I HAD A DREAM LAST NIGHT

I've been trying to figure out what to do with my plant pots in order to display them on the plant stand I'm making, which is coming along nicely BTW. I just have the glazing, which I have been procrastinating about, because I've never done it before, and the poly finish to do. If it turns out 1/2 as good as the ones I've seen on the web, it's going to look nice.

Anyway, back to the pots. I have several different styles and colors of pots. Now, mind you,  these are not nice designer pots. Most of them are the typical plastic hanging pots you find at the home improvement center.

So, I had seen this idea about putting decorative shelf liner around the pots, like this at http://hisugarplum.blogspot.com/2010/10/before-after-entrance-hall-take-2.html,

but the only kind of shelf liner I can find where I shop is solid color, and I don't think that would look particularly attractive.

Then, I thought, maybe I can wrap them in fabric and secure it just under the lip of the pot. Sorta like this.

Of course, this image is just for visualizing purposes only. It would be neater around the top, no corners hanging out, probably rounded. If I went the fabric route, I was thinking maybe different patterns of black and white, or maybe just black with white dots and white with black dots, or maybe the same idea with stripes. I have deep saucers for under the pots, so watering would not be a problem getting the fabric wet.

So, last I night, or really early morning, I had a dream that I was crocheting baskets to put around containers and thought  "hey, that's what I should do with my pots". When I woke up, this kinda stuck in my mind , but I thought "boy, that's gonna take a lot of yarn!" Then I remembered about this craft for making a headwrap out of old t-shirts at http://sewhomegrown.blogspot.com/2010/10/diy-braided-t-shirt-yarn-headwrap.html

I figured, I have a lot of old t-shirts around, maybe I could crochet some covers out of t-shirt yarn. 

Then I'm wondering, should I go with a vertical pattern 

or a horizontal pattern,

or maybe a basket weave.

 

So, what do you think? Fabric or crochet?  Or do you have some other idea?

I would love for some input on this, 'cause I an indecisive and I know there are a lot of creative bloggers out there.

BLOG ADDITION

You'll notice a lot of posts added recently. That's 'cause I decided to streamline and combine my Design and Feats blogs into this one. I found that I had different readers on each blog and the ones following the design blog did not always pop on over here to see the finished results of my ideas. This way it'll all be in one place and make for a more cohesive thought process.

Have a great day 

and welcome to those of you

who transfered your following 

from my design blog to this one!

POTATO TOWER...THE REVEAL!!

This is what it looked like when I first planted it...

This is at peak growing...

And this is just before I broke that sucka open. It really shrunk down.

It didn't exactly all fall out, like the guy said it would, but close enough. I could brush the soil away with my hands where the potatoes were growing.

 I don't know if you can tell or not, but I raked about 2/3 of the soil back into the spot to compost over the winter. That way I'll have my first layer for next spring already there.

Here's my harvest. About 7#. Add to that about 5# we harvested earlier, it comes to about 12# or so. So, I doubled my input, 'cause I planted 6# originally. So It comes to about 25 cents a pound for fresh potatoes. That's not too terrible.  I did expect  a better harvest, but this is certainly better than the none I was able to grow in the ground before. Add to that no digging to harvest and I think we have a winner.

Here's my largest potato...

And here's the smallest!

So, to recap:

Pros

It didn't take up much space

It looked pretty good as an architectural planting

It was pretty maintenance free, except for watering and a couple of "wheat" weeds from the straw

The harvesting was easy

I actually got a harvest

Cons

Not as good of harvest as I would have liked

I plan to do this again next year, but I think I'll skip the Kennebecs. We weren't real thrilled with them and prefer the Reds and Yukons.

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