I was picking up my friend a few weeks back since he has a pickup and agreed to go with me on a horse manure run. As I stopped by his house, he was out chatting with a next door neighbor who had built a pretty awesome vertical tower that was planted with petunias.
I was inspired and decided to build a petunia tower of my own. I took a length of hardware cloth (aka chicken wire), formed it into a cylinder and added it to the middle of an old metal washtub that we had picked up at a garage sale for $5.
I linked the hardware cloth together with some spare pieces of wire I had laying around and made sure that the cylinder was very secure. This would keep it from collapsing and the contents spilling out. I cut holes in spots and placed half-lengths of pots in the holes at a 45 degree angle to hold the petunias on the side of the tower. The majority of the cylinder is filled with mulch (free from the mulch yard) and then the planting areas were filled with a mix of planting soil and horse manure.
The top of the petunia tower is planted with a lovely rich purple variety called Johnny Flame - it seemed appropriate. There's enough soil at the bottom of the tub holding the tower in place, and the weight of the mulch in the cylinder is more than enough to keep the whole thing upright. I'm not worried about structural integrity or the tower tipping over.
This will continue to fill in as the petunias grow, I'll be sure to post additional pictures as the season wears on and this becomes a tower of pinks and purples.
1 comment:
Petunia towers, Legos, 40th birthdays, and Weed Dragons, wow, a LOT has been going on over at DDGB! Can't wait to see the tower fill in, that's a neat idea! Legos abound around here, too, and I'm also the proud owner of a torch for weeding, love it. I bet you haven't got a tool to rival my newest acquisition, however...the malkestol. Happy belated Birthday, John!
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