A clawfoot bathtub can also make an attractive planter in your landscape.
Whether you have limited gardening space or simply want a unique and stylish planter in you landscape, using a clawfoot bathtub can be an ideal solution. Like modern day bathtubs, clawfoot tubs can hold enough growing material to provide you with a salad garden of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs. Or, for visual appeal, plant your favorite flowering plants and bulbs in your clawfoot tub for color throughout the growing season. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Place two to three layers of shade cloth or a fine mesh screen over the drain hole of the clawfoot bathtub to prevent material from leaking out, yet provide some drainage.
2. Add three to four inches of pea gravel in the bottom of the tub, covering the shade cloth or wire mesh. Pea gravel will aid drainage.
3. Lay down six to 10 sheets of old newspaper over the pea gavel. Wet the newspaper thoroughly with a garden hose.
4. Sprinkle three-to-four handfuls of organic fertilizer in pellet form over the wet newspaper. The pellets provide slow release of the fertilizer.
5. Add a four-to-six inch layer of organic material on top of the fertilizer and newspaper. Compost is ideal for the organic material. Follow this layer with a three-to-four inch layer of straw. Wet these layers. Add a two-to-three inch layer of well rotted mature, followed by another three-to-five inch layer of organic material or compost.
6. Mix potting soil with equal parts peat moss or garden loam. Add this on top of the final layer of compost in the clawfoot bathtub. Fill the tub to three-to-four inches from the top with this soil mixture. Wet the filled soil with a garden hose so it is moist, but not waterlogged.
7. Plant seeds or plants in the soil in the tub. After seeds germinate and have grown four-to-five inches, add mulch around the plants to help keep the moisture in the soil.
Tags: clawfoot bathtub, inch layer, organic material, garden hose, inch layer organic
