Things I am good at: porch pots

After having the porch and sidewalk re-poured last fall and having the beds built and doing lots of planting this spring, the porch was looking a bit bare.  We needed some pots, and as big as our porch is they needed to be a decent size.

Ace Hardware in Westport turned out to be the spot.  I'd looked at planters everywhere and had money been no object Resto would have won.  That's rarely the case here of course, and we got these (about 2.5 feet tall) on sale for 45 bucks.

The plant selections at the Westlake were dry and sad however, so we were off to our go-to spot for plants, Soil Service nursery.


For some reason I've always had a way with mixed pots, and as usual I went with a lot of my favorite workhorses:  Sun coleus, varigated ivy, dracena, sweet potato vine.  I also decided to try some new things like ornamental pepper, persian shield, and in there somewhere is some plain old rosemary.  The giant firework-like things are papyrus, which I've never used before but like a lot.

They find themselves in both sun and shade depending on the hour, so there's a mix of sun and shade plants.  I don't usually do that but not knowing exactly what to expect in this location I just went for it.  The persian shield (those dark purple things) like mostly shade, and the coleus seem to be big enough to protect them.  One great surprise has been that potato vine.  I've always used it but its never grown like I thought it would.  These seem to like their spots (and the plant food they've received) because they started out with maybe one or two leaves over the edge of the pot, and now they're down to the porch floor.


Another smart thing we did was to buy a couple trollies to put under the pots so we can move them back and forth to even out the sun exposure.  They come in all sorts of overly-ornate designs at prices that seem silly.  These were the cheapest they had at Lowe's and they disappear nicely.


I used styrofoam peanuts to take up some room and provide some drainage at the bottom, and a potting soil that is supposed to hold moisture.  We're in the middle of a long stretch of 100+ degree days however, so I'm watering most every day as things are usually wilted by the time we're home from work.  Hopefully I can keep them alive through the rest of this hellish spell.