I have been drooling over garden books and magazines since Christmas. While my ambition usually is overtaken by my sloth sometime mid-year, I do get some serious stuff done the first part of the year. One thing I would like to do is "decorate" my gardens. I have a lot of ideas (from twig and branch designs to stuff with rocks) but I would also like to do something with all the plastic pots I have amassed since God knows when.

Have any of you tried painting plastic? I would like to do some zany designs on the old black 1-gallon ones ( I must have a couple hundred)...

Or? Any other ideas? Thanks.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

Answers

Sheepish,

Try sanding the sides of the black plastic pots before painting them with exterior paint. Another "cool" thing I picked up from my sis-in- law is buying a special glue for hard to stick surfices from the art supply store, then making cool designs with the glue, and stick colored sand, rocks, pebbles, and shells to it. Hers are on her deck, and have stood up for a few years now to KS unpredicatable wind, rain, hot, cold, and terribly active children. :-) I'll e- mail her for the name of the glue if you want. I know that it's waterproof....

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

Hi sheepish,

You might want to try hgtv.com and check out Carol Duvall's section. She has so many different craft ideas I'm sure you'd find something there.

Good luck.

-- Anonymous, January 05, 2002

I have painted them with spray enamel and that works well, but cracks off in a couple of years (if it matters) due to the flexable nature of the plastic.

I've painted other plastic items by first either putting down gesso or automotive primer and then using acrylics, and then after thorough drying, you can spray with something like clear protective Krylon to make it more durable, but if left outdoors, this will eventually give out too.

They would make good forms to build up Tufa over and have nice stone- look pots. They can be 'aged' by buffing with a wire brush, then sprayed or painted with a moss & buttermilk mixture (whizz it up in an old blender), put in a damp shady spot and misted for a couple weeks and you will soon have ancient stone pots to work with, if you like that sort of thing (I know I do!).

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

You can also use a latex paint treated with a little acetone to make it pliable, but it is a science achieving the right mix and you have to clean all residuals.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

Wow. Cool. Thanks you guys!!

We have mostly damp weather here. I think the worst hazards would just be the typical mold problem. I would be interested in finding out more about the glue as well as how to build up Tufa (is that like cement?) Do you you get it at a hardware store?

Either buffing or priming the pots seems like the way to go, although knowing my impatience, I would probably forgo doing either.

I'll check out that website.

If you think of any other garden decorationg ideas, please keep 'em coming! I'm also very fond of windchimes (glad my neighbors aren't within earshot...

Thanks again. This is fun!

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

If you think of any other garden decorationg ideas, please keep 'em coming! I'm also very fond of windchimes (glad my neighbors aren't within earshot...

OK, you asked for it. :-)

Making Silverware Wind Chimes
I have one of these chimes hanging in my kitchen - it's a great use for old silverware that you find at the thrift store.

MAKE YOUR OWN WIND CHIMES

The Wind Chime Page

Wind Chime Construction Forum at Yahoo! Clubs

Making Wind Chimes

Assemblin g Your Own Set of Wind Chimes

Have fun! :-)

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

I made a silver spoon wind chime when I was a teen. My dad showed mt how to use the soldering iron and off I went. Turns out I used spoons that mom and dad got as wedding gifts...ooopsy! Hyper tufa is a mix of cement,peat,perlite and sometimes pther stuff. About.com's garden page has instructions.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

Hypertufa is COOL! I'd love to try it but haven't done so, yet.

Here's a hypertufa bench:

And a planter:

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

oh my!! Guess I won't get any work done around here today....I'll just visit websites!

Thanks! (I think!!!)

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

Julie, about the moss and buttermilk in a blender...just old moss out of the yard? Like what grows on the *north* side of trees?

Is the buttermilk a growing medium? Do you mix half moss and half buttermilk? What happens if it's shaken, not stirred? !!

I'm intrigued by this tufa stuff! I made cement stepping stones a couple of years ago. That was fun, but this looks more interesting (plus I don't have to have 7 yards delivered!! tee hee)

Wind chime websites were getting technical on me! I don't care too much for the wavelengths of various sounds. I liked college physics, but not that much! I think I'll just start hanging things on structures to suspend. I have a couple doz. windchimes now. It's really windy right now, too. Lotsa chiming! Wheeeeeee

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002

I'm glad someone else got back about making HyperTufa...One of the really expensive garden centers around here sells small Tufa planters (like the size of a wash basin) for over $35 each. Cottage industry opportunities there folks!!! They sell the ones planted with either sedums and stonecrops, or else with herb selections for over $60 and they seem to fly out out the doors. But then, we have a lot of Chicago summer people here who will spend the money to support it.

The moss that works the best for cultivating on pots seems to be the stuff that I have seen growing on the collars of hardwood trees out in the woods. It is green and forms sort of a mat going up the tree at the bottom. I don't know if using the grey and pale green lichens that you see further up the trunk would work (interesting idea for an experiment since I like lichens as well and they thrive with less water).

I got the idea of using moss and buttermilk from a magazine article about a guy who had converted a shady and acid strip of land by his house to a moss garden entirely so he wouldn't have to mow (could just sweep up leaves with a broom). His instructions came with using a quart or so of buttermilk (guess it depends on how much acreage you want to cover) and throwing in a half a cup to a cup of moss, and then hitting 'frappe' on the blender. What that does is to break down the moss into a nice sort of slurry mix, and spread it evenly. The buttermilk makes an acid medium that sticks well (think about milk paints they used to use on fences and barns) and feeds the new moss that is colonizing.

The guy who wrote the article was experimenting with various mosses that he was collecting, since he wanted a variety of shades of green and textures. I don't think that club mosses would be effective, but that moss that you find making whole felted carpets on open woodland floors would probably work out too.

While on the subject of moss growing, what he was doing was using big commercial cookie sheets (apparently he had them) and garden flats, sifting sand into them to cover, then laying down pieces of nylon mesh over it, and adding the buttermilk/moss slurry to cover the sheet. Then he'd put it somewhere shady and cool and wait, misting it as need be. Eventually after a few weeks, he had whole sheets of moss grown this way, which he removed (the netting kept it in a sheet), and form-fitted over his landscape, then watered in. It was a really neat idea of what to do with a problem area. He spread agricultural sulphur to further acidify the soil so that grass wouldn't grow, or weeds, and sculpted the land in swales and hummocks and added stones and such, so that it looked like natural woodland again. It was a great idea...I just need the time to get around to doing the same thing under all MY big old trees.

-- Anonymous, January 08, 2002