When Chunky Soil Mix Causes Chunky Girl Backaches: A Watering Story
- Lynn Adkison
- Mar 12
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 30
Conversationally with a plant person, I would absolutely NEVER tell you what's in that tub. The water looks like someone pulled a blue baby out of it, and we are not going to discuss why. I dropped a felt-tip pen in there. It looks blue now. Moving on.
See that weird looking blob mid-tub? That, my friends, is pantyhose.
I originally bought them to hold up my melons - not THOSE melons - on garden stakes outside. If you grow cantaloupe vertically, you can tie the melon to the stake with pantyhose to keep it from snapping off the vine before it's ready. I love cantaloupe, so I tried it. Can confirm: it works.
The whole enormous bag was about five dollars, so in between cantaloupe seasons, the pantyhose get repurposed. (Never to include actually wearing the godforsaken things, of course.)
The Method
Grab some kitchen scissors, snip off an appropriate amount, tie off one end, dump in mosquito bits. Why pantyhose and mosquito bits? Because I am a pragmatic human, and pragmatic humans do not attempt to strain the volume of water required to hydrate shelf after shelf of 3.5" tropicals in a chunky aroid mix like Not Dirt. They just do not.
The pantyhose tea bits steeps into something you wouldn't ever want to serve with crumpets, and the gnats - as previously discussed in A Brief Guide to Murder - do not take over the world. Every preventative measure matters. Otherwise we'd all lose our minds, and some of us are closer to the edge than others.
Free Stuff is the Best Stuff
The nursery trays came from Lowe's — the Gainesville location specifically, which is not the fanciest or the newest, but it IS the one with a whole rack of free stuff right next to the clearance section. It's almost always full of carry trays in various sizes, because they accumulate faster than the recycle pickup can handle them, and the ladies there love giving them away.
If you've got a lot of little plants in little pots, check your local Lowe's. Just check. You're welcome.
The Miracle-Gro Elephant in the Tub
Fine. You're not going to let it go, so I'll be like Lucy and 'splain myself.
I've had this Miracle-Gro for a very long time. It came in a rectangular plastic tub. There are two large bags inside. I've made it through almost half of one. You couldn't pay me to use their soil — I've heard horror stories and had a few myself — but the plants on this watering regimen are the ones pushing new growth right now while the "rainwater and intentions" crowd is still troubleshooting yellowing leaves.
It ain't broke. I ain't fixing it. Come at me.
The Peanut Gallery
My dad used to tell me constantly not to listen to the Peanut Gallery. He said it so often that younger me finally looked it up just to stop feeling dumb about not knowing. (If you don't know either: think nosebleed section, except it's a theater from back before movies existed. The cheap seats. The loud ones.)
What my dad neglected to mention is that when your personal Peanut Gallery is a 90-pound German Shepherd, you don't get the option to tune it out.
Sam is curious — which is the polite way of saying he's nosy. He's helpful — which is the polite way of saying he's incessantly in the way. And when Sam's mom is doing something that does not center Sam, Sam becomes exceptionally, curiously helpful, with a side of visible affront.
So if you see 90 pounds of German Shepherd interspersed through the photos and videos, that's just Tuesday. I literally cannot avoid him. He stuck his entire head into the bathroom, assessed the situation — blue water, pantyhose tea, his person standing on the side of the tub with phone in hand trying to get good pictures — and looked concerned and personally offended. Then he stayed anyway.
My Neck, My Back
And not in the early 2000s song way. I mean achy.
Lift, bend, set down — carefully. Lift, drain, set down — carefully. Then don't forget to get everything off the bathroom floor and back to their respective shelves before anyone besides Sam needs to use the restroom for its intended purpose.
The plants are hydrated and dubiously fed — maybe Miracle-Gro is the McDonald's of plant food, but they sure seem to like it — and I've got 3-4 days before we do this whole production again.
Exercise is good for you, especially at middle age. Probably. I'll report back.
Questions about the Not Dirt mix, the mosquito bit method, or why you're now reconsidering your relationship with pantyhose?
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