Thinking outside of the planter box in September

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Hostile Bacon | 0 Comments

This month has been filled with spring cleaning all manner of things in my home and life in general, and one of the first things to fall under the spring cleaning radar was to clean up the balcony garden. All through winter I had visions of sipping cups of tea, reading novels by first time authors, and doing some work in my balcony garden. So as the birds started chirping and the bees began their buzzy passage to the beehive a few doors up, Mr B and I took to the balcony and started to create a floral oasis.

The first thing to go was the cumbersome planter box that was built with love a few years ago. That was the result of another vision I had when we first moved in, which involved lavender and chamomile gently swaying in the breeze and perfuming the air. Fast forward to present day, the lavender was out of control, the chamomile and other fragrant flowers had withered away and all that was left was a planter box that looked miserable and took up too much space.

Thinking outside of the planter box, I started searching online for small greenhouses and found a good selection at Bunnings. I’d already started to experiment with turning teacups into planters and decided that the new balcony garden should have a variety of different planters, including terracotta, clay and plastic pots, up-cycled teapot, teacup and saucer and jug.

A few things I learnt is that you can’t just pick up a drill and start drilling away when up-cycling a household item into a planter. When drilling a hole in the bottom of a teacup or jug (for drainage) like the ones in the pictures, you will need to use a porcelain drill bit. It also takes longer to drill into porcelain and care must be taken to avoid cracks. Whatever the object is it gets very hot, very quickly around the area that is being drilled.

So after deciding on a greenhouse and planters, the next step was to decide on the types of plants I wanted in the balcony garden and bought a variety of herbs, fragrant flowers, and a fern to add to the plants I already had. The result is exactly what I envisioned and have spent many days sipping cups of tea and working in the balcony garden. I haven't had a chance to sit down and read the work of a first time author as yet, perhaps that will be next on my list of things to do in 2012.