Growing plants on your balcony can be lots of fun with novelty containers. Here’s a few ideas for you to think about.
Old shoes don’t need to be thrown out. If you have a favourite pair of shoes that you really reflect who you are but they’ve seen way to much jogging or partying, then fill them with potting mix and grow your favourite herbs in them. You can nail them to a post and make a vertical “shoe garden”!
Recycle your old tins into pot plants. Take the labels off and stand them in a row with parsley for an effective display. Similarly, old galvanised buckets make a nice feature too. Just remember to drill holes in the bottom of your containers to allow for drainage. Imported olive oil tins are a funky choice too.
Fence palings can be cut to size and screwed together to make wooden boxes. You can line the box with shade cloth or old material to stop soil spilling out of the cracks. Just make sure to collect non-treated wood. Or you can fill the boxes with your old unsightly pots so they can’t be seen. If you go a recycled timber yard you can collect some patterned architraves or dado boards for a more ornamental effect.
Antique stores are filled with some real treasures. Old bread boxes, packing crates, wooden champagne and wine boxes, and even old cupboard drawers make ideal containers to grow a variety of summer salad greens. It’s amazing what you can pick up cheaply from a car boot sale too. Throw away items can be turned into a cheap potted veggie garden.
Used butter containers (with holes snipped in the corners) can be useful for sowing seeds into. Germinate your herb seeds in these first and then transplant into your other recycled containers.
Small pots can dry out easily on a hot sunny balcony so it may be hard to grow herbs in them so why not stick to some exotic succulents. Succulents come in a range of colours and sizes so you can mix and match plants with similar shoes. Or you can do a theme on the same plant but highlight different containers. Sedum species are great succulents that suit small containers.
Happy hunting!
The Vege Lady
Login using your social media account (such as facebook and twitter) to make comments. Click the “share” button to share comments with your friends via your social media accounts.
