Bury Gardeners: Planters on Line

I was recently asked by Planters Online if I would like to write a review about one of their pots. I happily accepted.

Firstly the site itself Planters Online is an excellent site to visit. Visually attractive and easy to negotiate. There are many filters you can choose to reduce the amount of pots you need to trawl through if you are looking for a specific size, colour or finish.

The delivery time was also excellent and my well packed trough arrived just two days later.

This summer I have been looking for five new 'long toms' to replace the ones I currently use to grow my herbs in outside the back door, but it seems I can only find them on line these days so haven't made a real effort to get on with it. My other thought was a couple of long troughs and plant three or so herbs in each. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of lifting large plant filled troughs twice a year when removing old plants pre-winter and replanting with new plants in the spring, so the notion of a fibreglass or plastic pot was attractive to me.

My next consideration was that all the pots in my garden are terracotta and its a look I like and didn't want to deviate from. Many of the pots sold by Planters Online are very dashing and modern and while they are lovely to look at they are not what my raggety, taggety, fluffy garden is about.

I decided on one which was described as terracotta and with a matt surface: ARTESA 25 terracotta matt. This would cost £35.91. I am not all that familiar with the usual price for these sorts of pots but since owning it have looked at similar things in four different garden centres and would say this was a pretty average sort of price. I did find an unpriced one in B & M (!!!) earlier in the year before I set off on this journey and declined it as it was £11 - little did I know then!

I confess it isn't the colour I wanted. I was hoping for something close to the usual terracotta colour. I am hoping it will mute down a little over the winter. I am sure the product manufacturer would claim it will keep its colour and texture whatever the winter throws at it - we shall see.

These planters are made for indoor or outdoor use. If they go outside they should, of course, have holes drilled in them to supply good drainage for the plant(s) or have a generous base of gravel in the bottom to do the same. Similarly indoors, plants would thrive better if they had some means of draining off excess water away from the plant(s).

This is no particular criticism of this seller but I wish pot manufacturers would have the sense to add this sort of instruction to the label and save a few plants 'lives. My label read: UV resistant, frost proof, shock resistant, light weight.

Again for a complete novice it is useful to mark up places to drill when you flip the pot over. Ideally if they could mold half a dozen areas more thinly that the rest of the material so they could just be tapped through with something like a nail and hammer that would be even better - not everyone has a drill.

The flipside of this pot looked like this

Do you tap out the huge circle in the centre? Do you drill through the six small indents round the edge? Maybe none of these, just make your own holes?

You may also notice that the pot sort of has legs - the main box is slightly raised from the ground with edges that will also allow water to drain away. This will prevent the pot sitting in water and, more importantly, stop it freezing to the ground in the winter if we have a really bad spell. All my terracotta pots are raised a little in some way to prevent this happening.

We went with drilling out the six places with the indents. Seems odd having them round the edges only but there is a sort of run off trough all round the edges to catch water. So here is the brand new spanking pot ready to take its dozen free bulbs from Summerseat for its overwintering trial run.

[If you get a membership card for Summerseat (also works at Bradley Fold) you get money back and offers like free spring bulbs.]

As it is probably destined for the herb ledge next spring, it may as well live close up to it as that will be the weather it will get for its future life.