Black Metal Plant Stands - A Pair

Metal Plant Stands

I found two metal plant stands, one that fits inside the other, and both fit inside a single large carrying bag.

Another use for the iconic shopping tote

I gave these black metal plant stands away to a friend with a balcony who wanted to create height variety for his selection of indoor/outdoor plants.  Right now the plants are inside for the winter, but the black metal plant stands are still doing their job of keeping plants off the floor and giving the pathos vine some room to cascade over the side down towards the floor.

Standing tall

Conclusion

It's always good to save things from the dumpster, especially metal items which have such a high environmental production cost, why waste when you can reuse?  Even if I don't have an immediate use for things, I take those dumpster gems and offer them to friends.  You might not realize it, but it seems that everyone has their own wishlist of free items!

Happy freestyling!

Giant green monster planter

My alternate title of this post would be "the most recent time I traded muscles for food." When I saw a monster green planter loitering in the loading dock I knew it would be heavy. So I asked a friend if he would help in some freestyle adventuring in exchange for dinner, and tada, I had the muscle all lined up.

In all my excitement I didn't take a dramatic before picture (which would have included some ants running around the black tray when we first picked it up).  Instead I suggest you look at the picture below, but imagine it covered with hard water sedimentation all around the black tray and about two inches up along the green pot.  You can still see a few small flakes clinging stubbornly to the side.

The mineral deposits came off pretty quickly with hot water and vigorous brushing in the shower, but all the moving around for cleaning made me glad I wasn't trying to lift this thing by myself. It's huge!

 

To give you some sense of scale the green planter is 21 inches high, 21 inches wide at the top, and the walls are 1.5 inches thick. If it were plastic it would be lightweight, easy to move, and far less awesome because it would be a bucket with a hole in the bottom. It is, however, glazed ceramic, as is the black tray underneath it, and thus worth bartering food-for-moving-to-my-house in order to own it.  Does it still count as free?  People who frequent garden centers know that large ceramic planters can be expeeeeensive. I'd peg this one at $60+  when new, quite a find!

Here is the finished setup, with the green planter settled into its corner by the window.

Sharp-eyed readers may notice that technically this qualifies as an update to the 'evolution of a living room corner' series. 

Below is a previous incarnation of this corner (note the different plant):

And in case you've forgotten the earlier image here is the corner now, with the large royal palm (?) tree, some Haworthia succulents, a jade plant, an orchid, and a reading lamp.  The palm tree has been in this spot for a while, but in a plain black plastic planter which is rather meh when compared to the new shiny green monster pot.

Welcome to the jungalow!

Happy freestyling and summer gardening.

Maybe Haworthia *is* a utensil

Almost anything can become a planter, especially if it is ceramic.  I like the shape, and more importantly the price, of this small stoneware crock at a discount store. 




Since planters and cachepots can be more expensive than the plants themselves I've started to keep my eyes open for low priced ceramics wherever they may be.  This one was in the kitchen wares section and only $5.99. I'll take it.

My Haworthia succulents keep producing offsets (plant babies) and I have to keep finding new homes for them or repotting the mother plant into a large container.  This one was pretty simple.   I often use coffee cups for succulent planters, because they are free and its easy to poke holes in the bottom for drainage.  The utensil crock was taller than the coffee cup but that issue was easily solved by adding a little step (made out of part of another coffee cup cut down to size)  for the plant cup to sit on.




Voila!  Another example of kitchenware to cachepot.


Even though I don't usually give my succulents their own chairs I think this ones looks pretty good on the slipper chair, maybe it will just hangout there until it has to move.







 

Happy freestyling!