Lots of questions here:
1. Even though the liner will be shaded by plants and the crate, you still want something which says it's UV resistant. I would hesitate to use interfacing sold for clothing for that reason - it is an artificial material that will add more micro-garbage to the environment when/if it falls apart. At least the proper landscape cloth is designed to last, although they aren't all created equal - thicker will last longer.
2. Sphagnum moss is not as bad as peat moss - they aren't exactly the same - but it is still hard to re-wet if it dries out, and growing on a balcony is a dry environment. One alternative is there are places you can buy sheets of "coir" which are more renewable and less difficult to re-wet. Or two, you could look at thrift shops for old cotton sheets that might only last a year, but they wouldn't hurt the environment when they did decompose.
3. The whole "drying" issue: A) if you put a shallow bowl in the bottom and
water so that the water drips down into it, it will act as a bit of a reservoir. You don't want something so big/deep that you think things will get soggy and rot, but
enough that the water doesn't just pour through.
B) If you can get 2 solid plastic tote bins that are larger than the crate, you can lift the crate into the "bin bathtub", let is sit for 15 min or so to soak up the water, then lift it onto an empty crate in the second bin to let any excess water drain out. I recommend a watering system like this because depending on how your balcony is designed, any water that pours out of your crates, may
land on the neighbor below's
lawn chair - my sister had this problem as the "below neighbor" and found is just wasn't neighborly!
C) I have taken a page out of the Hugelculture idea and put some punky
wood in the bottom to act as a biological sponge. The down side is that it may compete with annual plants for some nitrogen.
4. I *really* don't like the idea of using staples - if this is worth doing, it's worth doing right! I suspect the link showed them cut out as they may have done it in a way to conserve material and keep the space available for dirt as large as possible, but in that case I agree William, check that the dimensions are all the same and then sew them together. A sewing machine would be quick, but a talking book and needle and
thread is great practice for when your favourite pants need to be mended! I would get some plastic clips to hold the liner into the crate long enough to fill it with soil. If the top edge tends to fall over in a way that bothers you during use, a few old chop-sticks or similar pushed in against it would likely support it vertically.
Personally, I've had no luck with little plants coming out of the sides of containers. It may be because I run things on the dry side to conserve water - with a good drip irrigation system it might be fine, but then, drip irrigation systems are a lot of plastic with a limited lifespan. I'll admit I'm biased as we have lots of minerals in our water, so that tends to clog things up at the best of times!
This looks like a cool
project - easy to move, easy to lift up to a healthy back height when you need to work on a bin, easy to rotate so that different sides get a turn in the sun... I'm sure we could think of more pluses. The big plus will be to have some fresh herbs and veggies. Add a worm composter and you will have healthy soil to amend with as needed.
Good luck!
of how to set one up, but was wondering if there are alternatives to landscape cloth for the liner. I sew, so I have some tulle already, but am not sure if that will be ideal. The fabric that they salvaged looks like this interfacing fabric which is what I was thinking of snagging as a last resort.
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