Making A Concrete Plant Pot

I've been doing a lot of concreting lately (I'll show you some more of what I've been up to later) so I thought I'd have a mess around with some left over concrete. 

So with some underground pipe, a bit of plywood and half a Vimto bottle (I do love Vimto so much) I knocked up a very simple shutter to pour some concrete into.

Now because all the sides are straight I knew I'd have a bit of difficulty getting it out of the shutter, basically I made it to be cut out afterwards, much quicker for me and as this was only an experiment it didn't matter. 

The pot poured. Shuttering is basically making things in reverse, so here you see the future base of the pot.

And here's the finished pot. I am only messing around and experimenting at his point but I am tempted to make some big planters for my new patio as I find terracotta doesn't last and other big pots are so expensive. I like the modern look of the concrete on the edges, and although I know this isn't to everyone's taste I think it could look quite cool if you had a collection of pots in a group with some striking plants in them. 

I'm planing on making some big square planters on wheels to act as a barrier to the stairs on the patio that can be moved out of the way, as well as some big pots to plant up some acers and other ornamentals in.

What would you make out of concrete? 

(I know I've asked this before on this post here but it's always interesting to here if people have had new ideas)

I also like the look of these.

Grow Your Own Plant Pots

This is a little tongue in cheek but I did do it for a reason! 

The other day  I run out of plant pots, I have never planted so much before and I've ended up using everything I can find, I've even been to mums and pinched all her spares as well. It did make me think about preppers and I wondered if they've planned for plant pots and other sundry items that you need when you grow lots of food. What would you do if you couldn't buy any more plant pots to start seedlings off in or to pot on when you're tryign to keep the growing season as long as possible?

Looking around for other containers I found a few squashes that I'd chucked out. 

Rotten squash shells

They sounded hollow when I tapped them.  

Cleaned out ready for a bit of soil

 They'd dried up inside, so all I had to do was bash a hole in the top, scoop out all the seeds and dried flesh and then swill them out. I was left with something that could be used as a plant pot, not just a a wasted vegetable.

Eight in fact, just enough to pot on a few tomato plants as a little experiment.

Tomatoes growing quite happily in their new pots

The plan with these is just to bash out the bottom when I plant the tomatoes on next time and the pot should decompose in time back into the soil. I know I'm not the first to use a squash as a container (I know some gourds were originally bred for this reason - to carry water) but I was quite pleased with my novel little pots.

Who else has been using anything they can find as a pot lately?