As a novice gardener, years ago I remember standing by a particularly sparse bed of vegetation and screaming, “Grow! You stupid flowers! Bloom!”, and almost crying in frustration at not getting the results that I wanted after many weeks of earthy labor. Flowers, it seems, will ignore these types of pleas if you ignore their need to be placed in an area that corresponds to their nature. As gardeners, we need to accept this ground rule. Embracing this law signals your advancement to the rank of actual “gardener”, because until you have passed this marker you will just be a wild, out-of-control killer; another muderer in Eden. After years, I finally passed this embarrassing milestone, and yet I still find myself trying to bend this rule. Now though, I have discovered something new; adult diapers and the universe of container gardening.

Not too long ago, my spouse spent a Sunday afternoon installing window boxes on the front of our house. I quickly filled these well-drained boxes with perfect soil and a beautiful assortment of blossoming flowers. It took me about 3 days to realize that I was engaged in conflict with the relentless afternoon sun. No mortal could posible keep up with the watering that these wndow boxes demanded. They were high and dry and even though the flowers were clearly designated for direct sunlight, I was never going to have more than dry thatch outside my windows unless I came up with a way to manage the humidity of the soil in these boxes.

Sometimes gardeners and writers have to start over and that’s what I did. I overturned the boxes and started fresh. This time, I unfolded some adult diapers and spread them all over the inside of the window boxes with their absorbent sides facing into the boxes. I re-filled the boxes with new soil and flowers, hung them back up and gave them a good watering.

It worked beautifully. Rainwater took care of most of the watering needs of these window boxes. Not only that, but the diapers absorbed water so well that the soil always stayed at near-perfect humidity. My flowers loved it. Adult diapers have a polymer inside them that can absorb fantastic amounts of water. In my window boxes, that moisture was gradually released back into the soil as the water in the soil evaporated. No need to worry about toxins either, the polymer in adult diapers is not toxic.

It was a friend of mine that put me onto this idea. I do not know the origins of the idea, but I can’t help but wonder at the odd connection between diapers and gardens: You know, the manure thing.

Enjoy!