How to make your own stacking planters.

Hello!

I will not be truly happy until I have either a 'Garden Tower' or a 'Greenstalk' planter, or something very similar.  If you're not familiar, these are stacking vertical garden planters, that are sadly out of my budget and/or only sold in America.

But, never fear, I've come up with my own DIY versions.  Not quite as tall or exciting as the pre made ones, but I'm pretty pleased with what I've managed to come up with, with pots I had lying round the garden.

Example number one:

Three terracotta pots of different sizes stacked together. I've put a snapped off bit of bamboo cane through all of the holes in the bottoms of the pots, to help keep it steady.  Burying the bottom of each pot a little way down in the bigger one underneath will also help keep everything safe and secure.

I planted some strawberry runners in my DIY vertical terracotta planter, and they're really happy in there.

Example number two:

Round plastic pots. Stacked together in the same way as the terracotta ones.  I didn't put a stick through these, but they are all slightly buried in each other to keep them secure.  The big black pots are florists buckets, they sell them off sometimes in Morrisons £1 for 10. The smaller pots I've reused from other plants.

These have potatoes in the largest pot, some borlotto beans in the middle pot (well, there would have been borlotto beans if some slugs hadn't eaten them all!🤦‍♀️) And chard in the top pot. 

I grow potatoes in the big round pots anyway, so by adding more pots to this set up I get more vertical gardening space for practically no cost or effort!

Example number three:

Square pots. I had two of these square pots already, then I realized you could stack them on top of each other and make vertical potato planters.  The pots are £3 each from B&M, and the label says they're made from recycled and recyclable plastic.

I based this design off a 'Paul potato planter', which is from a German company and starts at  about £40 for the plastic version, as goes up into the hundreds for the stainless steel version. No shade for those prices, it's just not possible for me.  Thank goodness for B&M!

This is literally just 2 square planters carefully stacked diagonally.  The potato in the bottom pot has sent it's leaves through the gaps (just like I hoped it would 😊).  For these particular pots I could only stack 2 together, 3 was a bit heavy and wobbly.

You could probably do this with all sorts of square and rectangular pots, so if you have some give it a go and see if you can make them into a vertical garden. 

Overall I'm pretty pleased with my cobbled together vertical planters.  It always pleases me to grow as much as I can in a small place, and you can never have too many potatoes!

Do you have any DIY stacking planters in your garden?

See you soon, love, Susie Moon xx

Diary of a permaculture -ish garden, March and April 2020.

Lilac blossom time is my favourite time.  It smells so good.  My neighbour says she can smell it in her garden too, and she wants a cutting of it when the time's right.

In the back garden, my raised beds have been topped up with a mix of driveway soil (yep we're still going with that!), hotbin compost and some compost from a big deep planter I'm getting rid of.  I've planted potatoes, peas and broad beans in one, and interplanted with spinach and bok choi.  My other back garden raised bed is empty for now, but I have some minipops sweetcorn in the greenhouse ready to go in next week.  There's swiss chard in both raised beds that's just started to bolt.  And you can see in the front one that my walking onions have popped back up and have started to flower.

One of my projects has been rationalising the amount of pots I have round the garden.  I've been planting things into the ground and rearranging, I'm pleased with this little arrangement with the owl planter and the big terracotta bowl with ginger and spring onions in it. 

My front garden raised beds are doing so good.  A couple have been cleared out and are waiting for new plants, and a couple are full, of onions and garlic, and garlic and carrot seedlings and lettuce seedlings.  My onions are covered because we get onion moth (they lay their eggs in the leaves and the caterpillar buries itself in the onion and eats it from the inside out!), my cover is a mosquito net for a cot, held up with sticks, and so far it seems to be working ok. 

We had a really big job done on the back hedge.  It's needed trimming for ages and we finally bit the bullet and had a tree surgeon come and do it.  It cost £500!!!!!!!!!  And while I'm sad about the loss of birdy habitat and privacy from the houses behind, I am definitely glad of the extra light that it's letting into the garden, and to be rid of the creeping dread that 'something' would have to be done about the hedge - at least it's done now!  The winter-y photo below is the before, and the next the after.  Just so you know, the tree to the left was a sycamore and was taller than our house.  The huge tree on the right is also a sycamore and was what I was dreading our tree turning into.

The hedge looks a bit sparse at the moment, but I've been assured it will grow back pretty quickly in the next few months, and there is new growth on it.  I asked for the chipped wood from the hedge-cutting, and there was enough to cover our whole garden, 14 rubble sacks have gone to mums for her garden and we still have this much left, under the blue tarp, in an old tonne gravel bag! 

I'm dealing with this corner next.  I've already started clearing it out, I need to finish that, put gravel down and then move my shed and greenhouse so they're flat against the brick wall at the back. 

Speaking of greenhouses, I've painted mine, black and white because that's the only paint we have at the moment, and I think it looks ok.

I don't feed the birds.  We've had rats and mice in the garden and I don't want to encourage them.  But the garden is always full of birds, sparrows, robins, blue tits, coal tits, great tits, blackbirds, starlings, pigeons and these goldfinches, who visit to eat dandelion seeds for their lunch. 

How's your garden doing? 

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Diary of a suburban permaculture -ish garden, February 2020.

Look at this little blossom! 

It's a cherryplum and I hope the weather doesn't go too crazy and blow the blossom away before it gets pollinated!  And look at these crab apples, still holding on, I love the colour of them.

It's been so long since I wrote about my garden.  And that's because my camera's memory card corrupted so I've lost like a years worth of photos.  But I have a new camera and a new memory card and I'm backing everything up like crazy!

I got some pennies for Christmas and I used them to buy this b-e-a-oootiful new trug.  I have lots of bulbs to plant and I still haven't planted them all - woopsy!   I also bought some mini fruit trees from Thompson and Morgan, the kind that stay really small for pots on the patio, the trees are nice but there were grubs in the pots (maybe vine weevils!) so I wouldn't buy these ones.  But I'm looking forward to having 2 new apples, a pear, a plum and a cherry!

I made this cute little project one winters day.  I hope to collect lots more cute little tins to make a little display somewhere. 

My back garden raised beds still have some chard going in them, but not much else.  There's messy bits everywhere that need dealing with, and theres Still that big pile o' dirt at the back of the garden that I'm running out of inspiration for!  My potting table broke too, I need to find a new one. 

My little garden robin is still keeping me company. 

In the front garden raised beds I've been picking kale and chard all winter.  The overwintered onions and garlic are going strong too. 

Can you tell I haven't done any proper gardening since last year??! 

Luckily the flowers don't mind a neglectful gardener and carry on blooming anyway! 

How are your gardens?  Have they survived the winter?  And the storms?  I hope so!

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I (ahem, we) got an allotment.

Today I am the happiest girl in the world.  I have an allotment! 

I've known for a little while that we were going to get it, but I didn't want to say anything to jinx it, and I didn't have a definite date, so I've been keeping hopefully quiet with my fingers firmly crossed for the last couple of months.

AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL! 

Would you like to know the story of how we got our allotment?  (I'm going to assume you've said yes!)

When Joe and I were on holiday in May we decided to bite the bullet and put our name on the council waiting list for the allotments in our town, which are conveniently located right behind our house. I'd wanted one for years, but we've been busy with house stuff and life stuff and I wanted Joe to be on board to help with the heavy jobs!  When we got home I emailed the council to ask to be put on the list, only to be told it was closed.  There are currently 10 people waiting and no one's left the allotment site for years.  Cue big sighs and resigning ourselves to waiting for years and years to get an allotment. 

But then I remembered that there are a few public allotments at our local National Trust property, which is also conveniently located right behind our house.  I was a garden volunteer there, for about 5 years when I finished uni, and my Mum still volunteers in the house now, so I asked her to see if there happened to be a list for the allotments there. 

LUCKILY for me, there was an allotment coming free in the autumn, and the head gardener said we could have it!  It's very sad for the lady who used to have it, she's become to ill to keep it up.  There's still the last of her leeks and beans in, and all the soft fruit is hers, I'm not sure if she'll want to take any of it with her, but Joe's offered to help her dig up anything she wants to take with her.  The lady's paid for the allotment til the end of the year, but is kindly letting us put some stuff in the spaces this year.

I know I am sooo lucky, I know not many people decide to put their name on an allotment list then actually get one 4 months later (albeit on a different site!).  It's more than big enough for us too, to grow potatoes and beans and onions and some pretty flowers.  A little shady, but that's ok.  And there are no weeds!  I quite like the challenge of it being at the National Trust, people pay to visit which is good motivation to keep it tidy and I'm going to research Edwardian allotments so I can make it look right.  

It's super peaceful and beautiful too.  I love these old apple trees (I can't harvest from them because they're used by the Trust, but I can appreciate their gnarled beauty).  I love these gardens where I've spent so many hours gardening.  It was lovely to catch up with the head gardener again.  And the allotment where I started to learn about gardening is still there, just across the path from my own new allotment. 

I am so happy and so lucky and I can't wait to get started! 

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My homegrown harvest, July 2019.

July's been a month of raspberries.  Sooo many raspberries.  I only have autumn fruiting raspberries, but that doesn't seem to be stopping them fruiting now!

I've had loads of greens too, which I've been shredding, wilting in boiled water, then squeezing into little handfuls to freeze, so I can use it later in the year.

We had our first, one and only cherry, it was delicious, the variety is 'sweetheart'.

My 'discovery' apples started falling off the tree so I picked them all, which was a mistake as they're SUPER sour and nowhere near ripe!  They're on the windowsill, I hope they'll soak up some sun and get a bit sweeter. 

I didn't manage to grow any carrots last year so yey for carrots this year!  The variety is 'berlicum' and they're really nice. 

I've also had loads of strawberries, purple snap peas, potatoes, beets, some baby onions and a little baby garlic.

What have you been growing this month?

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My homegrown harvest, June 2019.

Things are finally growing in my garden!  These are the first potatoes of the year - it was a mix of varieties.  The potatoes aren't quite ready so I just rummaged around in the soil and pulled out some big feeling potatoes without disturbing the plants too much! 

I've had my first raspberries.  I'm slightly perturbed that these are my 'autumn bliss' raspberries and they're all coming now!  Is this climate change?  Did I prune them crazy wrong last year?  What will I eat in autumn!?

The first strawberries have arrived too, I only eat home grown strawbs so these are a proper treat.  The first ever yellow raspberries came, a small total harvest of 5 berries but there's a big cane growing already for next year.  Purple snap peas and tons of kale and chard too.

I'm trying to keep up with picking and drying home grown herbs this year, I've picked oregano and mint this month to dry.  

I trimmed the onion tops back and ended up with a washing up bowl full of onion tops!  I washed and chopped them all, froze two boxes full, and popped another box in the fridge to be used up in stir fries, fritters, Joe's omelettes and I made a particularly delicious green onion pancake too.  I thinned out my cabbage seedlings and ate them, because waste not want not. 

It's all about the berries though this month, I've been out picking them every day! 

That's about it for this month, have you been harvesting much from the garden this month?

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