Gardening Update

So I wanted a little water feature in the one side of the 'dining room gardens.' Last weekend I found a large planter I thought would work well for it, so got that. I already had a small submersible water pump.

The trick was, however, getting the two to work together. I tried sitting the pump on something inside the planter, but the force of the pumping water and the pull of the power cord flipped it on its side, and it wouldn't stay upright. So I decided I had to permanently attach it to something to hold it at the right height, and then weight that something so it would sit firmly in the planter.

For my first attempt, I scrounged in the garage and found this piece of black flexible pipe which was just the right height, then found two container lids (from the plastic containers sweet-and-sour sauce from the Chinese takeout place comes in) which just fit the ends of the tube. So far so good.

I also had some clear waterproof sealant/adhesive, like can be used for aquariums, etc. I figured that would glue a lid to the bottom of the pipe (so I could weight it with stones), then glue the pump to the top lid, which I would simply snap on.

Except when the pump was stuck to the lid, it warped it slightly so it wouldn't snap on ... so I tied it on with hemp twine.

This was a complete failure. The pump didn't stick to the lid, so when I put it in the planter full of water, the pump came lose and fell sideways. When I went to pick the whole thing up to move it and try to fix it, the bottom lid came loose, spilling my rocks all over the place.

This might have worked if I had let the adhesive cure. :o) I was too impatient.

Then I got the idea that it would be easier to use a plastic coffee container I knew I had; I could fill it with rocks, glue the pump to the lid, snap the lid on, and voila.

But even after letting the pump and lid sit for 24 hours, the adhesive wouldn't stick to the slick plastic lid.

Then we tried JB Weld, a heavy-duty epoxy, which we believed would stick anything together. I even heavily scored the lid to take away some of it's 'slickness.' But again, failure. The epoxy bonded great to the pump, and simply would not stick to the lid.

In desperation, I went old school, and tried what Greg first suggested - zip ties.



So the coffee can has a bunch of rocks in it, the pump is zip-tied to the lid, and the lid is snapped in place. Stupid-looking? Yep. Works? Yep.

In other news, I had ordered some plants from Spring Hill Nursery, but unfortunately, prematurely, as I wasn't ready to plant them when they came. The directions say if you absolutely can't plant them right away, to put them in the crisper drawer of your fridge, but under no circumstances can you expect success if you don't plant them within 10 days.

Well, I put them in the crisper drawer, but then still didn't get the area ready for planting till something like two weeks later, so I figured the plants were toast. But, having nothing to lose, I pulled the astilbe and planted it in its new home.


However, I think it's going to make it this is how it looks a mere week after planting.


Definitely doing well.

Here's what the whole area looks like so far.


I have plans to add more, and of course these current plants will eventually get much larger, filling the area pretty well. I need to camouflage that pump cord, and fill in around the plants with mulch. I also need to get my soaker hose installed - I've been using the rain barrel to water these plants, but it'll be much easier when the actual soaker hose is in place.

BTW, sorry all the pictures are a little dark and hard to see ... I've been using the Droid for all my pictures lately, instead of bothering with my regular digital camera. But while the Droid is a higher MP camera than my 'regular' digital, and has a flash, I haven't yet figured out how to actually take good pictures with it. And my photo editing software sucks - as in, I actually don't have any on the netbook, and am just using Windows 7's 'editing' window. Which sucks. I'll probably have to break down and go back to using the old computer just for photo editing at least, or get better at taking pictures.