DIY Self-Watering Planters

For Easter, we made a trip out to my mother's house and were treated with a lovely surprise fresh from my stepfather's greenhouse: Nearly mature tomato plants! John provided us with two plants each of the following varieties:

• Heirloom tomatoes
• Cherokee tomatoes (which will be purple)

What a great addition to our garden! When we got home though, I realized that with my somewhat forgetful nature, these mature plants and their containers would need some kind of self-watering system to avoid drying out. So I took some terracotta pots from last season and made some deceptively simple outer containers - all I had to do was plug the drainholes.

I came up with a crafty solution of slicing up an old cork (our running cork collection came in quite handy) into "slices" about 4 mm thick. I then planned to insert that in the bottom of the pot, and seal it like a wine bottle.

Unfortunately, the corks were just bigger than the holes, so I had to make the diameter smaller. Doing this left a bit of a gap between the nice round curve of the pot and the chopped edge of my cork though, so I needed to water proof the cork somehow. I took an old candle that had burned almost all the way down, and dripped wax on top of and around the cork to seal the opening.

After letting the wax cool down for awhile, I tested the seal under the sink and it worked great. Voila! Self-watering containers! Now, the tomato plants, comfy in the plastic containers they came in, each have their own self-watering container that will allow them to "drink" from the bottom if they're thirsty. These should serve the plants well until it is warm enough to move them outside permanently.

In the meantime, I can hardly believe it but they are already beginning to flower. We may have fresh tomatoes from our little urban garden at the start of the season this year!

Developing a Garden Plan: part 1

After the hit-and-miss plantings of the last few years, Jen and I decided that this was the year to actually develop a plan for our backyard that would incorporate many of the the things both of us desire.

• space for a table / chairs
  
• vegetable garden
• herb garden
  
• raised planters
• gravel / porous paving areas
  
• solid paving from house to garage
  
• shade-friendly plants
• perennial plants
• firepit area
• compost area
  
• water efficiency (more rain barrels)
• And perhaps a bit of an oxymoron - low maintenance
  

Of course, there needs to be a lot of compromising because we're working with an area that is effectively 22 x 30, surrounded by a fence, and most of which is shaded by a large maple tree on the north east corner of the area, as well as some very mature lilac bushes. Here is a preliminary drawing we came up with that incorporates the existing site elements with much of our "wish list" items.


After this initial step, we are now working through designing the hardscaping that needs to be done to accommodate all of these features. In addition to the soft lines of the gravel-based plan above, we came up with many other ideas for the space - rectangles, a diagonal patio, a circular theme. With the goal of trying to find a plan that best fit the small space, we have pretty much settled on the octagonal patio idea shown below.


This would ideally be pavers, but may be stamped / stained concrete too. We already need to have some concrete re-done in the left-side area of these plans. The steps leading down to the basement are crumbling, and the slab there is pitched towards the house. When coupled with a large downspout that sometimes overflows, that is a bad combination.

Also, Jennifer is a little concerned about the patio area being limiting - we like to have gatherings with friends when weather allows, and the backyard fills up fast - she's worried it will fill up even faster with a small defined patio space! So this may evolve ... we shall see.

But with a firm(ish) plan in place, we can start to look at how to go about implementing it - and what will fit within our budget.

Stairway Plant Shelves with an Arts-and-Crafts Touch

Ever since we "finished" our second floor in 2007, there have been a few punchlist items we've been meaning to take care of. One of these was to trim off the sides of our U-shaped stairwell with some finished shelving.

When we expanded the stairs from the original bungalow winder stairs into a standard-width staircase and landing, we had to demolish the old "cat walk" balcony that wrapped around the stairs. However, this left some large, 18" deep shelves flanking both sides of the landing in the middle of the stairwell. These would make great plant shelves as the windows in the stairwell are the only ones that truly face south and receive sun all year round.

While wandering through the trim aisle on a recent trip to the hardware store, we stumbled across this nice 2" oak trim with a very arts-and-crafts floral design cut into the oak. It seemed like the perfect trim piece for our plant shelves!

It may be hard to tell from the photo above, but the trim piece has a nice floral vine pattern that weaves along the whole length of the long shelf. Of course, we stained these shelves to match the rest of the new trimwork in our stairs and kitchen area, using a couple coats of a nice low-VOC water-based stain "Rosewood Red", which matches the original trim in Humprey House quite well.

Here's the finsihed plant shelf, already home to our collection of plants and Jen's herbs just in time for winter!