

Kev was out collecting wood one day when he came across 2 abandoned bee hives. Kev being Kev, could not resist bringing them home. When we looked inside we found beeswax! I had wanted to use beeswax to make candles and cheese wax too but could not find it to buy here. The fact that Kev had found some was a bit of a bonus!

The first thing I wanted to know was if you could use olive oil with the wax. All of the research I did said to add essential oils, coconut oil or other oils I didn't have. I couldn't find one page that used just olive oil. With us having a crop of olives every year and a free supply of oil it made sense for us to use it and not to have to buy other oils. I just decided to suck it and see.

I used 6 tablespoons of grated beeswax, put this into a glass jar in a pan of boiling water. I had read that beeswax is very, very flammable and so should NEVER be heated in a single pan. I don't know how true this is but I didn't really want to risk it.  If you decide to do this, keep in mind what ever you melt the wax into will not be able to be used for anything else. This is the reason we used a jam jar.
In the following picture I have moved onto making larger amounts but you get the idea.







Pan with a little water





Heat the wax in the pan of water

The wax was melted and I added 8 tablespoons of olive oil to it. When you add the oil the wax sets instantly as the cold from the oil hardens the wax again. You need to keep heating it and stirring to make sure the 2 mix well. When all the lumps have melted you can pour the mixture into a container. I used an old boot polish tin for my first lot.

As you can see this is very dark, it was because the wax was not cleaned properly. You can also see that it is almost runny. It works brilliantly on dark wooden furniture and I have even cleaned my brown leather boots with it.

I decided that I didn't want it so runny, I wanted a set polish. I used the same method as above but only added 6 tablespoons of oil to it. This set firmer. It is still easy to use with a cloth but you seem to use less because it is firmer.

The bonus that came from using this is that the polish is very good for your hands too. When I had finished polishing the wood my hands felt like they had been creamed, very smooth and supple!

Recycling...the final chapter...so far!

This blog post is all about the things we needed or wanted and made or used. We tried to make a list of all the different things we have made to make sure we didn't miss any out, but I am sure we have.

One of the things we have used is the 25 litre containers we were given. They come in very handy for moving water around the garden but can also be used  as water feeders for the animals. Kev just cut one in half and fixed some wood to it. This stops the water from tipping up when the chickens climb in it.

This one is now a little pond for the ducklings!

We then moved on to using drain pipe as a water holder for the chickens. This one we use for the chicks we raise. They cannot stand in it as it rolls and scares them. They soon learn to stand at the side and drink.

When the original chickens went out onto the land it was summer and very hot. They had their hen house for shade but we soon realised they very rarely used it. They used to sit under the trees but the almonds by July or August have lost their leaves so not really much shade for them. We set about building them a cave...as we call it...from the previous years prunings. We added some massive root stumps and covered them with branches. The front is open and the back is to the ground but the hens can still see out in all directions. They absolutely love this cave, the Cockerel stands on top and crows and the hens sit underneath.

Changing the subject from the animals we decided to have a go at making soap the old way. For this we needed to make lye. We used the wood ash from the fire and ran hot water through it. We used a bucket with a make shift stopper to allow the water to sit in the wood ash before letting it out into the jar. This allows the water to leach more potassium from the ashes and so in theory makes the lye water stronger. We are still working on the strength of the lye but the bucket works brilliantly.

Bucket with jar to catch the lye

You can see the plug in the bottom of the bucket and the jar of lye we made

 

 

I had been reading on line about solar ovens. We thought that this would be ideal for the summer months when we are not allowed to light the fires. This means that I only have the hob to cook on. We tend to eat lots of salads at this time of the year. A solar oven would allow us to cook more variety. We set about researching how to make our own. All seemed to say 2 cardboard boxes and polystyrene. One day when Kev was out collecting wood he came across this.

 

 

We set about changing it into a solar oven. We used foil and a piece of glass over the whole in the middle. We placed it outside in April and cooked our first meal chorizo and bean stew in it. It was outside all day but when we got back from work at 4pm it was cooked!

 



We are looking to refine this a little but it works perfectly well in the spring and summer months.

When we first arrived here we had no running water or shower. So Kev used an old mop handle to hold the shower head and fashioned an outdoor shower. The water was put in a tank and the sun heated it up throughout the day and we showered at night! I didn't take any photos of it but here is one of the tank.

Sometimes the water was a little too hot!

 

The project we are working on at the minute is to do with the ducks we want. We needed to make them a safe home to live in at night. A friend brought us an old water container 1000 litres that was broken. It had a metal outside. We took it apart to see what the plastic container inside was like.

 



We decided to use the metal container as the duck house, and the plastic one as a duck pond! We cut the plastic container in half and sank them in the ground.

We placed rocks all the way around the outside to give the ducks a slope in and out of the pond.

We are going to build this up and lay flat stones on the top to hide the container. We will run drainpipe from one to the other and plan to hook up a small 12 volt pump to a battery and small solar panel. This is to aerate the water and hopefully breed bugs and things for the ducks to eat.

Here is a photo of their finished duck house. We filled it with straw to keep them warm. We put a palette on the top and a plastic cover to allow the water to run off in the rain. We now have 4 little ducklings waiting to go in it!

 

We love building stuff out of nothing. It is quite inspiring to see your ideas come to fruition and actually work. We have loads of ideas for the future of things we want or need and I am sure we will get to making them all!



Recycling Part 2...Pallets

The first year we lived here, we were on the look out for pallets. Normally here you  pay for pallets when you order something and get the money back when you return it. This is because wood is in short supply and very, very expensive.
A friend of a friend had some old pallets he didn't want any more and they ended up on our land. There were just a few...ha ha.

We thought we had loads here but they don't take long to use up.
The first thing we used them for was the goat shed. Kev built this from scratch. We are so lucky that he can visualise something and just work out how to build it.


Split door to enable the bottom to be closed and top open

When we got the turkeys Kev had to build a house for them. The pallets came in very handy for that

We used an old kitchen cupboard door so that the access was big enough!

Then we decided to breed chickens and needed another house for the chicks to grow to the correct weight before slaughtering. This was a smaller version of this turkey house.

One of the chicks enjoying the perch!

We found out that the summers are too hot to grow salad crops here so we wanted planters that we could move around the garden at different times of the year. So my clever husband set about building them all different sizes for the different crops

 Small one for spring onions and radish

 larger one for tomatoes or lettuce

Two for cucumbers

He even used one of the larger planters and changed it into a little chicken run for the chicks to go in during the day when they first go outside. This stops the dog from trying to eat them!

Next he set about building the rabbit hutches...one for the male (the smaller one) and a bigger one for the female to make sure she had enough room to have her babies,





 

We are now looking for more pallets as we have run out! The next project that we are thinking about is trying to make some garden furniture with pallets. This would look good on the terrace by the pool or dotted around the garden. We will keep you informed of how we get on!