Best way to obtain large, sturdy, cheap pots

[ddsack]

Naysen, how artistic are you? You could use less paint and achieve a faux granite effect if you put on light layers and used two or three colors, say, light grey and beige sprays, holding the can further away so you retain some white background. I think they do make fake textured paints, but I suspect they are for indoors and probably cost more than you'd want to pay for this project. I would also spray the top four inches or so of the inside, so you don't see the glaring white rim above the soil.

Or, you could use masking tape and newspaper to define a few different width concentric circles around your pot, and just do a stencil effect with green paint, leaving most of the pot white.

[z_willus_d]

Well it wasn't easy nor cheap necessarily, owing to the expensive spray paint, but I managed to get a roughly flattened strip atop my hillside (at the precipice) and arrange eight painted half-barrels. They don't look too great yet as the plastic is bent out of shape and deformed. I expect them to round out nicely once they're filled up with my grow medium. I had hoped to get them filled and plant out sixteen tomato seedlings I have just begging for a home, but lo there was not enough time in this busy weekend -- only so many light hours. I'll post a few pics with the final result probably sometime next weekend when I finish loading and planting the barrels. I think I'll use standard three-prong cages to start out the 2/per vines. Above these I'll run 10' conduit with a trellis hanging to catch the vines as they creep beyond the cages.

You can see some of my Winter InnTainers on their patio racks as well as the now rain catcher EarthTainer components that I've yet to build up in the background of the 2nd pic.
-naysen

[stormymater]

you want a laugh?
I have 30 & 15 gallon black plastic pots used by a local nursery for big installations & I have been painting them LIGHT COLORS (using leftover house paints from the seemingly never ending supply in our garage)! It gets so hot here I believe my maters roots are getting too warm - the 7 1/2 & 5 gallons stay black b/c the peppers & eggplant seem to love warm footsies.

Made me chuckle when I saw your pics. - they look great BTW.

[z_willus_d]

Yeah, I guess one person's problem is another person's solution. Something about all this money spent spraying these plastic bins dark felt wrong to me, more so after I started getting dirt and dust all over up and down their sides. Oh well, this is a pilot run anyway. I still have another 16 barrels (that's 32 halfers) to play with.

Thanks for the encouragement on the looks...
-naysen

[kurt]

If the exterior is rough not slick shiny,another option could be a wood type dark wood stain which will probly cover more area than the cans and keep cost down.Maybe get a small can do a test area and a scratch test.

[z_willus_d]

Originally Posted by ddsack

Naysen, how artistic are you? You could use less paint and achieve a faux granite effect if you put on light layers and used two or three colors, say, light grey and beige sprays, holding the can further away so you retain some white background. I think they do make fake textured paints, but I suspect they are for indoors and probably cost more than you'd want to pay for this project. I would also spray the top four inches or so of the inside, so you don't see the glaring white rim above the soil.

Or, you could use masking tape and newspaper to define a few different width concentric circles around your pot, and just do a stencil effect with green paint, leaving most of the pot white.

Dee, my bones don't have an artistic cell in them. I can hardly draw a thing, let alone paint, terrible penmanship, and so forth. But I like your ideas. I just need to find someone with those qualities and get them to work on my other 32 containers.

[z_willus_d]

Here's a couple more pics showing the result filling and planting the first 5 of 8 barrel halves. I went with two vines/seedlings per container, so that works out to around 10-gal of grow medium per, as I left several inches for top mulch. I'll cage the plants with the cheapo three-prong cages for their initial support and then run two 10-foot length conduit spans for the upper 5' above the cages. I attached a couple lousy pics of the progress.
-naysen