Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Growing plants in your pants

I really love re-purposing things that aren't useful in their original state anymore into things that are useful in another form - especially for the garden so when I started seeing pictures of people growing plants in their old pants, I was all about it! I had a hard time finding any instructions for how to successfully do this so I did the best I could. So far my pants are planted and doing well. Here's what I did:

The old, too small, ripped and stained pants I decided to use
1. Select a pair of pants that you can no longer wear or pass on and cut them into shorts (You could leave them full length and potentially stuff the legs with something like newspaper, straw, or rocks if you want to plant full length pants).
2. I found a plant tray to place the pants in so I can reduce water runoff because I planned to put these on the roof. This also makes my pants easy to move around.

I knew this scrap of plastic would come in handy one day.
3. Turn the pants inside out and line them with plastic to the best of your ability. This will not completely waterproof the pants but should cut down on staining from the dirt you're going to put in the pants and will add some structure to your new "planter". I cut the plastic into pieces that were a little larger than the size and shape of the pants and attached the plastic to the inside out pants with safety pins to keep it in place. I did not worry about closing the bottom in any way.
 
My pants lined with plastic
4. Turn the pants outside out again and you should have plastic lined pants with some structure ready to plant. 
5. Choose the plants you want to use. I chose succulents as I have an abundance of extra ones around the garden, they are super easy to grow in San Diego even under the worst conditions and they are very pretty. Whatever you choose, I would not suggest food plants because of the plastic but I have nothing to back that up other than plastic is toxic to the human body and I would not want to eat food grown in pants lined with plastic. 
6. Choose the soil most appropriate for your plants, in my case I used cactus mix, and fill your plastic lined pants with it. 
7. Plant your pants. I added a little bit of plastic to line the front pockets, filled those with a little soil too and added cuttings to the pockets as well.
Growing plants in my pants
8. Place your pant plants where you want them and water.

A view of my pants from below.
These could have looked fuller towards the right side but they will, there are plants in there that just need to grow up a little before people will be able to see them from below. I already found a pair of pants that Farmer D can no longer use so I'll be planting those next!
Gidget asks "How does this potentially feed me? I don't get it."

2 comments:

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