Some great ideas, texaskitty.

Nice planters. I once made a strawberry planter out of an old file cabinet, until it fell apart. The drawers are still chicken nests.

With an old wash pot from your great great grandmother? Plant a water lotus. It's not much yet, but here it is:

What can you do with old feed sacks? I folded them over, added dirt, and planted sweet potato slips:



It may grow s.p., it may not. But it does hold down the cloth I have over the melons. Seems like the wind, and weeds growing under the cloth were always displacing it.




Also, since it disintergrates in about 4 months, I'm hoping all I will have to do is pull on it, and all the potatoes will spill out.

I don't think that is a bad idea, if you are able to get your hands on a bunch of feed bags. I'm curious how deep those are and how many sweet potatoes you will be able to harvest.

The average is supposed to be 5-6 per plant. The bags are about 18x18". I would be happy with a couple per bag, we'll see. We have feed bags multiplying like rabbits. Use them for garbage, frost cover, planters, etc

Which variety of sweet potatoes are you growing? I bought some Gardman potato tubs from Amazon for the sweet potatoes I ordered from Georges Plant Farm. The bags are supposed to be 20" tall and 16" across, so I planted three slips per bag to make sure that I have at least one plant survive the brutal summer heat. I also planted one or two okra seeds per bag because they are supposed to be great companion plants for the sweet potatoes.

Although it is not my first time growing sweet potatoes in a container (not everyone I knew at the time thought it was a sane idea), it is my first time growing them in a bag. I hope the bags last through the season as I know how damaging direct sun can be. They didn't look all that sturdy for re-usable bags in the pictures at amazon.com, but when they arrived, I can see that the pictures didn't do it justice. I just hope the outcome of this experiment is favorable. I am already feeling a bit of relief from seeing a bunch of new leaves growing on the slips. But it is too soon to get my hopes up. We had a couple nights temperatures that dropped below 40 degrees F shortly after I planted them which had me very stressed, but I think the layer of straw I topped each bag with helped them survive and the next morning is when I noticed the new leaves starting.

I'm probably aiming too high in wanting at least 10 potatoes per bag - I bought four bags. But with the hot summers we have here, I thought sweet potatoes would be one of the most successful crops I could grow here because they are supposed to really love it hot. And if the bags can be used for at least two seasons, it will allow me to feel comfortable trying the bags for other crops. Having sweet potatoes grown from my own garden for Thanksgiving will also be fantastic. I have the Porto Rico, Vardaman, and Red Japanese varieties growing. I think I only grew one variety last time, Beauraguard, if I remember correctly.

But there's a chance I know of a local place to get some free feed bags I will have to remember to look into.

I got vardaman potatoes, and put one slip per bag as I have lots of bags.

Two bags, nested, will last longer than one.

What can you do with old watermelon and winter squash seeds? I throw them out in the pasture. I thought the chickens would probably eat them. Or, if they sprouted, the goats would eat them. Or, if the goats didn't eat them, they would die from lack of water. Well, none of the above happened yet, they are growing in a line below where the water tank runs over.

ckat, another good place to find feed sacks is any horse farm or boarding/training facility.

I got a lot of weeding done yesterday. Most of the "weeds" are watermelon, cantaloupe, and sunflower plants popping up everywhere from the compost. I may have as few as 6 of the sweet potato vines survive. I waited to weed because I also planted okra with the sweet potatoes, but don't remember what the okra seedlings looked like last year.

But I continue to have hope I will be eating my own sweet potatoes this year.

I emptied one of my feed bags to see how the sweet potatoes were doing. This is what one potato slip grew:


I'll let them grow another month

Nice, tk. In time you will have a great harvest!

We ate them all. Very tasty.

What can you do with old plant labels that you need to re-mark?



I got some hobby type paint and painted over them




And then used a laundry marker to write in what I wanted. It is my hope that they will stop fading in the sun, too.

I scrub the old name off with an SOS pad. Haven't found a "permanent" marker that doesn't fade to unreadable in my sun, but it does help to face the writing to the north.

I use pencil-on-mini-blind-slat.

I used to use a rubber eraser, but a green scrubber pad works too. Comet Cleanser makes it whiter and gives a rougher surface for the pencil to write on.

But the plastic gets fragile after a year or two outdoors, so now I throw them away after one use. The effort to clean them is much more than the effort to cut a new one, and I have a lifetime supply from cutting up two mini-blinds.

I have just started with HB pencil on zinc plates on stainless steel legs.