We have quite a number of plants in containers in our garden. I get them trade doncha know. Some of them are quite small and being terracotta dry out quite quickly.
Some of the containers, however, are quite large. The back wall of the house was rather plain looking and I wanted to train Virginia creeper over it. The previous owners of the house had installed paving on concrete right up to the house and so planting the Virginia creeper in the ground was not possible. I decided to try an experiment (a long term experiment!) and plant the climber in large terracotta style pots. I used large synthetic ones partly due to the cost but mostly due to potential hernia problems if I lifted them!
I also planted four 8ft tall trees in to large square synthetic terracotta style containers to screen off the side of the garden.
Well, the Virginia creeper is still there after around 10 years and has almost covered the back of the house. It looks beautiful in the summer and turns that lovely deep shade of red in the autumn. The trees are now around 15ft tall and quite bushy. They are stable in windy weather as they are now in square planters. They were originally in flower pot shaped containers but began to blow over in the wind. I had to go out the back on a few occasions to lift them off the floor. If they had been real terracotta they would have turned in to a 3D jigsaw puzzle!
Many years ago we were going away for a few days and a neighbour kindly offered to water the plants. I’m sure he did water them, but it was very hot weather and perhaps he hadn’t quite watered them enough. When we returned from our break, the plants in the containers were wilting in the extreme.
It was at that point that I decided to fit an irrigation system. Every plant pot and for a while, every new tree in the garden was being watered twice daily. Automatically. There is a number of battery operated watering timer kits on the market and they range from the basic once a day to programme for different times on different days of the week.
They are simple to fit and just need an outdoor tap with a suitable anti-siphon fitting to prevent unclean water going back in to the house supply. Fitting the larger distribution hose and smaller feeder hoses is also easy but time consuming, and needs a little planning to avoid unsightly hoses everywhere.
The timers need to be taken inside in the winter as the frost will damage them but the hoses can be left in place. It’s quite easy to forget to re-install the timers in good time as you think spring isn’t quite over but then you feel the soil in the pots and it’s quite dry. Before you know it the trees in the pots are covered in leaves and the Virginia creeper is shooting. Forgetting to water now could lead to ten years of growth dying off!
The experiment has been a success but I sometimes wonder whether I should have arranged for some large holes to have been drilled in to the paving. It’s a bit late now though as the roots in the containers won’t reach the floor if I took them out of the planters. The Virginia creeper may be getting a bit root bound now so I may have to upgrade those planters. It’s going to be fun trying to get the root ball out of the container without ripping off the stems from the wall and damaging them. I will replace the round planters with square ones as they can hold more soil overall.
I have only recently learned that in addition to the terracotta and lead coloured synthetic flower pot shaped containers, you can also get beige, black, brown, green, blue, mauve, red and yellow! Ideal for a funky bar or restaurant.
I get them trade doncha know!
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