Blossoms in Your Briefs
As a novice gardener, years ago I remember standing by a particularly sparse bed of vegetation and screaming, “Grow! You stupid flowers! Bloom!”, and almost crying in frustration at not getting the results that I wanted after many weeks of earthy labor. Flowers, it seems, will ignore these types of pleas if you ignore their need to be placed in an area that corresponds to their nature. As gardeners, we need to accept this ground rule. Embracing this law signals your advancement to the rank of actual “gardener”, because until you have passed this marker you will just be a wild, out-of-control killer; another muderer in Eden. After years, I finally passed this embarrassing milestone, and yet I still find myself trying to bend this rule. Now though, I have discovered something new; adult diapers and the universe of container gardening.
Recently, my husband installed some haystack-style flower boxes under the windows in our house. I enthusiastically filled these with a rich assemblage of bright blossoms and greenery but quickly realized that I was in trouble; the afternoon sun was merciless and I could not keep up with the irrigation needs of these window boxes, even though the plants were supposed to love direct sunlight. I needed some way to manage the moisture level in the soil or I would never have anything but crispy brown firestarter under my windows.
Sometimes gardeners and writers have to start over and that’s what I did. I overturned the boxes and started fresh. This time, I unfolded some adult diapers and spread them all over the inside of the window boxes with their absorbent sides facing into the boxes. I re-filled the boxes with new soil and flowers, hung them back up and gave them a good watering.
Adult diapers are filled with superabsorbent polymer (SAP) which can absorb as much as 30 times its own weight in fluid. It is non-toxic and it is a modern marvel. In my window boxes, the polymer did its job very well; absorbing water when it rained, these little crystals gave up their water at the perfect rate to keep the soil in my flower boxes moist and fertile.
Okay, Im not the one who discovered this. My best friend told me about it and frankly I do not know who first came up with this idea. Diapers and gardens might seem an odd match at first, but certainly both take care of manure very well.
Happy gardening to all of you this summer.