We’ve had a skew lemon tree in our garden since we moved in. It may seem silly, but the fact that there was a lemon tree in the garden gave the house serious points when we were looking. Well, in my mind at least. I’ve always loved the idea of being able to go outside and pick my own fruit or vegetables. Hence, I made a pallet garden. Unfortunately this poor little lemon tree was just very awkwardly placed and leaned out into the small section of grass that we have. Not ideal.
We eventually decided to try transplant it and put it in a pot around the back of the house, but have you seen the price of a nice big pot? Ridiculous! Fortunately my mom came across a brilliant idea and we now have this:
This pot is made using a sand filter from a pool pump. Try asking at your local pool shop and you may even be lucky enough to get a used one for FREE. Anything to help make a garden on a budget can help.
You will also need a jigsaw, drill, newspaper, masking tape and one of my new favourites, spray-paint.
1) Decide how deep you want your pot and cut off the top of the sand filter. Make sure you cut off the part with the big hole, as you don’t want everything in your pot to just fall straight through. Because we wanted our pot to be as deep as possible, we had to leave the two holes on the side. (When filling the pot, we placed some folded plastic over the holes. Pushing the soil up against the plastic should be enough to hold it in place)
2) Drill a few holes in the bottom of the pot to allow for water drainage.
3) Clean your pot as well as you can. Use the masking tape and newspaper to protect the areas that aren’t getting painted.
4) Give it a few coats of spray-paint, allowing them to dry in between. Remove the newspaper and you’re done. Easy right?
We filled the bottom with drainage stones and potting soil with a little bone meal and then added our old lemon tree.
We will have to see how the lemon tree holds up after the transfer, but why throw away a good lemon tree if it can just be moved? Hopefully I’ll be making another lemon meringue from it soon 🙂
cupcakemummy says
so clever!!!