Container gardening

Go Creative with Plant Containers

Flowers and plants add color and a cozy touch to any indoor or outdoor space—but you don’t have to stick with boring, conventional containers to house your blooms or greenery. Get creative and make use of items already in your home (or even in the pile that is headed to the donation center). Below are lots of creative planter ideas that you can use in your garden or around the house.

  1. Metal or wood crates can give an industrial or rustic look to your home decor. To keep the dirt inside the crate, line it with plastic and fill with moss. 
  1. Everyone has a few stock tanks that leak around, so this option is an easy one to find.  Add personal flair with paint or leave them as-is for a metallic look.
  • Create a whimsical display with the watering can tipped on its side or hanging from a pergola with long flowers or vines hanging down.
  • By lining a bushel basket with plastic before adding dirt, you can retain moisture while using such a readily available container. While you can definitely use baskets indoors, you can make use of them outside under covered patios for colorful annual flowers.
  • Smaller kitchen crocks are great for condensed plants like cactus. Or, use the very large pickling crocks for an arrangement of several succulents or cacti.
  • You’ve seen them before and there’s a reason. It’s a great way to add character to your yard! With a little bit of cleaning and/or a fresh coat of paint, that used toilet can get new life, brimming with colorful flowers.
  • If you have an extra colander around the house, you have a planter! These are also common at thrift stores and flea markets and make a fun option for your plants inside or outside the house. If using indoors, line with plastic before filling with soil.
  • Old machinery tires that are painted and stacked make perfect containers.
  • When their utility as footwear is done, add dirt to create a whimsical front porch display.
  • If you have extra feed bags around, roll down the sides, fill with dirt, and plant away. Burlap offers great drainage while holding everything together. Plus, it adds a rustic touch to any garden area.
This week's garden questions

Winter Injury on Evergreens

A couple of evergreen questions with similar problems, even though the trees are different.  Ten-year-old pines started to turn yellowish on the south side of the trees in late April.  The south side does get more wind than the other side. The second tree is an arborvitae close to the house is also turning brown.  What is happening? Are they drowning?

What’s happening is winter desiccation. A lot of different plants suffered winter desiccation, including pines, spruce, fir, arborvitae, privet, boxwood and white pine. The needles lost water faster than they could replace it in the fall, so the leaves/needles started to turn brown and die back during the spring.  For now, just watch the plant and see what happens. If it sends out new growth, then prune out the dead branches back to living tissue.  If the plant is younger and completely brown with no new growth, then you will need to remove it.

It is not how much moisture they have now, but how much they had in late fall.

This week's garden questions, Vegetables

Gardens are so Muddy

With spring being here, we have recently been experiencing, many of us are anxious to get outdoors and start scratching away at Mother Earth, however, the beds and gardens are so muddy. Unpredictable is the single word that best describes the month of May. Right now, soggy earth and emerging tender shoots limit what we can do. Control that overwhelming urge to dig, rake and cultivate. Stay out of the garden.

If you must be there, step lightly. Walking on wet garden soil compacts it and easily destroys its structure. A simple test to determine if your soil is workable is to grab a handful of soil and firmly squeeze it. If water runs out of the soil or if the soil stays compacted in one sticky lump, it is too wet and too early to be cultivated. Even though I encourage restraint that does not mean gardeners must do nothing.

Consider waiting at least two more weeks. I am confident it will be to your advantage and definitely to the advantage of the many newly emerging plants in your landscape. Tomatoes, peppers, vine crops and warmer growing annuals like zinnias and marigolds will catch up to the plants you have already planted.

If any annuals are looking rough and wilting, symptom of water-logged soil, it is not too late to replant.