DIY Outdoor Plant Hanger

I have a bunch of pea seeds left from last year’s garden by design. I need to find a better way to plant them so the vines don’t take over my small patio container garden like they did last summer.

The heavy duty plant hanging eye bolt similar to this kind I used years ago and largely ignored gave me the inspiration to try growing peas in a hanging planter. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links for your convenience.)

Spoiler alert: All of the hanging planters I found were so high off the ground they required my short little self to pull out a step stool to water them. I hate dragging out a step ladder to store things normal people can reach. That’s why anything above my head is dead to me – including hanging plants.

I considered a macrame plant hanger but I wasn’t sure how well cotton or jute cording would hold up outside. And again, the hangs the plant too high and over my head thing.

The only solution was to make an outdoor plant hanger myself. 

 

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How to Make Garden Plant Markers

The theme of this year’s container herb garden is Hey, That’s Different, Let’s See If It Will Grow (and We Need Cilantro.)

Which means I need plant markers to identify what this stuff is once it comes time to harvest it for cooking.  Sure, some of the plants came with a plastic plant label stuck in the pot but I had to split some of those plants up into different plant pots that make up my small patio container garden.

I want a set of plant markers that is cute and somewhat unique.  I turned to my little stash of on deck items to repurpose (or formally recycle in our bin after a given time limit) and made plant markers from recycled aluminum cans. I got four plant tags from one aluminum pop can and put the scrap into my city recycling bin.

DIY Garden Markers from Recycled Aluminum Cans

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How to Grow Basil Plants From Cuttings

Basil is one of my favorite herbs to grow in my self watering container garden.  It is affordable (especially if you grow basil from seeds,) fairly hardy (since I often forget plants need water to live,) and is the easiest (and cheapest) way to cook with the fancy varieties (opal basil, anyone?) I never see for sale in the grocery store. (Disclosure: I am including some affiliate links for your convenience.)

But the thing I really love about growing basil  is if you have one basil plant, you can use it to propagate the clippings to grow more basil plants!

Yes, really!

How to Propagate Basil Plants

How to a Make Tomato Cage Plant Stand

This year’s Tabasco and Habanero pepper plants aren’t doing as well as they could planted discretely in our front flower bed as they could on the sunny backyard patio. They only way to do that is to eek out space for two more plants on my small patio container garden with  four plant stands.

Which was a fantastic excuse to check out our new IKEA store! I saw a self watering planter and stand on the IKEA website that would do the job nicely.


Until I got to the store and an associate told me they were discontinued. *sad face*

No worries! I swung by Home Depot on my way home to buy tomatoes cages to make into a quick and easy modern plant stand.

Quick and Easy DIY Modern Plant Stands

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You will need:

How to Make Compost Tea Fertilizer

Every evening as part of my post dinner cleanup,  I try to dump our kitchen compost collector into the big tumbling compost bin outside to keep the little guy from stinking up the joint.

This particular evening I gave the compost bin a crank like I have done so many evenings before only for the half full bin to suddenly become much easier to turn, like it was practically empty – because it was.

The hinges and latch on the door to the compost bin failed and dumped compost all over the yard.
For the third time.

I didn’t have enough finished compost to fertilize my garden but instead of singing the Condo Blues, I used it to make compost tea. Compost tea is an excellent plant food and fertilizer and well earns its nickname – Black Gold.

How to Brew Compost Tea Concentrate the Easy Way

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