Howdy ya’ll!

As usual I’ve been keeping busy with my art. So to give myself a break I decided to work on my houseplants. I don’t just have a couple small potted plants. I have many with LARGE plants growing. Large, that is, for me. I’ve never been known to have a green thumb. I reckon that the older you get the greener your thumbs grow. (hee hee). Anyhow, since I live upstairs I got permission to use the extra area on the landing. Take a peek:

Plants on the landing

As you can see, they have come to be quite unruly. There are three or four pots with Mother in Law’s Tongue and Snake Grass. Those are the long leaf ones. There’s a corn plant/tree in the back left too. I honestly don’t know what kind of plant the one is on the wall. I think of it more as a tree. So did my neighbor boy. Seven years old and wanted to help. I was glad for the company.

I want to show you a trick I learned quite some years ago. It is possible to have planters that don’t have holes in the bottom and still grow your plant friends. It’s all in the preparation. You simply need a drainage system UNDER the plant. Yep, down at the very bottom of it all. How?

Check this out:

place rocks in bottom of planter at least 1 inch deep.

I love rocks. I am always picking up pretty ones I find on my many walks with my sidekick, Daisy. (she’s my dog). Put a good inch deep of rocks in the bottom of your pot. Spread them out to cover the bottom as close to level as possible. Then add a coffee filter on top.

Scrunch the edges real good.

Scrunch down the edges along the side. You can even press the filter down around the wall and the rocks if you like. The filter helps to keep the finer more important additives to the dirt from sifting through. (Shh! The plant thinks this is the bottom of the planter now!). Now, on top of the filter add a piece of round plastic canvas, cut to fit.

plastic canvas into bottom of planter on top of filter and rocks

 The plastic canvas can be rough on the edges. The plant doesn’t care. I happened to have some that were already round. I cut off two rows for it to fit. Now you can finally add some dirt. The canvas helps with filtering too. You always want to put the canvas on top of the filter. First the big and then the small, let those silly particles fall. (Hee, hee! I felt like a rhyme).

The neighbor boy enjoyed trimming leaves and shoveling dirt into pots. I let him take home this very pot I’ve just shown. You probably noticed it’s not really a “pot”. I used a food service container. It’s sturdy and plastic so it won’t leak. Thinking children here….

My neighbor with his new plant.

This has pretty much been my day. Fulfilling. Wholly.

Until next time….

Enjoy life as it comes, even in small packages.

Bonnie