Yes, I bury a 2 liter bottle to up the neck, so you have 1" or so of the bottle out of the soil. Once the plants have grown it's nearly invisible. I prefer to put it at a 30 degree angle with the neck closest the edge of the pot and sloping toward the center. I poked holes in the bottom & around the middle section for seeping out A soldering iron melts it easily, but is smelly. I've also used an ice pick and opened it more with a scissor. Also works with a gallon milk jugs. I wish I would have used 2 of the bottles last year. My largest pots held 2 cucumbers with dianthus & pansies surrounding.

Hi Sueflay, Welcome to the Painting forum. You might want to check the past few issues of Painting magazine. They've been doing some wine/vineyard patterns. Try checking their website at www.paintingmag.com. Also look for painting books at www.artistsclub.com Good luck in your search and be sure to come back and post pics of your current or past projects. We always love to see what everyone is painting. Luvs

I helped my father make wine during my entire youth. He had upwards of 1000 ginger ale bottles (still have over 500 with wine in them dating back to the 70's), and I helped him cap many of them using a simple hand press with beer caps that were lined with cork. I just opened a bottle of 93 vintage today, and it tastes beyond belief good. He never added sulfites to his wine, just pure grapes, fermented in a wood barrel for a year then bottled the next year. So, an occasional bottle would go bad, and it would land up in the vinegar barrel for some of the best vinegar to be had. So, old fashion cork beer bottle tops, if they can still be purchased, seems to be a good choice. Actually, the cork I took off this bottle was cork lined and said Lemon Lime Soda on its top. Who knows where he got these corks things from. Oh, he stored all the bottles in a cellar, just standing up. Of course, there was build up on the bottom of each bottle that was not drinkable. One just carefully poured from the storing bottle, into the serving bottle to not get any of the stuff which had built up over the years at the bottom of the bottle.

Sake is not wine. Wine is fermented fruit juice. Sake is made from dried grain, which has no juice. More like beer. But the question was good. W/out more info, it is hard to recommend something. If you have been drinking wine from KY and OH, you are drinking pretty sweet stuff probably. Most of what people would consider "fine" wine is not made that way, but there are exceptions. Sweetness generally comes from unfermented sugars in the juice. The sweetness in the local wines may come from added sugar as well - who knows. But in general, it is more common to find sweeter reds than whites. So if you are looking at imported wines, you can look at many German rieslings. (Riesling is a grape.) These are categorized by the sugar in the grapes at harvest, from QBA and Kabinett (less sugar) to Auslese and Beerenauslese and trokenbeerenauslese (more sugar and MUCH more costly.) Germany has had great harvests over the past few years, so it is hard to really go wrong. Here are some that are available now, all for $20 - $33 or so and all of which I just bought. (Spatlese is an intermediate sugar level that should suit you perfectly.) 2005 Robert Weil Spatlese 2005 Weingart Riesling, Sch.Fur.Spatlese 2005 Haag, Fritz Riesling, Bra.Juf.Spatlese 2005 J.J. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spatlese 2005 J.J. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese 2005 Donnhoff Riesling, Schl.Fel.Spatlese 2005 Donnhoff Qba 2005 Gunderloch Nackenheimer Rothenberg Spat 2005 Gunderloch Nackenheimer Rothenberg Auslese 2005 Muller Catoir Spatlese But keep in mind that the sugar at harvest does NOT always equate to the sugar after fermentation. THose are 2 different things. You can pick low sugar, not ferment completely dry, and have a sweeter wine than if you picked at high sugar but fermented it all into alcohol. Mostly, but not 100% of the time, spatlese would be kind of sweet. And if you can't get any of those on this list, just find a decent store and ask for a good, not dry, riesling. Hard to go wrong these days. Just remember that "dry" means no residual sugar in the wine, so it won't be sweet. Gwertztraminer is another grape that is often rather sweet. It also has a beautiful floral nose. The rieslings can smell and taste like tart apples and pineapples, the gwertz can smell like lychees and taste a bit like them too. There are good rieslings and gwertz's made in the US, in Michigan, NY, and Washington, for example. Many are likely to have some residual sugar, but they are not as neatly categorized as the Germans. If you were to select a grape from the eastern US in fact, I would suggest that you select a white rather than a red, for which I would go to California or Washington. And eventually you will look at some less sweet wines too! Happy hunting.