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 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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Dairy of a permaculture (ish) garden, June 2019.

I love it when the foxgloves flower, they're soo beautiful!

Our biggest garden-y excitement this month has been that the driveway is almost finished!  Seven 850kg bags of gravel have been spread (we may have bought one too many, but we've come up with  a plan for it!).  Joe's about to put up a new fence, there's a bin store to build and we want a couple of big pots with something pretty in by the front door (any suggestions - we want something hardy and evergreen and it's mostly shady apart from a few hours of sun in the morning).  I have a new waterbutt too, it's 250 litres and filled in one night - it's been really rainy here!  We've also had new guttering and facias so please note how nice and shiny they are because they cost £1700 (our old ones were asbestos...).

I think the gravel will be slightly less white and a bit more more pale grey once the rain's washed the dust off.  Look at this side path too - I think it's sooo nice!

The front garden raised beds are doing really good!  I've already had my first potatoes and there are beans and peas growing in with the potatoes too.  I've got carrots and beets on the way, and I've trimmed all my onions back because they were hitting the top of their protective mesh (the internet said I could trim them back to 4 inches high a couple of times during the growing season, and it would send more energy into making a bigger bulb, so we shall see).  I've had loads of kale, the sweetcorn is up and my tomatoes and peppers have flowers on them!

I've got little apples on my little apple tree! 

I've got broad beans, peas and borlotto beans in my back garden raised beds.  There are some courgettes in the other raised bed and a lot of weeds too (not pictured!).

Here's the garden in full for posterity. 

How's your garden doing?  Every time I plant a new plant a slug eats it and I'm getting fed up of that, and I had to pull up nearly all of my outside tomatoes because of blight, but otherwise I'm enjoying my garden! 

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Diary of a permaculture (ish) garden, May 2019.

This month we got new garden furniture!  It's so lovely to sit out in the garden in comfort and the set is modular so it comes apart and goes back together in lots of different configurations.

In other, actual, gardening news, my front garden raised beds are going good.  The potatoes have all come up and so have broad beans, peas, coriander, borlotto beans, carrots, beets, onion, garlic, kale, cabbage, chard, sweetcorn, peppers and tomatoes.  I love having 4 raised beds instead of a car on my driveway! 

In the back garden my raised beds need some attention, but I've got broad beans and dwarf borlotto beans and lettuce and a crazy cauliflower in one bed, and some onions and bolted chard in the other.

I planted some 'walking onions' a while ago and I guess it's their time to go walking, cos they're growing little onion bulbs on their tops and flopping all over the place trying to plant themselves.

My Hotbin composter seemed pretty full so I emptied it and got some lovely compost to spread on my cottage garden bed.

Speaking of the cottage garden bed I've been pulling up all the many, many, many forget me nots, chopping up some of them and laying them down as a mulch, then putting a layer of Hotbin compost on top.  I've also watered with worm wee from my wormery and sprinkled some poppy seeds and other random seeds that came from cleaning out my seed tin.  I hadn't added compost here for a few years and you could definitely tell, the poor soil was as dry as dust. 

My Aunty Rose (not my biological aunty, but the lovely lady who I lived next door to for 20+ years when I was growing up) died this month, and I inherited (or rescued!) quite a lot of her chipped kitchenware that was heading for the tip.  One of those things was this old colander, which I've lined and filled with sedums.  I did this little metal watering can too, it was left in the garden by the previous homeowners and it leaks, so it's much cuter as a planter.

My apple trees have set some fruit!  Yey!

That's it really.  The garden is looking pretty and I'm feeling pretty tired after doing lots of gardening this month! 

How's your garden doing?

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