Thinking Outside the, Uh, Can. . . .

Last year I got my pea seeds into the ground way to late. I really didn’t get any peas pods until it was too hot, and even then they didn’t do anything spectacular. So this year I decided they had to go in much earlier. Yesterday looked to be a perfect time, a very nice afternoon but with rain forcasted later in the evening-I would need to give my little seeds a nice watering, but then mother nature would also make sure they got off to a nice start! So I planted my peas, patted the garden soil back over them and went looking for my watering can.

No watering can.

I can’t even remember the last time that I SAW the watering can.

What to do? The peas were already in the ground, and I knew that if I just poured water over them with a cup it would disturb the soil too much.

So I decided to think out side the box, uh, can. I wanted something that would sort of sprinkle the water over the soil. After mentally rifling through what I had on hand I decided to use a yogurt cup. I went back into the house, pulled a nice clean yogurt cup (peach!) out of the tupperware cupboard, and punched a bunch of holes (well, small slits really) in the bottom with a paring knife. Then I took the berry picking bucket that lives on the top of the fridge down (it is filled with soda/beer can coozies-which wound up all over my counter) filled it with warm water, threw my “watering” cup in and went out to the garden.

It didn’t work exactly as I planned. The water didn’t “sprinkle” out of the cup, it sort of ran out of the slits, but it still was much gentler on the soil than just pouring it out of the top of the cup. It took a tiny bit longer, because I had to dip the water out with the cup-but it was a lovely afternoon, the kids were inside sleeping, and I got to enjoy the outdoors for a few minutes. All in all, it was a successful substitution.

But I will buy a new watering can-just not until I’m already in town for something else!