This spring I started several paw paw seeds in clear 3 liter soda bottles. They're by south and east facing windows, with the tops just about even with the windowsill. I chose these because paw paw seedlings start out with a tap root, and the lateral roots don't get very long in the first year, so the shape of the bottle is a good match for the root system. Last year I had a few situated so the bottom of the bottle was even with the windowsill....in the morning, the sun made the container quite hot, so I wrapped them in foil. I can also confirm the algae growth. Where the sun does hit the sides of the upper part of the bottles for a little while each day, algae has grown. If you have something to grow out of direct sunlight, it's neat to have a few clear containers so you can actually watch the water movement through the gritty or 5:1:1 mix. You can also see that the mix down in the container is still moist even when the top is dry. Alex

how many of this post is there??

It may be possible to contain them at least until the pool cracks as plastic doesn't last forever. If you want a big bamboo, but don't want the ones that run rampantly, an very simple solution is to plant the least aggressive running bamboo that you can find that is still hardy enough to grow. Some species simply don't spread more than a few inches each year, and partial shade can further help to hinder their growth. In the northeast, some running bamboos can spread up close to 10ft a year while others typically run less than 1ft. I never use barriers, but I've been getting rid of species that run rampantly. Here's an example of one of my bamboos that has made it up to 15ft tall, but still hasn't spread much. I haven't done any rhizome pruning either. Here is a link that might be useful: Picture of my 4 year old phyllostachys dulcis- note their may be different cultivators of this

You know... you gotta take some things with a grain of salt. Everything has positive and negatives. Not everyone can afford expensive stuff. I have a big cinderblock garden set up. "Don't do it! The bricks will leach all your water!" they told me. Uh huh. As you can see by this old photo -- bit wilted, sorry it was the worst part of late July at the time -- apparently the plants survived. While I was setting that up, I decided to use a whole bunch of Dollar Store big tubs to plant things in. "Don't do it! The plastic has chemicals and is weak!" they said. As you can see, despite these many challenges, my homemade earthboxes worked out. I also used a variety of terracotta pots; Ceramic pots; Walmart plastic pots; ...and everything grew. And I ate the result. And nobody died. That was in 2006 that I first set all that up. All of it was perfectly fine until March of 2015 when we had an ice storm. Horrible, especially for my trees. Every single container I had was destroyed. Every. Single. One. The terracotta and the ceramic and the plastic -- as well as the tubs. A small fortune in gradually collected pots in front and back of my house. The only thing that wasn't destroyed was the cinderblock! So all I can tell you is that all that stuff lasted for nine years for me -- all of those different things outdoors. And it only died with the ice storm and even my quality ceramic and terracotta pots bit the dust just as much -- often even worse, most the plastic just cracked, those others shattered. So, you know, whatever... Do what you can afford, man! Gardening is fun! Plants grow even when we don't want them to, to which weeds attest. Put them in any growing media with some decent amendments for nutrients (or, in inorganic media and then water with nutrients), get the plant into the light, and it'll probably grow. That saying, "Don't let perfection be the enemy of good" probably fits here. If you've got lots of cash, buy premade products. If you don't, buy some cheap tubs (surprisingly, walmart online will now free deliver most of these things) and go to town. :-) PJ