Do you cut the sidewall to make a bigger space? Now, you'll have to figure something to do with the pieces,

"Back in the day" I remember people collecting tire tread pieces from the highway (from blow-outs) and using them to make sandal soles...

Boysenberries are my favorite fruit, but I seldom get enough in one day to make a pie. They will usually rot within 24 hours of being picked. So, I clean them each day, put them on parchment paper, and dry them in my oven for an hour each day. I have a drying cycle which is 140°. Old and new together. These are six days old, and they show no signs of fungus.

With a bunch of old paper?

I get irritated having to smell my neighbors stinking garbage when they burn it. So, I've been trying to figure something besides burning to do with my own mounds of paper. Since I've already pulled up the weeds around my tomatoes three times this spring, and they are back:



I decided to dump any paper around my plants both to cool the soil this summer, and for compost:




And, put hay the goats pooped on on top to hold the paper down, and for fertilizer:





I realize it's not a unique idea, but I'm hoping it will prolong the tomato season here. Last year they had just started to ripen when it got very very hot, and they stopped producing for the summer and fall.

You definitely have some weeds going there, TK !

I wish our neighbors just burned paper... they burn anything and everything

No burning at all, ever, out here. Never realized how lucky we were!

You did a good job with the paper and hay, TK.

We have weekly trash pickup and consider ourselves very lucky. Holiday weeks (Christmas and Easter) usually bring a lot of trash because the idea of trash cleanup doesn't occur to lots of people. Recently, a friend told me about tourists at the beach who stole all the trash bags and left a mess. Very sad but better than burning plastic which we have had to deal with at times. kb

Sandy and TK:

At least they are poisoning themselves even more than they are poisoning you.

You only get the "second-hand smoke". They get it full-strength.

People are strange.

Where I live, they are so fussy about the ecology that we are forbidden by law to wash our cars where the runoff can get to a sewer. The soap might bother the salmon. According to my park, I "can't" even wash it with just water - I wonder what the rationale was for that, if indeed it is a law and not just the whim of our dictatorial park owner.

We complain about water shortages, but won't build more reservoirs, again "because it might bother the salmon".

I guess salmon have well-funded lobbyists and are a big voting block.

Oh, thanks, Rick... up to now I wasn't even worried about being poisoned, just the odor (and the possibility of burning down the woods -- but I think they've only had to call our township fire dept. one time so far). Now I can add "poison" to the list



Years (and years) ago, when I was in between marriages, I was living in a small cabin out in the boonies, which had a rather decrepit greenhouse on the property (the former owners had a business, of sorts. In the process of cleaning stuff up I was burning a bunch of stuff and decided to throw some old, wrecked plastic flats from the GH on the fire. Ohhh -- that was so NOT a good idea! Fortunately I hadn't put very many on at a time, and definitely wasn't inclined to add more after that first batch...

On the upside, though, I'm still using some of the 6-packs and assorted pots from that GH for starting seeds (27 years later...).

Yeah, burning plastic is an odor that stays with you.

Once I was driving around in NJ, and lit a cigar. pretty soon, I thought "there's something seriously WRONG with this cigar!"

Within seconds, I knew the cigar couldn't be THAT bad.

My next thought was: "Darn NJ! Is that chemical waste or burning garbage?"

My next thought was "Why does my elbow feel so warm? So hot!?!"

Looking down, my lighter must not have gone out, and ignited some napkins, and then the fire spread to the plastic divider-cup-holder widget between the front seats. A bright, merry little blaze with STINKY smoke! SO stinky that I could smell it even over my cigar AND northern NJ.

I got pretty frantic when I remembered that I had a small propane cylinder with me ...

But nothing happened beyond a melted, black-rimmed hole in my cup-holder / change-holder widget.

And a life-long determination to watch every flame expire BEFORE I let a lighter out of my hand.

Well... what can I say to that, other than I'm so glad you lived to tell the tale, Rick!

After the pure panic passed, I knew that an observer would be rolling on the floor, laughing at me. I was kind of laughing at me.

This is my peanut crop. I have extra tomato cages on top to prevent the chickens from scratching them up, and last years black plastic keeps them from eating them.

What can you do with a cloth soaker hose that's clogged up with sand and silt? I washed it in a net bag:





And now it works perfectly again.
Clean hose on left:

When you have too many tomatoes to eat fresh, they are good sliced in a food processor and dehydrated, and then put in the freezer. They dont stick together, so it"s easy to break off what's needed.




In my oven, it takes 12 hours at 120° for them to get dehydrated enough to be pliable, but not crunchy.

Tissue box cubes:

You've probably all done this already, so this is really a follow up on how well it works. I saved all my tissue box cubes this year to use as pots to transplant tomatoes plants into.



I know they can be planted and will rot, but I prefer to open them, which is very easy;




And, rather then pulling them out through the hole, tear it. Very easy to plant and has a grapefruit sized root ball mass of dirt. Don't think they realize they were moved.

Clever idea.

Another great idea for reusing stuff, TK! (for anyone that wants to try this and "plant" the box along with the plant, I'd suggest cutting or tearing through the cardboard to prevent the roots from being trapped inside -- I've had that happen with peat pots, so I imagine it could with the cardboard as well, even though it will certainly decompose over time.)

Jack always used milk (or heavy cream) cartons and they were easy to rip off without harming the roots.

I'm trying to keep the dirt from washing out of the retaining wall cracks. Worse, it's a shaded area under a dreadful walnut tree. Using 10" edging to make round "pots" that push together is now my 20th idea. I got the caladium and elephant ear bulbs from Caladium Bulbs 4 Less July 2019. They are already beautiful.