Monday, March 8, 2010

a gutter planter

I've toyed with vertical gardening ideas for a long time. Before I decided to build the greenhouse last year my thoughts were largely of going vertically up the back wall of the house. It still seems to me that with the right approach a big south-facing wall could be enormously productive without being a ton of work. But, that's not what I did.

The other night I happened across this article about using rain gutters as planters. It mentions people using gutters around deck railing, too. My deck is perfect for this, and I've always meant to build planters to run along that sunny rail. A trip to Home Depot and a couple of hours of work and I now have nearly 19 feet of seeded planter in a supremely convenient location.


It's worth mentioning that the gutter itself is dirt cheap at $5 per 10 foot segment, but man do they put the screws to you on every other bit you need. I was about $40 by the time I had the end caps, connecting segment, and supports every two feet. But compared to the wooden planters I've built and hung in other places it's less expensive, rock solid on the railing, and should last forever.


It's a bit of an experiment, but I'm pretty confident that I'll find something that works in it really well.

2010-05-22 update: It's working nicely.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for the confermation of the idea. I saw a write up in Handyman Mag a few months ago and we are going to give it a try when we get moved into our new house.

Steve Poole said...

I tried to find that article, Paul. What an infuriating web site! The planter is doing pretty well; you can see an update here: http://cookingroastingbrewing.blogspot.com/2010/05/gutter-planter-update.html