Having watched entirely too many Youtube videos on gardening ideas, I came up with one of my own.
Recently, if you've been following along, Ms. Sassafrass and I made the hanging bottle tower strawberry planter out of 2 liter plastic bottles. Here's a picture in case you missed this wonderment of discarded 2 liter bottle finessiness:
The hanging bottle tower strawberry planter has since been moved outdoors and looks pretty much like it did when we constructed it. I'm thinking I got a bad batch of strawberries, from a local big box store, as they still look like dead crawdads sticking out the sides of the planter. I'll give them another week or so, before replacing them with something else.
The next bottle project came from watching a lady make a garden planter with yet another 2 liter bottle attached to a mop handle. It wasn't something I wanted to make, but it did get me to thinking about some bleach bottles I had laying around.
I've always wanted to do some kind of hanging planter that could be attached to a 4x4 post. We have a deck out our back door that is covered by a pergola, plus another large pergola that covers one of the patios. There is no lack of 4x4 post to be adorned. I always wanted to wrap them with lights at Christmas time, but my husband nixed that idea with the "look". Sigh......he was right, my reindeer are still sitting outside, but at least I have managed to get them moved to the basement door. Shoot, it's only April.
There seems to be a certain style to the molded handle on certain bleach bottles. One would think they would be universal in their design, but some of the handles have a curve in them, while the others make an angle, providing a straight side to the outside edge of the handle.
I took this particular style of bleach bottle and held it upside down, with the straight edge of the handle against the post. It fit perfectly flat against the side and provided a perfect trajectory angle of the bottle away from the post. I was on to something!
I gathered six bleach bottles, cut the bottoms off of them and drilled a small hole, for draining, in the lid. I then gathered several zip ties for holding the bottles to the posts. God made zip ties because He wants us to be happy, they are a most useful creation. I used six bottles because I didn't just want one per post, oh no, I wanted 3 on one post.
Thinking I might improve the image of the bleach bottle, I spray painted them grey. I thought they might look good in a variety of colors, but decided to wait until I could see the finished product. The goal of which would have been to keep someone from driving by and saying "Are those bleach jugs she's got tied to those posts?"
I strapped the bottles to the posts and "Viola!", the end result was just what I had wanted to achieve. Why, they didn't look like bleach bottles tied on a post at all! I'm sure you will agree:
I awoke at midnight to the sound of 50 mph plus straight line winds moving through the area. I truly expected to get up this morning and find my bottles somewhere over in the neighbors backyard, but to my amazement, they had survived the storm. One was a little cattiwampus, but I was able to adjust it back to its original position. I may need to add a few more zip ties. I found some really wide zip ties on line, but the purpose of the project was to be cost effective, the wide zip ties did not fall into that category. I will continue to ponder on what might be a better attachment system.
Now, for the next project.........
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