Ok, the decision is made, we start growing.
Then you bump against a question - IN WHAT???
The easiest and most expensive answer is to spend an exciting afternoon in a gardening centre. You'll be bound to come home swaying under the weight of professional, proper flower pots (and with much lighter wallet, too). Those usually look nice, but I can't afford them and I'm completely not sorry.
I prefer to employ some imagination and use whatever I already have.
As mentioned yesterday, garbage bin is a wonderful source of functional, original flower pots. At the early stage of fixation, I developed some kind of pot-fever, looked at every single piece of rubbish as at a potential container and probably was overdoing it a bit. More than a bit. Now I'm almost recovered and I can share with you this list of 'potty' ideas:
- plastic bottles - you know, coca-cola and the likes. 2 litre size works best for me. Cut in half, make few holes in the bottom and that's it. You have a brand new, cost free pot. You're also recycling, and it's devilishly fashionable these days.
- yoghurt pots - the bigger ones, anyway. Principle is the same, pierce the bottom to allow water drainage, full stop. You don't even have to cut anything.
- milk cartons - to be honest, I haven't tried this one yet, because I'm running out of windowsill space anyway, but I have a feeling that it would work just fine. If it holds liquid, it will hold moist soil too.
- builder's buckets - this one is for bigger plants, or for bigger batches of small ones. You can buy them really (and I mean REALLY) cheap in DIY stores. Also, paint buckets, or any-funny-building-stuff-that-comes-in-buckets containers work great. Check with your neighbours whether they're not doing some decorating soon! Just wash them well, some of those substances can be pretty vicious.
- cake boxes - as long as they are plastic. I swear, I have a batch of strawberries growing happily in a box that once held carrot cake...
Basically, anything waterproof, roughly box-shaped will do. If you're ambitious, you can beautify them with paintwork or some such. I'm not, so I will leave details to your imagination.
Tip - trying to cut holes in plastic containers may be dangerous business. Too easy for the blade to slip right onto your finger. Warm the blade up in a candle flame and it will slice plastic like butter.
Feel free to use your own imagination to come up with more ideas.
