Frustration, coconut coir liners

Frustration: the thing that you need to open a tightly sealed package is inside the package.

Grrrr, grunt, hiss. 

Gotcha, Bastard.

Here's the thing: The coconut coir liners that come with the railing trough planters are flimsy. By the end of the season they're raggedy and falling apart. They're all leaned over and spilling their contents. They cannot hold water, obviously, and constant daily watering, sometimes twice, their threads are hanging out. They become shaggy. Such that birds come and pull them apart to build their nests. 

Maybe I made up that last part, but it could happen.

I'm tired of replacing them over and over and over end over Andover. 

See how thin they are? 

The best one is $21.00 and it lasts only one good season. Two seasons tops, but that's pushing it. 

X 4 that's, what, that's $84.00 right there.

Shirley, there's something more permanent.

We home gardener types are always thinking about ways of hacking the system.

I could buy plastic railing trough planters and glue patches of coconut coir and paint green and black stripes to make it appear as metal basket holding coconut coir lining.

Previously I bought a very large roll of this flat coconut coir liner to use for the germination material to grow microgreens in 1020 nursery flats. Presently those heavy duty flats are being used to start plants for the terrace garden, not for microgreens, and this huge roll is just sitting there. 

And it is a lot more than I expected. The roll is 36 inches X 33 feet. 

I can use this roll to make my own inserts. It's a lot thicker and much more consistent, a lot denser than the liners. I can make super heavy duty liners with this. 

Then line it with spray on rubber so that they hold water like a pot. 

I did this before with regular replacement liners and it worked very well for holding water in the shallow troughs in this exceedingly arid climate, so much like a desert, and held up to the dry breeze five stories high, such that each day becomes a water-emergency. 

But it did not work that well for keeping the saggy liners together. 

The coconut coir is difficult to cut. My most fierce scissors do not work well at all. That's what the knife is for.

I also bought an upholstery sewing kit with long strong steel needles with large eyes to thread with fishing line. To sew the required seams.

The shape is not like a bisected tube. It's flat on one side and curved on the other to create a bulge. Then the ends are curved too so that the top is longer than the bottom. 

The replacement liners fudge this whole thing. They're formed into a simpler shape. And that's why they get pressed all out of shape. The weight of the dirt and the water forces the liners to the shape of the metal basket. They bulge through the spaces of the metal basket so the whole thing is bulging through all over the place especially the bottom. The sides sink so that water spills out.

This will be a lot more stiff. Possibly 4X as stiff or more.

The liners are made for root aeration, but these will have zero aeration except from the top and the worms that I put in them.

The soil that I put in there is mixed specifically for worms. 

Turns out, the stuff that's perfect for worms is also the best base and the best fertilizer for plants.

The soil is potting soil and fungal dominated compost and all kinds of additional goodies that include rock dust, kelp meal, humates, chitin, biochar and super premium worm castings. This goes into all of the containers, not just the troughs on the railing.