ideas for homemade planter covering

April 15, 2011 8:53 AM

I have three DIY self-watering tomato planters made from beige 30-or-so gallon containers. They work great, but "in the sun" in my yard means "visible from the street." Please tell me some ways that I can make them more attractive with coverings or any other ideas that you might have.

Last summer my yard looked like it belonged to an ADHD serial killer who never finishes a project. I got sick of that, and the tubs were up against a fence so I built a three-sided pine enclosure as high as the tubs and stained it, and while my workmanship was just fine I wasn't really pleased with the overall effect: too big and it just looked like a massive raised-bed garden behind my normal one. individual wood covers of the same fashion might work better, but you might have a different idea and I would appreciate hearing it.

posted by Mayor Curley to home & garden (7 answers total)

Do you have any pictures? My initial thoughts are burlap, rolled bamboo fencing, or sandpaper the plastic (I'm assuming your 30 gallon containers are the kind that plants/trees come in) and use some plastic spray paint in bright coordinating colors.

With the burlap, you could just wrap it around your container & attach it with the appropriate adhesive. Same with trimmed-to-height bamboo fencing. You can avoid cutting the bamboo fencing by burying the surplus height in the ground around each container. I'm talking about something like this.
posted by Kronur at 9:03 AM on April 15, 2011

Maybe this isn't the solution you are looking for, but consider... You only need to water a tomato plant once or twice a week. You need to do atleast that much maintenence on it (pruning) to get a great producing plant. Maybe just ditch the self watering eyesore and water it yourself when you are pruning?
posted by ShootTheMoon at 9:06 AM on April 15, 2011

It is difficult for me to visualise your problem, but:
- tomatoes are pretty ♥
- you can wrap ugly containers in burlap or something similar
- if you mulch with shredded bark or similar, it will look better and will benefit the plant
posted by leigh1 at 9:12 AM on April 15, 2011

I'm going to 3rd burlap. It will look 'earthy' and cool, and is probably the easiest to do.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 9:58 AM on April 15, 2011

Are you growing something in front of the earthtainers? How about just putting a low wooden trellis (maybe thin wooden slats) in front that would also be useful for the other plants? Or maybe a little planter-holding wall like this one made of old pallets?
posted by bcwinters at 10:02 AM on April 15, 2011

Maybe this isn't the solution you are looking for, but consider... You only need to water a tomato plant once or twice a week. You need to do atleast that much maintenence on it (pruning) to get a great producing plant.?

Tomatoes grown in containers need a whole lot more water than those in the ground.

All of my containers are made of stuff like re-purposed storage containers -- if I want them to look prettier, I wrap them in burlap, bamboo or something similar. Window blinds can work well for this.
posted by desuetude at 9:48 PM on April 16, 2011

...looked like it belonged to an ADHD serial killer who never finishes a project...

Call it Norwegian Modern. Look sincere.

Seriously, it's hard to visualize what you have going on since "DIY self-watering tomato planters" can mean a lot of things. I think most of us are assuming you mean that your have a reservoir at the bottom setup in a knee-high-ish plastic tub. If the tubs are fugly looking, the burlap or bamboo fencing wrap is a pretty easy idea to implement. Krylon makes a paint that sticks well to plastic if just hiding the hastily re-purposed nature of your tubs is good enough. You could also sink them into the ground.

If this is a setup with an elevated gravity feed kind of thing, embrace your geek cred! (But not knowing what your setup looks like, I'm kind of hard pressed to tell you what that means.)
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 9:46 AM on April 17, 2011