DIY concrete planter

I seem to spend an awful lot of time scouring 'Pinterest' at the moment, there is something so very addictive about pinning images of things I want to create or of gardens I think are amazing and at the moment pinning images for Christmas.
I'm sure most people are aware of Pinterest and what it's all about and no matter how many times I go on I still get a thrill each time I see one of my own images pinned by another viewer. 99% of the time there is a backlink to the blog post that the pinner found my image on and I guess I should be more upset and pro active the times where the link  - or any mention of me - are absent but I just can't bring myself to follow it all through, I guess I'm happy to accept that as soon as I put an image out there in the netherspace that it pretty much becomes open to the cyberworld to be used as people will. I know we all have rights etc etc and many people protect and police their images  methodically and I guess I would too if my livelihood depended it, alas..........
Anyway I digress, I was supposed to be mentioning an image I found on Pinterest, and has been all over FB too, of someone who made garden pots out of old towels and cement/hypertufa.  Of course I kept promising myself that I would give it a go at some point but tbh I can be a lazy gardener so often have a list of 'things to make' that should actually read 'things I'm too lazy to make'. Anyway one day a few weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and give it a go, here's the image that captured my eye

and here's the link to website (because I'm polite like that) Thehypertufagardener

My main problem is that like I stated before I can be a lazy gardener and I'm likely to lose interest in something if I have to keep rumaging around looking for things - I get distracted very easily, so i had to make sure I had all the equipment on hand to do this job. As it turned out I didn't read it properly anyway and so didn't realise that I shouldn't be using just cement - but oh well!

First I have to state the obvious, this is one messy job! Yes, I kind of did realise it would be but from the Youtube videos I watched of a lady swooshing the cement around and everything being neatly in place I thought the mess would be minimal - not so!

I mixed the cement up in a wheelbarrow to the consistency stated on Youtube (pancake batter basically) and excitedly dumped that towel in the mix (donning the marigolds of course). This wasn't as easy as I thought it would be - the towel didn't 'soak' the mix up like I thought it would and actually it just kept sliding off when I picked the towel up, also despite having a barrow full of cement it was barely enough for this bath sheet of a towel I was using.
I thinned the mixture a little and finally got to the point where I could chuck the cement towel over an upturned bucket which in turn was sitting on a table.
This is where my lack of attention to detail showed again - I did put a plastic sheet on the bucket so that the towel wouldn't stick to the bucket when it dried but a) the plastic was way too small and b) the towel just stuck to the plastic instead. If I do this again I would position the towel over an upturned plastic plant pot that could then stay inside.
Once the towel was over the bucket it was simply a case of messing with the flaps and folds to make it look nice and layering on more cement mix - this took more time than you would think.

See the mess!
I left this to dry for days and days, basically because I realised I should have used hypertufa so figured the thing wouldn't be right anyway.
When I did venture back to look at it I realised it had actually set - yay! BUT, it had stuck to that blue bucket as well which wasn't covered in plastic so I heard alot of crunching and cracking as I broke it away.
The finished product looks pretty naff it has to be said and for several reasons 1) I used too big a towel.  2) I didn't use the right polythene.  3) I didn't use enough polythene.  4) I used cement rather than hypertufa.  5) I didn't cover the folds evenly with cement so it still has that towelling look in many places. 6) because it's cement on a towel it has a flexibility to it.

The finished look

Can't say that I am in a rush to give this a go again - I'm too impatient.

Successful Cornus cuttings - finally!

Last time I blogged I posted about a fabulous website called Mikes Backyard Nursery so I thought it was time to follow up with one of the methods Mike suggested for taking cuttings.
I usually take Cornus cuttings in the dormant season and to be honest my past attempts at them have been pretty pathetic - I've taken heaps but only ever had one cutting successfully root and survive (though i suspect this is through my own impatience than anything else), so when I saw Mikes article on taking cuttings and rooting them in sand I figured I'd give it a go.

Mike uses 'flats' that he builds himself from off cuts of wood but I used a plastic tub with drainage holes drilled in the bottom instead.
The idea is to half fill the tub with sand, add the cuttings and then saturate the sand with water. Mike suggests cramming as many cuttings in as you like and this is how he manages to make hundreds or thousands of cuttings each season.
Once the cuttings are in and the sand saturated you simply insert the whole thing into a white plastic bag, supported in all 4 corners with pencils in my case, and then leave it somewhere to do its thing - mine stayed in the PT out of direct sunlight.

To be honest I was sceptical about this method, I honestly did not think it would work so I was a tad unconcerned about keeping an eye on it and by the time I gave it a second thought I figured the cuttings would have wilted and died.
So I was totally surprised when I took a peek and saw this.

A few of the Weigela cuttings may have died off but the majority of the cuttings were happy, healthy and surprisingly well rooted - even the Cornus, that plant that I have had such trouble propagating all these years.
In total I had about an 80% success rate which for me is nothing short of amazing and I believe that if I'f been more attentive to the plants then the success rate would have increased more.
Once my back has recovered I will be taking loads more cuttings using this method and next year I will be taking even more of the things I don't usually bother with because I've failed so many times in the past.
Thank you Mike McGroarty of Mikes Backyard Nursery and Freeplants.com

Mike's Backyard Gardening

A serious lack of gardening lately has left me scouring the interweb for gardening websites and blogs that will see me through the winter months when it's too cold to be motivated outside.
Along with the the blogs I regularly read without fail (though I often forget to comment) that are listed on the right hand side I've managed to find a few new ones and one in particular has really had me hooked as it is full of brilliant information and tips.

It's called  Mike's Backyard Nursery and while many of you may already know of the website I'll explain what is interesting about Mike to those who aren't familiar with him.
Mike and his wife live in Ohio and have worked extremely hard, clawed their way out of bankruptcy and set up a successful business from their own home selling nursery plants. What amazes me about this guy having read his story in his own words is that he happily and enthusiastically shares his successes, his failures and his own methods with the general public despite residing in an area that is already rife with competition having at least 130 wholesale growers within a 10 mile radius of his property.
It's not often I read the 'about me' section of a website or blog because I feel I get a good idea of a persons character when reading their posts but something made me want to understand where Mike came from and what bought about this passion for sharing his business methods. His story is available here and it is well worth a read, in fact it wouldn't be out of place on the big screen.

Mike's Backyard Nursery is a website jam packed with useful information whether your passion is simply creating your own garden and propagating for it or if you're interested in using your own plant material and garden space and having a go at selling propagated plants from home. Mike's hints, tips and ideas will certainly have you saving money on plants whether it be from propagating, swapping or selling.

Mike also has some great ideas for building your own tools for the job and shows you how he makes these things work for him, such as these "propagation flats"

Mike also has hints and tips on all aspects of pruning, some of which may differ from what we think we already know such as "How to prune a Butterfly bush"

The information that Mike makes available to his followers doesn't end on his website, he has a Youtube channel you can subscribe to full of interesting videos he has made on various topics from topsoil to pruning to potting bench plans.
And he doesn't stop there either, Mike has created a FREE Ebook titled "The Gardener's secret handbook" which you can download FREE and is also available on Facebook

The points I have included in this post really are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Mikes website, it is literally full of information as is his Youtube channel and the Ebook link where there is an information bar on the left packed with further reading.

Now that I've filled you guys in I'm off back to Mike's to learn a bit more about how he does what he does.