Following 'hint & tips' #1456

Recently in Trevors excellent 'Hints & Tips' compilation, hint number 1456 from Rob Olds suggested using dried parsley.

I don't know if it has been done before, but I thought I might give it a go.
For the basis  of the tree I used a sprig of dried heather, lightly sprayed with grey primer.
Dried parsley came from our local wholefoods shop.
Adhesive I used was a bargain tin of matt varnish from 'The Works'.
As an extra to Rob's hint, draped a very small amount of Woodlands scenics green poly-fibre over the heather. (normally I would use old poly-fibre from a pillow, but none was handy at the time).

Here are the components:




Rough cost:

Heather - free
Grey primer - quick waft - 2p
Poly-fibre - about 1 hundreth of a pull from a £2.50 bag (its gone up since I bought it) - 2.5p
Spray of varnish (1 tin has done 15 trees) - 7p
parsley - £1.58 for 60g - I've used less than 10g for 15 trees - say 1p per tree.

I make that 12.5p per tree…

Here is the result:









I sprayed, sprinkled, sprayed and sprinkled a second time, the gave it a finishing spray. So far the parsley seems to be hanging on, so to speak. I don't think it will take much abuse though.

Going one step further, I sprayed one of my finished trees with a quick burst of a rattle can of 'Wilko's' Lawn Green, to see if that would hold better.
Here's the picture:





The parsley is certainly effective, but it remains to be seen what the lasting qualities are. I've now found some old poly-fibre, so experiments are about to get under way…

ATB

Shaun.

Thyme will tell!

It will be interesting to see how it progresses; thanks for posting this.

Ken

[user=34]Ken[/user] wrote:

Thyme will tell!


Ken

What a sage comment said Rosemary to Herb

Apart from that I suspect dried Parsley flakes may be a bit big for N gauge, or will they crumble smaller if you crush them a bit?

Really cheap hair spray (the sticky stuff) does a pretty good job of keeping the foliage on the trees.

John

I've tried that John, but it's hard to find one that is odour-free. At the last test SWMBO gave me some really funny looks when she came into the railway room…!

(some of the post replies are really mint…)
I'll get my coat.

Agree with you there, stinks to high heaven.

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to get some nail varnish (to use as an insulating coating) so wandered into the makeup section of Walmart :shock:  Now I know how Stanley and Livingstone felt as they explored the Zambezi - terra incognita indeed.

John

Nice looking tree Shaun. :cheers:cheers

I too wonder how long the parsley will last :roll:.  Being a natural product, it may well absorb any moisture and start to droop.  You could always plant spuds under the tree for a ready made meal.

Certainly at those prices, it looks extremely attractive.

I have tried this in the past and still have a couple of the trees on part of my layout, the only thing I found is that because I did not spray the parsley with colour (paint) it has faded to a light grey/green colour apart from that it has stood up well.
The tree just to the left of the Phone Box above the house roof is Parsley, you can just see the colour going off.
 

Perhaps it's changing colour because it's autumn.