Planters Etc. Blog - Plantersetc

Balcony Vegetable Gardening – Fiberglass Planters to Replace the Backyard

October 15, 2018 by Craig Urbine Leave a Comment

Limited space does not mean limited choices. Quite the contrary, small apartment balconies or large decks in your yard offer a unique opportunity for an outside living space with charm, and rype and ready vegetables for your table. Fresh vegetables grown in an environment that you control will be rewarding, delicious and fun for the whole family. Monitoring the pesticides and nutrients will provide for a healthy alternative to the vegetables found at the supermarket. An added bonus will be teaching your children the wonderful art of gardening that will bring them memories and skills that last a lifetime.

Define Your style

Before you begin, define your style. Fiberglass planters offer many choices. Shorter planters provide easy access for children; taller planters can eliminate bending. Coming in a variety of sizes, shapes, colors and textures, you can mix and match to create an eclectic space or coordinate them in your favorite colors. Lightweight and easy to install, fiberglass containers offer flexibility in designing your outside space, and they beautify any area with style that is uniquely your own.

Choosing the Right Planter for the Job

Once you have decided on the style, make sure you know the needs of the vegetables you will be growing. Different vegetables will require different soil types and different drainage requirements. Some require no drainage while others require the soil to be soaked then dried to a damp state. Planters come with or without drain holes allowing water to nourish and drain your plants adequately. The right amount of water will produce the results you desire.

Placement of Planters

Placement of your vegetable garden planters will also be important to be productive and fruitful. For example, root vegetables such as beet and carrots do well in partial shade (direct sun for only a few hours a day); leafy vegetables such as spinach and salad greens thrive well in full shade (no direct sun).

There are many types and varieties of vegetables that love full sun. Full sun is considered to be 6-8 hours per day of direct sunlight. Some examples of easy-to-grow and healthy full sun vegetables are tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and beans. Tomatoes and peppers require less space, while cucumbers and beans need room to spread out and make vines to support a larger crop.

Planting Seasons

Some vegetables thrive in colder temps while others need the hot summer sun to produce. Your geographic zone will help you determine what grows best in your climate. With fiberglass planters, however, you can “rotate your crops” from season to season and enjoy fresh vegetables of your choice all year long.

Armed with information about conditions, sturdy and durable fiberglass planters allow you to control the growing process from the comfort of your own home and enjoy quality fresh vegetables for years and years to come. Happy Growing!

How Having Office Plants Affect Your Home Business

September 17, 2018 by Craig Urbine Leave a Comment

Working from home may sound like the perfect way to keep your stress level low and your job satisfaction high, but many people feel that their home office is actually lacking some of the things that drive productivity. One of those items is office plants, which are often strategically placed in office spaces to help boost productivity and help employees feel more at ease in their space. Here are a few reasons you should be adding office plants to your home business right away:

Creating a Dedicated Working Space

Perhaps the biggest challenge of running a home business is staying on track while you are home. By creating a dedicated office space, you can keep yourself on track and ensure that you do not lose productivity to other household distractions. Office plants can help absorb sound and light, creating a barrier between your home office and the rest of the house. Plus, when you are surrounded by living office plants, you won’t feel the need to go outside for long breaks as much as the outdoors have been brought in.

Plants Improve Air Quality

If you didn’t already know, there is significant research showing that our home indoor air quality tends to be worse than the outside air. This is because we keep our home businesses mostly closed up without fresh air coming in. If you want to make a positive impression on your clients or guests, adding indoor planters can really help improve the air quality inside and create a fresher smell throughout the home. Plus, it’s good for you and your family as well! You can even cut down on the number of illnesses experienced by your household.

Managing Stress

Stress management is an important part of keeping a home business alive. Since you are effectively living and working in the same space, it can be hard to shut your mind down at the end of the workday and manage that work-life balance. Indoor planters can boost your mood and lighten the ambiance of your home business so that you feel relaxed while you are there. In addition, they provide excellent focal points if you decide you need a break to meditate or just think. You can’t get a better source of mental health than this!

Plants Are Inspiring Creativity

Surrounding yourself with natural colors and shapes in the form of office planters is a good way to inspire yourself daily. Whether you are an artist or an accountant, plants hold an inherent beauty that activates creative regions of your brain, allowing you to think outside the box and find new solutions to old problems. The more varied your planters are, the more you will benefit from this wealth of inspiration. You can even dedicate some time to arranging and planting new plants from time to time so that you can exercise your creativity in a new and exciting way.

Office planters are a small investment with a multitude of positive payoffs. When you place indoor planters throughout your home business, you will transform your space into a living, breathing workplace where you get things done and reach new goals. Do away with the dusty, bland office shelves and bring in some color and fresh scented flowers to dress things up. Then sit back and admire your handywork as you mull over those spreadsheets. You’ll find that you and your clients are more comfortable in a space that has been filled with greenery and beautiful planters that add warmth. For more information, visit Planters ETC today and see our full collection of indoor planters, large and small! We are happy to help you find the perfect fit for your home business.

How to Turn Your Planter Into An Indoor Succulent Garden

August 9, 2018 by Craig Urbine Leave a Comment

Planting an indoor succulent garden can really help to liven up your home or office space. Succulents are very desirable because of their unique look, low maintenance, and non-allergenic qualities. They also come in a wide range of sizes and colors to accommodate any room.

If you are ready to transform your fiberglass planter into a lush succulent garden, here’s what you need to do:

Gather Your Supplies

First, you need a fiberglass planter with a large opening on top. Succulents are very versatile so you don’t necessarily need a very deep planter, but you can use a shallow planter with a broad opening like our Selenge. Once you’ve selected a planter you will need soil for your plants. In most cases, you can buy cactus potting soil pre-mixed from a store. Cactus and succulent soil is different from other soil types because it is meant to drain well and does not hold as much moisture. If you cannot find cactus soil, you can buy regular potting soil and add some sand to the mix. This ensures that the soil is porous and closely matches the natural growing environment of the plants you choose. Finally, you will need gravel to put at the bottom of your planter. The layer of gravel will also assist with drainage, and gives the succulents somewhere dry to put their roots.

You will probably want to have a pair of gloves handy as well. Many succulents have spines or thorns that you will have to navigate around as you do your planting.

Choose Your Plants

As we mentioned above, succulents come in many varieties. To create a really organic look in your planter, you will want to buy a range of colors and sizes that you can mix and match. Make sure to pick out one or two large succulents to serve as the focal point of your display, and then smaller varieties to give your planter some depth and texture.

Put Your Design Together

Start assembling your indoor succulent garden by placing the layer of gravel in the planter first. Then fill the planter most of the way to the top with your cactus ready soil. Gently remove your largest succulent from its pot and position it in your planter where you want it. Some people choose to place their largest plants in the very center and work outward in rounds, but if you have a long straight-edged planter, you may want to place the largest plants in the back and work forward in half-circles.

A special note about succulents: succulents naturally grow in little clusters. They don’t typically compete for resources because they require so little in the way of water. Thus, when you are planning your design, try to create clusters of your own. You don’t have to space the plants out like you would with flowers or other plants, which would look quite unnatural in a succulent garden. Just make sure that all the roots are sufficiently covered, and you should be okay to plant your succulents in colorful groups however you like.

That’s really all it takes to build a beautiful indoor succulent garden in a fiberglass planter. Planters are perfect for creating succulent gardens because these plants require little maintenance and won’t get cramped living in a planter as time goes on. With a properly planted succulent garden, you can enjoy a beautiful green view year round!

For more information about fiberglass planters for succulents, click here to look at our full collection of colorful fiberglass indoor planter options. We can help you plan the perfect indoor succulent display in any size or shape to fit your home or commercial space.

How Underplanting In Your Planters Enables Creativity

July 1, 2018 by Craig Urbine Leave a Comment

Underplanting is an important concept to learn if you want to make the most of your planters and exercise your creativity. While the walls of the planter may make you feel like you need to plant only in the center of the pot, or in equal quadrants, underplanting offers a more fluid alternative that you will definitely love.

What is Underplanting?

Underplanting is the practice of planting a variety of complementary plant species in the space beneath a planter’s primary inhabitant. Most often, this is done when there is a strong focal point in the center of the planter, such as a large tree or flowering shrub that dominates the planter. Even with such a plant in the center, it is easy to see that there is plenty of real estate left around the outside of the main trunk, which could be filled with colorful plants instead. That’s where underplanting comes in.

Why is Underplanting a Good Idea?

There are many reasons that underplanting is beneficial to your planters. First and foremost, it gives you more room to express your creativity. You can choose from a selection of ground cover plants, as well as small flowers that add contrasting colors at the base of your primary plant. You can use seashells, rocks and other decor to create artistic designs amid these smaller plants, or you can add vines that you can train to flow out of the planter, covering part of the side in a cascade of colorful blooms. There are tons of possibilities for using this space to expand upon your floral design concepts.

In addition, underplanting can help keep your planters healthier by giving you the ability to mix and match plants that return important nutrients to the soil. Plus, by covering up the exposed soil with a thick cover, you are ensuring that it doesn’t dry out as fast. The extra cover protects the soil from wind and sun, which erodes its quality over time.

Underplanting Techniques to Try

One way to transform your planters year round is with the help of spring bloom bulbs. For the majority of the year, these bulbs serve the purpose of covering the ground with long green leaves. They tend to look like decorative grasses to the untrained eye. However, they really shine when the seasons change. They can fill out the planter with colorful blooms when all of your other plants are still in hibernation. If you’re tired of having dead-looking planters during the cool months of the year, underplanting with bulbs can bring things back to life.

If you’re interested in adding some texture and layering to your planters, you should start looking into low growing shade-friendly shrubs. Hostas and ferns are often placed closest to the base of the primary tree because they are able to thrive in that environment, and they will grow upward just enough to cover a portion of the tree trunk with lush greenery. As you move outward toward the edges of the planter in concentric circles, you can add plants that grow lower to the ground, including annuals that you can easily maintain and replace when necessary. Thus, the core of your planter is multi-dimensional, while the outer edges are accented with bits of color.

There are dozens of great underplanting examples available online, and your local nursery is able to help you find plant species that are especially hearty for this purpose. With underplanting, you have even more canvas to bring your garden art to life. To learn more about creating picturesque underplanting, check out all our products or visit our photo gallery for more ideas!

How To Use a Planter For Vines And Climbers

June 8, 2018 by Craig Urbine Leave a Comment

Climbing vines can make a bold statement in front of any building or along any pathway. However, when left in an open garden, they often encroach on surrounding plants and can be difficult to contain. Choosing a decorative planter for vines offers a simple solution for keeping your unruly vines and climbers in check while allowing you to shape the look of your garden.

Choosing a Planter for Vines

If there is one thing we do know about vines it’s that they can grow forever, and they are very good at getting their tendrils into cracks and crevices, eventually damaging structures. This is important to keep in mind if you are considering planters that have naturally porous surfaces which may invite vines to break apart the structure over time. In addition, flimsy plastic pots will not hold up for the duration of a vine’s life, requiring you to replant often. If you want to keep your vines contained in planters, you won’t want to discover that the vines’ roots have broken apart the base of your planter and entered the native soil, allowing them to spread outward unchecked. The best solution is durable, smooth sided planters such as fiberglass that are free from imperfections which might allow vines to grow wild. A fiberglass planter for vines is also a good solution because vines require full sunlight, and the finished planter will not fade or discolor in the heat. Just make sure you give your vines at least 16″ of soil to grow down into, and you should have happy and healthy plants.

Add Supports

Another factor you will want to consider is the type of support you want to add to your planter. For small home displays, a few bamboo shoots are usually sufficient to direct your vines upward. They can easily be tied together near the top to form a neat frame for your climbers. However, if you want a more presentable and professional look, you might want to place an iron trellis or obelisk in the center of a pot which allows your vines to grow upward with an ornamental accent. There are dozens of trellises, mesh frames and other options available to help you direct your vine growth while also protecting the surrounding area from stray vines.

Bring on the Flowers

The most exciting part of all is selecting which vines you would like to display. The most popular vines are perennials because once they’re established they can be easily maintained year after year. However, there are some very enticing annuals that you can add to the mix if you’re up for the extra work. You can choose your vines based on a particular color scheme, or you can pick up an assortment of colors and bloom shapes that will make your garden pop. If you time things just right, you could have different vines in bloom at each part of the season. Morning Glories are a traditional favorite, which come in many different colors, as well as Sweet Peas. Don’t forget to add some good old fashioned green ivy in to serve as a solid backdrop for your flowers. It is a good filler plant that is easy to grow in most environments. Add a touch of Star Jasmine or Passion Flower to the center of your display and you will have a truly eye-catching design.

With those three simple steps, you could have a gorgeous container garden full of blossoming vines and climbers. The better you plan ahead with your planter selection and your supports, the more artistic you can get with training your vines to grow in beautiful patterns and shapes. To see a full gallery of ideas and more information about how to choose a planter for vines, check out our online store today!