Bags and Apples

One of my favorite garden “cures” is placing a clear plastic sandwich bag around apples when they are young to protect them from insects and disease.  It usually works great and impresses the heck out of people who see and eat the apples which are normally tough to grow without using  bunches of organic or synthetic pesticides.

Unfortunately this year was different.  Rebecca Koetter, the person who planted these trees and put the bags on the apples (on the University of Minnesota campus) discovered that birds may choose to ignore the bags.  And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Asian lady beetles decided to get in on the fun!

No Way! Something that actually works?

Sometimes I feel guilty because I always seem to be putting down the products that people sell to make their living.  But not today!  Today I’ve got something that actually works!  No, it isn’t pretty, and it does have some irritating problems, but I can honestly say that it does what the company that manufactures it says it does.  And that product is the Aqua Globe.

This is a very simple contraption (which is part of the reason that it works).  It’s just a glass ball with a hollow tube connecting to it.  At the base of the tube there’s a hole where water can be poured it to fill the globe.  When you push this into a container it will release the water in the globe slowly and give an extra day or two between waterings.  This contraption doesn’t affect the drainage of the media that you put it into, and it works with most types of media.

The down side to this thing is that….well….it’s kind of nasty looking.  The other problem with it is that, after you push it into the potting soil, it’s hollow tip will fill up with media, so when you fill it with water the next time you need to dig that media out with a fine-bladed knife or a thick piece of wire.  But hey, if you’re going on a short vacation and you’re feuding with your neighbors, then this little contraption will do the trick.