I want to alert anyone wanting to use so-called food grade plastics for growing vegetables or for the collecting of rain water, that these containers are very toxic and grow deadly strains of black, red, orange and green molds. Watering plants with the 5 gallon buckets that came from Chinese restaurants that contained soy sauce are especially toxic if used over a period of time, as the minerals from water wear down the plastic and make it more and more porous and toxic. The toxicity is both from the leaching of the plastic and mold into the water. PETROLEUM BASED PLASTICS ARE TOXIC We have to take our health into our own hands, as few; (not all)in business have any sense of morality when a profit can be made!

Hi y'all. Hubby and I have made 5 rain barrels. Ours are soda syrup barrels. We used the bung to attach the spigot. In the center of the the bung we found ours had 3/4" threads. Although it was sealed over, we were able to drill out the seal without damaging the threads. We then attached a 3/4" threaded 2" nipple, a threaded elbow, another nipple and then a pvc 1/4 turn ball valve, and another 3/4" threaded nipple to attach a hose to. Everything was wrapped with teflon tape and silcone caulk was used on the bung and the overflow hose then we turned it upside down and cut a hole for the downspout. About 2 or 3" from the top we drilled a hole just big enough for another 3/4" threaded nipple. This was used for a overflow hose. It also could be used to add another barrel. another option we are considering is stacking the barrels. Using the bung hole we would put a pvc pipe from the top barrel to the the bottom barrel, thus using only one spigot and giving more pressure. I use the rain water quite frequently to water my many flower beds. I attach another hose to the spigot and run it to where I need it. A full barrel will put out a 4' spray from a sprinkler until about the barrel is half full. Like I said earlier the threads on the bung are 3/4" you could attach a garden hose and a shutoff valve on the end of the hose.

This thread is hilarious and informative at the same time! Thank you all for the laughs and the knowledge! My experience with fish emulsion goes like this. I’ve been growing bonsai for many years and have more than I want to talk about. Some are pretty old and my treasures. When we moved from the big city to the country, we of course brought every single plant and bonsai! We had four box trucks jammed full of plants and one for the house stuff. I carefully arranged each bonsai on their little stands so they’d all look just right even if we were the only ones that could see them. I started the repotting process soon thereafter and of course...used fish emulsion to give them all a boost. The next day, I go back to check on my “babies” and stood there in shock! Thinking the worst about some human vandalism or theft, I notice that each plant had been uprooted and holes had been dug in every pot. Little hand like prints and tracks are all over the place, I follow the trail of destruction to a boggy area near a creek. There lie the remains of several larger bonsai, the fish emulsion bottle and even the bucket! A few choice words later and some tears too, I gathered the survivors and repotted them. Most survived with some very interesting new shapes but I certainly learned my lesson. Fish emulsion is great stuff but never use it if you even suspect that you have raccoons.

Hi, I fought orchid pests indoors for a long time and the most effective seemed to be a combination of neem oil/soap in water judiciously sprayed on affected plants and the putting of the plants outdoors in summer to let the spiders and other insect predators do their thing. I also found that repotting every year without fail kept pests from going from year to year in the potting mix. Using a fan in the area also helped with thrips and other things like that so long as I could keep relative humidity high enough, over 50 p.c. Outdoors, nothing works better IMO than encouraging predator insects. From wasps to lady bugs to praying mantisses and snakes, you can enlist an army of helpers by providing 1) diverse plantings of nectar producing flowers, 2) host plants known to attract beneficial insects, and 3) a source of water and shelter for frogs and other critters to use. Japanese beetles were really bad here because of an old tree that good denuded each year. It was some type of dark leaf cherry tree. Moles would come after the grubs and make a huge mess. Nothing worked, not even milky spore. So I cut down the tree and replaced with a Prunus mume and voila, problem solved. Sometimes you have to observe and replace things rather than fight momma nature IMHO. After 10 years I am happy to report I use no chemicals or pest controls of any kind. I live with a little black spot and rust but that's it. Keeping planting well spaced and diverse, with good airflow helps a lot. But probably avoiding problem prone cultivars is the most important thing which means I don't use tea roses at all. YMMV but I think using pest control gets to be too much of a chore to keep up and for every measure you come up with the bugs come with a counter measure. RJ