~ Portable Planters ~

 

Portable planters are ideal for those who live in apartments, rentals or summer homes and cabins.  They allow the lovers of flora to bring the outdoors into their homes and accent the décor or in the case of many rented spaces liven up the whitewashed walls and sharp corners a bit.

Once you decide that you want a planter in your home you can build either a built in one or a portable container.   Portable containers have the added bonus of their portability.  You can take them outdoors, put them on the patio, put them in your living room or set them along that half wall  in your stairwell.  Portable planters make great accents to just about any portion of your home and garden. 

Portable planters have five requirements that you should look for when buying your planter or work to fulfill when building your planter.  They are; ample volume for the plants and dirt that you intend to put into the container, the container should be really strong because you will be moving it around and it will have to hold the combined weight of growing plants, water, and dirt,  good drainage so that the plants don’t develop root rot, the planter needs to have a wide base so that the planter won’t be as likely to tip over and lastly the planter should be resistant to the weather.  Afterall you don’t want to go through the bother of picking out a good planter or building one only to find it doesn’t stand up to the elements.  A good material for your planters is painted metal or a chemically treated wood.

Although you can use just about anything in the creation of your planter, wooden boxes and tubs, clay pots and even plastic pots.  It is generally desired that the shape of the portable planter does accent well with the general shape of the plant in it at maturity.  So a rounder bushy leafed plant would fit nicely with a round pot.  Smaller herbs and spices look well in a long rectangular planter. 

If you choose to use clay planters look out for the unglazed kind.  These planters easily allow water to pass through the porous clay so its less likely that your plant will develop root rot.  You can also grow special kinds of peat moss and sphagnum moss on the outside of the pot since it is porous and allows water to pass through.

Pots of different sizes are referred to in a different manner.  Those over ten inches are referred to as ‘tubs.’