With all of the holiday craziness my posts have been a bit sparse, as I'm sure you probably noticed. But now that the holidays are over and presents have been given, I can now post about all of the projects I worked on last month!
First up, the "Grass Cube:"
A while back my brother-in-law decided that he needed a plant to take care of while at college. While contemplating what kind of herbage would be best, he remarked how cool it would be if he could get grass to grow on all sides of a cube.
The gears in my head started turning, and I decided that growing him a "Grass Cube" would be a pretty cool Christmas present!
I knew that to make it work I'd have to suspend the cube and rotate it somehow so that the grass could have a chance to grow in every direction. I came up with a wire frame with two loops on opposite corners.
Using a thinner gauge wire I wove a mesh onto each side. I then stretched some old pantyhose over the whole thing to keep the dirt and the grass seed in. I did keep one side open so that I could fill it up. That was a little tricky, but I managed to get grass seed on every side with tightly packed dirt in the middle. After wiring the last side closed and securing the pantyhose, I thoroughly drenched the thing in water and hung it up near a window to grow!
I rotated the cube every few days and it was soon growing really well. I found that it dried out really fast and I had to water it every day in order to keep the grass from wilting, but the end result was pretty sweet!
In order to transport the cube I constructed a stand out of some commercial-grade cardboard tubes and some old wood I had lying around. The crosspiece is a small section of decorative bamboo that I had leftover from some custom curtain rods I made.
...and of course, my brother-in-law thought it was pretty cool, too!
Way to go green and save some, too, on a great gift!
ReplyDeleteThanks! It was fun to grow! I think I need to make another one for myself... I miss having it hanging over my sink.
ReplyDelete