D’oh! I messed up.
I’m still awaiting the arrival of
my seeds. So I thought I’d get a head start on my container. The original plans
for this build used eight 2-inch net pots. I decided to use 3-inch ones and
grow six plants instead.
Utilizing my day off and cooler
weather on the July, 4th holiday, I took the time to paint the lid
black, with the intention of using this weekend to drill the holes and
determine a number of other things. There is a saying that goes, “measure
twice, cut once.” I really should have paid attention to this. In my haste and
excitement of getting this project started, I carefully laid out six 3-inch
paper circles on the lid and marked where I should drill. That’s were things
went wrong.
With small cross hairs notched into
the plastic, I drilled away. What I failed to account for were a couple of
things: the raised edge along the sides of the top; and the lip along the top
of the net pots, which keep them from falling through the holes. I foolishly
used the ridge as a guide, and drilled right up against it. Because of this
bump, the net pots would not sit flat, and would allow excess light in. I also
ran into a similar issue where the rims of the net pots would rest on one
another, again not sitting as flat as they should.
So it was back to the store for
another container. Only this time, I did all of my marking and drilling before
I painted it. In addition to that, I’m only going to try growing five plants.
A couple of other things I learned from
this is when drilling plastic, it can make a helluva mess. Like sawdust,
cut/drilled plastic leaves behind a lot of stringy or tiny bits of plastic, and
the Dremel tool I used to cut away a couple of bits of plastic away actually
melted the plastic! That was something I didn’t realize until I grabbed a glob
of hot, near-molten plastic. Fortunately I was not burned.
Hopefully the next update really
will be the arrival of my seeds so I can get them going. Cheers!
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