Gardening Hacks: Privacy Screen, Hanging Baskets, and Pots

Our country house is small and lacks storage. We have two good sized outbuildings, but George just will not walk further than he must and has now reached the age where that is quite understandable. That means that the carport which is next to the house is a magnet all the junk a country place requires: garden tools, woodpile, two burner propane stove top to keep heat out of the kitchen in summer, gasoline, diesel, extra hoses, spare pots, potting soil, extra bags of cat litter, ladders and, at my place, birds. The three macaws love being outside in the summer months. Above you see the street view and the back view of the steel carport that is next to the house. Up until this year the street view was just awful. I thought about various ways of screening the front but had no budget for doing that. I have a lot of plants started in tubs and buckets because keeping them close to the hose and the house makes it much easier to care for them while they are small. Then one day I had a Eureka! moment and figured out how to do it. I had two pallets on hand. I sent George to buy 3 more. I arranged pallets and plants. Then I added two pieces of wood lattice that I hung horizontally from the trusses of the steel carport. I just tied them where I wanted them with poly rope and zip tied the two units together in the middle. Arkansas is full of rocks and George likes bonfires so I added a bonfire ring that is partly under the carport but mostly outside it. Our mantra around here is: It ain't wonderful but it looks a heck of a lot better than it did. It does conceal the mess from the street side. It was very cheap to do.

The second thing I want to talk about today is hanging baskets. I love the silly things but I have very little money to spend on garden display. When I lived in town I was in a high crime neighborhood and regularly had hanging baskets stolen until I devised this trick which can be used with just about any hanging basket whether plastic or metal. Remove the original hanger and replace with three inexpensive chains of equal length. Fasten the chains to the basket with S hooks and fasten the chains together at the top with another S hook. Get a pair of pliers and shut those S hooks tight. Then add another S hook at the top and fasten the basket tightly to the chain that comes down from above. In the city I had big oak trees in the yard and we installed chains that passed around big horizonal branches. We ran the chains through bits of old hose so that the chain wouldn't hurt the tree. Chains remained in place year around. Baskets were added in the summer months. Yes, the baskets can be stolen, but only by someone who happens to be carrying a bolt cutter. Most hanging basket theft is impulse crime and not the work of professional thieves who wouldn't bother with baskets anyway. Once I went to this system I stopped losing baskets. In the country basket theft is not an issue, but I still do it this way out of habit. It is strong and will easily carry a lot of weight.

Still on the subject of baskets. The average Walmart hanging basket is plastic, but I also own three big ones that are open metalwork. These are pretty but require those coconut coir liners. Pricey and must be replaced annually. Um, no. I cast around for another way of doing things and what I came up with is this: I buy small rolls of fiberglass screening and keep them in my tool shed. Put the empty metal basket on any convenient surface, unroll the fiberglass and cut two big pieces that will completely fill the basket. I use a double layer, one square on top of another. I cut big squares and shove them into place and put a cup or two of potting soil on top to hold them in place. At this point you have all kinds of points and odd bits sticking up above the rim of the basket. Keep adding soil and shaping the fiberglass. It folds into pleats and requires a little fussing to get it looking good. Then cut off the surplus material above the top rim. Now add more potting medium, plants, and water. The fiberglass drains freely and holds the soil in place and lasts for years. Once the plants begin to grow it is inconspicuous.

Now let's talk pots and containers. I prefer the classic Italian terracotta pots. I think they are beautiful. They are also expensive. I buy what I can of these, but then I improvise for a lot of my planting containers. I bought some nursery pots. There are nursery pots and nursery pots. Some are very flimsy because they are designed simply to get the plant started, sold, and then carried off by the customer. Some are heavier. I read reviews on Amazon until I was cross-eyed and eventually found some fairly sturdy ones. I bought a mess of those. I also use a lot of five gallon buckets. George drills holes in the bottom for drainage. I am more or less perpetually handing something to George and saying "Drill a drainage hole." He says, what size, and I say, about as large as a dime. That allows water to drain freely but it is also large enough that soil wants to drop out of the bottom. To prevent that I use, guess what, squares of fiberglass screening. This works like gangbusters and it lasts.

I am totally offended by the asking price of plastic pots. Plastic is not environmentally friendly and they want the world for garden planters--a lot more than a reasonable markup for plastics. Back to Walmart. No, I am no fan of Walmart but in small town Arkansas it is often the only place to shop for many items. In late spring and early summer Walmart stocks a bunch of stuff for backyard cookouts. Melamine plates and plastic serve ware of all kinds. It is thin and cheap and not designed to last but they make it in a variety of sizes and shapes. It is ridiculously cheap.I start succulents in small plastic bowls, put larger cactus into salad size bowls. Small bowls can be drilled for drainage simply by heating a skewer on a stove burner. Open a window--smells vile. Hot skewer will open holes in these light plastics very easily. I make multiple small holes. I re-use plastic coffee containers by making them into pots. I buy odd small plates at the thrift store for plant saucers.

If you have limited money for plants and landscaping, don't forget the Arbor Day Foundation. They do a lot of good and their trees and shrubs are very cheap. They send tiny plants, but they grow amazingly fast. I am perpetually starting something or other and that is why I had all those odd plants in containers to create the privacy screen.

Hope this helps someone. More later.