Fooling strawberry thieves and a compact growing tower with it's own compost tube

[Sue Sullivan]

Two cool ideas found on the interwebs today:

This is a fun craft project, albeit time consuming, probably better
suited for winter's slow time. Paint small stones to look like
strawberries, scatter them through your strawberry beds in early
spring and psych the birds and squirrels out so that by the time the
real berries ripen, they'll have given up on your patch.

http://imageevent.com/leewismer/directionsforstrawberryrocks;jsessionid=tnyb9fnx74.tiger_s




This garden tower is a product in development through kickstarter, a
food-grade barrel with 45 opening around it's sides and space on top
for five larger plants. A tube runs down the center of the barrel, a
place to drop compost and have it feed back into the barrel potting
soil as it decomposes. How cool is that? I'm not spending the 240
bucks or so for the tower but I like the idea of a self-composting
planter!

http://gardentowerproject.com/index.php/50-plants-in-4-square-feet