Make, Do & Mend - Plant containers

Submitted by Keely Rendell

I’m always on the lookout for containers that I can use in my garden for either planting or just for show.

A while ago…

I was recently asked to cover for a couple of days at my old job, which is on a small industrial estate, and is often ripe with discarded potential containers.

The picture shows the latest containers that I couldn’t resist bringing home.

The lawnmower grass-collecting box can easily have a few holes drilled in it and I can move it about the garden easily.

My favourite find is the metal tube, probably from an air-conditioning installation.

It looks pretty cool just by itself, but I’ll lay it on its side, drill some drainage holes and fill with earth. Then I can plant in both ends.

Forward in time to now…

I planted the nasturtiums that I grew from seed and they look fantastic now with all their bright colours, not to mention adding the leaves & petals to my salads.

Last year I was desperate for containers and used an old car wheel, old holey buckets & old saucepans. I used the water from my water butt and made use of my pond by sitting some of the containers in the shallow end among the water plants.

(One of my cats just had to get in the picture)

I found a pair of (discarded) fireman’s wellies the other day so they’re the latest addition.

Link of the week: http://www.seedsofknowledge.com/containers.html

Moan of the week: Why aren’t crisp packets recyclable or biodegradable?

Interesting fact of the week:

‘Dickens to Pay’ is used as a threat: ‘If you do that again there will be Dickens to pay’.

Charles Dickens wasn’t a frightening character so as a threat it seems mild to say the least. But the 19th century novelist has nothing to do with it.

As long ago as the 16th century the word ‘Devil’ was, in fact, ‘Devilkin’ and having ‘the devilkin to pay’ meant a passage straight to hell for one’s misdemeanour. Devilkin was usually pronounced ‘Dickens’, or at least it was in 1601 when William Shakespeare included the line ‘I cannot tell what the Dickens his name was’ in his play The Merry Wives Of Windsor – more than 200 years before Charles Dickens was born.

Taken from Red Herrings & White Elephants by Albert Jack