By Steve Silk Container gardening is for everyone. Whether all your gardening is done on a deck, in window boxes, even if you have an eighty by fifty foot garden, plants in containers will always have their place - can always be used to highlight, illuminate, accent and decorate your out-door living areas and places of visual prominence. Metal pans, clay urns, terra cotta pots, wine tubs, wood boxes, bath tubs, glass bowls, wire baskets, sisal rope planters, cement hollows, hyper tufa hand crafted containers and broken crocks - to mention a few, all work well as planters. Real wine tubs are excellent because they are already naturally ‘cured’ so resist rot. Redwood and Cedar are the most expensive woods but they last wonderfully well outdoors, need no weather treatment beyond a quick spraying of a preservative and are a pleasure to see, but beware. Many ready made planters are built of solid cedar on the outside but use toxic treated pine on the inside. Look for a sickly greenish yellow color. If it doesn’t look inside like the same wood on the outside, don’t buy it, or put a liner in it. Liners can be made of metal, fiber glass or plastic, none of which is ideal because they don’t breathe but all of which will work. If you use a liner be sure to provide holes for good drainage. Redwood planters are often dyed and that dye is questionable, as are those planters’ method of binding, (often flat metal bands which break before the wood has deteriorated.) If you choose a planter of this kind, you will do well to give it extra support before the binding breaks. When selecting or making wood planters keep in mind that the more soil surrounding the roots of the plants the less tendency there is for desiccation and for freezing so keep them as large as space and pocket allow. Terra Cotta pots are better than glazed clay or plastic pots because their permeability allows the passage of air. If you have a particularly pretty glazed pot, you’re better off planting in a plain pot and putting that inside the decorative one. Container Making With a little labor you can make your own attractive pots and basins. Here’s how: If you have access to a level of ground: Dig a hole to the desired depth of pot you want. Take a plastic container, ( a child’s bucket, a water jug with the pointed end cut off, etc.) and put a round hole or two in the bottom. Coat the outside with vegetable oil and place it upside down in the hole over a mound of earth leaving, about two inches evenly all around between the container and the surrounding soil, and between the top, which will become the bottom of the pot, and the ground. Into the holes of the container place snug fitting dowels or sticks extending above ground level. (The cement is going to go over the bottom of the plastic container and the dowels will stick through it, for drainage holes.) Purchase a bag of sackrete, (a ready mix of sand, gravel and cement), and a small bag of peat moss. Mix a batch of sackrete, (follow directions on the package, making it the consistency of thick soup), adding a couple handfuls of peat, and if you like, of soil for an earthier look. Pour this mixture into the hole and over the top of the plastic containerbeing sure the sticks are protruding through, and tamp it down. When the mix becomes firm, but not hard, carefully twist out the sticks. When the concrete is hardened, (there are different kinds of mixes so read the bag label to see when this should be), remove your pot from the ground. The plastic container should slide out readily. Wire brush or hose off the pot and plant it up. If you don’t have access to a level of ground: Get two cardboard boxes, one of which fits into the other with about an inch or two of space between all around. Unless they are very strong, reinforce them with tape around the sides and over the corners. Smear some vegetable over the inside of the larger and the outside of the smaller. Cut several candles each to two inches in length and fix these to the bottom of the larger box, evenly spaced. Make the mix as described above and fill the larger box to the tops of the candles. Place the smaller box inside the larger, resting on the candles, and put a little weight in it. Work the sackrete mix between the boxes to whatever height you want the sides of your container to be. If necessary you can put small blocks of wood between the two boxes to keep the spacing right. When the concrete mix is hardened, pull away the boxes. If the candles don’t easily pull out of the bottom you can drill through them. Experimenting with these two methods you can fairly easily make a variety of shapes and sizes of attractive containers. Designing With Containers If you are grouping containers together, such as on a deck, a variety of sizes gives the best look. Aesthetically, you are better off with say, one large container and two smaller rather than three medium sized pots. In addition, they needn’t all be on the same plane. Put a few on benches or tables or inverted pots and if possible, use hanging baskets and wall planters as well. All manner of old tubs and basins can be effective design elements in a container garden and as with size, a variety will give a richer look than will a collection of pots all of the same kind. Do have a repetition of textures, however, as overly eclectic can look too busy. As with containers, a variety of plants, from small ornamental trees through shrubs and vines to perennials and annuals creates the most satisfying container garden. The idea, generally, and if space allows, is to create an environment, an little ecosystem comprised of members from several plant groups. Hanging baskets contribute to this effect too, bringing the garden upward and allowing it to reach downward. A future edition will be dedicated to hanging baskets and wall planters. TO BE CONTINUED To Read More Articles by Steve Go to www.landscape-design-garden-plans.com FREE REPORT ON LANDSCAPE PROFESSIONALS Keith Davitt is an award winning landscape designer with projects nation-wide and the author of four garden design books. To download a free, comprehensive report on landscape professionals and how to identify which of the seven different categories is best for you and your garden needs go to, http://www.landscape-design-garden-plans.com/landscape-design-report.html Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Silk http://EzineArticles.com/?Container-Gardening-Is-For-Everyone&id=131440 50mg-buy-ultram pay pal order ultram prescription drug tramadol buy ultram with out a prescription
