Ric: How did you make the (shall I say) legs on your planter?
Jill: I really like your mushrooms -- not at all what I had expected. They will look so cute in the garden! I'd love a mushroom-making party!
Hypertufa Party at Critter's June 23
Maybe next time we can do mushrooms... all shapes & sizes... start looking for container combos now! :-) If the "stem" is wide enough, you can make it hollow with an opening at the bottom so it can be a toad house (or a place for a napping gnome).
Happy, Ric & Vickie both used this form to make their pots. So they formed the legs of their pots right over the legs on the form. Ric took his down to the barn and slid it back and forth on the rough concrete barn floor to level the feet when he was doing the clean up with the wire brush yesterday.
So here is my finished pot, I brushed it with a wire brush and tried to accent the bumpy pattern.
I brought one bucketful of mix home in a bag. Tonight I mixed it and made another mushroom plus stem, a birdbath bowl out of a very large plastic potting saucer, and a flower pot out of a 10 inch hanging basket. I'll try to post pics tomorrow.
Wonderful!!!
Holly & Ric, may I please have official permission to use your photos (trough, styrofoam form, and bumpy planter) in a DG article? Thanks!
Sally, I'm not sure but I don't think hypertufa is watertight... might be sufficiently so for your purposes (best to refill bird baths every few days anyway), or you may want to seal the inner surface with something.
I've got a bucket of mix here, too... what to do, what to do...
Absolutely, That Styrofoam form came from a shipping box for a piece of electronic equipment we got. Let me know if you need pictures E-Mailed.
Here is the last shot I have from that day.
Thank you! I've got a "before" picture of your basket container. :-)
I love them all!
I have missed all the fun :-(. Love them. Must try at home.
Gosh, I better follow the MAG forum more often; didn't know about this. Sure looks like you all had a great time and did any of you put drainage holes in your containers? I love those mushrooms..I've been using spray paint today to paint some brick stepping stones/pavers that somebody was giving away 2 yrs. ago. One could use spray paint if you didn't like the concrete color..Great job everybody. I'm sorry I missed it.
Have a great summer all of you.
You Tube had a tuitorial on this..but those pots are heavy. You wouldn't move those around like you would a fiberglass or resin, or terra cotta. Don't know where I'd store the Portland Cement or quickcrete, (whatever!)
I have 2 bags of mulch in our truck bed now..
Pippi, next "event" to mark on your calendar...
Saturday July 21
FSK Iris Society Rhizome sale! Followed by lunch as a group, followed by some activity (to be determined) at my place.
My niece will be here then for "camp Aunt Jill," so I'll see what she's interested in doing, too. Do we want to do more hypertufa? Maybe concentrate on mushrooms & toad houses? Or move on to a qwikwall project (leaves)? If it's deathly hot out that day, we'll switch to polymer clay instead.
What is qwikwall?
Happy, it's a product that was developed by the quickcrete (sp?) folks as a concrete block surfacer, but folks are having good success using it on its own for cement leaves, balls, various decorative features... I picked up a bag when I was buying all that cement, and I also got 3 of the big concrete blocks, the kind that have 2 holes down through them... thought I could make "planter rocks" from them to put into my bubbler bog.
Sounds like an adventure!
My birdbath dish--broke! Crumbled. Really seemed weak and unset. I might have made it too thin at one inch. I might have had the mix too dry when I molded it. The whole darn thing was so soft at 36 hrs after making, that I was able to crumble the whole mess right back the way it started. How odd. Its in a bag, if I just get more cement I could use this as my aggregate... My new mushroom and stem seem OK. My new planter pot 'seems' ok but I was afraid to test it much so I wrapped it back up. Same batch as the birdbath dish.
I did know a Tufa birdbath could be permeable. I kind of liked that because the birds might get a few hours to drink but then it would self drain. I found tons of wigglies in my regular birdbath to day.
Good point about wigglies.
I have read that bigger containers do need to be thicker -- more like 2 inches -- and also that it helps to reinforce with chicken wire, fiber mesh, something...
Sorry about the bird bath! Your new planter pot should be fine once it has cured a few weeks.
Oh too bad about the bird bath Sally. Oh well, something to try again. I want to try more mushrooms and experiment with different sizes and styles.
Guess I lack the magic touch with Tufa. no biggie.
ROFL-aspnehill-- your last sentence must not be taken out of context!!!!
This message was edited Jun 30, 2012 12:36 PM
Joyanna & I found some more of those plastic bowls at WalMart this morning (like I used to make my medium and small mushrooms)... big ones are $1, medium 2/$1, small 4/$1, also got some cups for stems, 4 or 6/$1. They're sturdy enough to be used again & again for molds, although I think I'm going to line the stem molds with grocery bags from now on for easier release.
Little tip- when I made my second mushroom cap, I remembered to put the stem mold in the bowl so it would fit later. But I put the cup all the way in- When I unmolded the cap it was a mushroom 'donut' LOL
whups!
new thread for the next "event" Saturday July 21! http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1270530/#new
So far I think there are just a couple of "definite maybes" so we might skip the workshop part, just enjoy shopping for irises and have lunch after with anybody who makes it in for the sale. That might work better for us anyway this time... I thought the Saturday workshop would be a mid-visit event for my niece, but I recently discovered she'll be going home Sunday morning rather than Wednesday, so we'll be finishing up various projects and getting in "just one more" pool session, shopping errand, etc.
Hope you have a nice event.
I'm dying to take my tufas out for good and start looking at them.....I even think my birdbath one might have been ok if I'd just left it wrapped in plastic and completely untouched for weeks.
Jill, I just planted mine a few days ago.
LOVE IT !!!!!!!!!
Ditto to Sally! I can just see two large ones in place of my nasty plastic ones on my stoop. Are larger sizes do-able....or at greater risk of disintegrating?
Holly, that's wonderful! I'm just about ready to lift mine out of their water bath... changed the water once, and now their garbage can is full (not because I thought they needed so much water but because I left the hose running too long).
Still working on the article... as concise as I tried to be, it still ran pretty long, so I think it's going to be 2 articles... before & after we took our break for "refreshments" and A/C! I'm really happy to have such a pretty PLANTED planter to show off to everybody... I think half the photos I edited for the article were ones Holly & Ric shared. Thanks!