So you live in an apartment and you shop for your fresh greens at the store, that is well and good but if you like really fresh greens and to save a few coins then you might consider doing a mini kitchen or balcony garden. The immediate thoughts would be but I’m on the 7th floor how am I supposed to do this? Well remember that coke bottle you enjoyed over the weekend, there is a new use for it. You can get your garden going, imagine coriander fresh as fresh can be!, sage, marjoram (Oregano), and not to mention several 
spices to build your “virtual” herbal garden right in your own home. Well the requirements are not too stiff. First you must want to have fresh food, then be creative with your plastics, choose the crops you want to 
grow, pick a sport that receives sunshine and then get started!
Preparing the bottles is a key component is the bottle farm. You can pick from several designs that suite your application best. For me, cutting the belly and using the bottle horizontal was one way. You make small perforations on the bottom side to allow drainage so that your soil remains in a healthy environment. The other design is the inverted funnel. This is virtually self watering, it works like a drip system only now the drip is inverted. If you take a coke bottle and cut across the middle and you have a funnel and cup. Invert the funnel, put on the bottle cap, with a tiny hole on it, 
fill in your soil with manure then transplant your seedling or plant your seed. Place the inverted funnel in the cup like half with water in it and that is about it. But before you transplant have the soil in the funnel, well watered over night so that the soil is still dump when you transplant . I have found out, to my pleasant surprise that inverted bottle needs a top up after about 10 or so days 🙂 what I need to worry about are the birds and snails when the fruiting starts. You can transform old, cooking ports, lampshade holders, kettles just about anything… you can have flowers in your newly found “pots”.
Planting in bottles gives going green an whole new meaning, you reduce the litter and reuse the containers. Minimal dig is required and management is not as difficult. My wife and I started our first bottle garden project. We just transplanted and hope things work out well. So far my strawberry looks promising as I now see the fruiting process starting. The next phase will be to string up the bottles to save up on space, (vertical garden- will share about this with pictures later) easy management and for aesthetic purposes. The other little challenge will be my two boys who may think mummy just put up some bottles for target practice! Well I hope they will take ownership of some plants and water them so that they too can get in-touch with nature and know that it is possible to harvest greens! The beauty of this bottle garden is that you know your greens are fresh, have no chemicals in them, and fairly organic 🙂
Looking forward to seeing the garden grow in the weeks ahead and i’ll be very excited when I go to the market and see Collards or spinach is a small bunch and i’ll be telling my self I have some at home!
The other day a friend came to visit and we got chatting, then I have no idea how we got taking about butter. Well our butter had run out and we could not make oat meal cookies, (really yummy) with raisins or chocolate chips hmmm need I say more? Anyway she said you know what you can make your own butter? So I lean forward and raise my eye brow and listen in. She said its simple, get fresh cream from your milk, put it in a container and shake it till consistent and guess what you have your butter! Well we tried it and made our cookies with home made butter and they were superb! I kept on teasing her that she must be Amish but I was not too far off… so we named our butter “Lancaster Style” fresh butter… you must try it.
urbanshamba 