This one should be interesting....

[butterfly]

I have no shade around the house area for containers so to have them, they are in direct hot heat all day

BF, not sure what you mean by this.All structures produce shade,sometime through the day.The only area would be the south side,that would be all day sun.

Molly

I have shade on one side about 4 ft out from the house for about 4-5 hours Not the side I wan to put conntainers excpet maybe one.
I have 7 entrances but just 3 which is used by others but me

That's it. One tree in the front end which doesn't provide shade on that deck

The south side hot sun all day. 3 entrances on that side

Only one small door step out of 5 decks has shade for a while but that isn't where I would put containers

[bluewillow]

Laura, this sounds like a neat little trick with sponges. I've seen pkgs of sponges at the $-store ... maybe 5 per pak.

I'm forced to grow my tomatoes and cukes in containers as my soil is bad in my yard. I'm taking Lyn's advice of a year ago .... Rubbermaid type containers. Thanks again, Lyn!

bw

[Eeyore]

Your welcome BW. I think I'll be adding a couple of containers for peppers this year.

I wonder if sponges would actually work.... I'd be worried that they wouldn't release the water when needed.... I'll have to look into that one further.

[bluewillow]

...and most sponges are made of cellulose and you are correct Lyn ... they do have a problem of holding water.

bw

Yep, tomatoes and cukes .. containers. Hoping to grow the long burpless, seedless cukes.

[dlb]

Have also used them with 1/2" rebar & plunk them in amoungst shrubs with the pots about 2 - 3 ft. above the ground to give a burst of color amongst predominately green areas. Kinda fun to fool around with pots such as buried in the ground under junipers & evergreens where plants don't much like to be, & this also gives color that otherwise would not exist.

Lee

I know someone who does this with a stack of 3-4 containers, with the largest one on the bottom and the smallest on top. She gets a threaded bar, drills holes in the pots, then screws on a nut and one of those flat round thingies (can't think of the word right now - looks like a CD but smaller and out of metal. They're used as a buffer between nuts or screws and wood. ARRGH) This supports the largest pot on the bottom. Then she puts another nut/?/pot another foot or so up and so on. She usually plants in petunias or other such plants.
Dora

[Eeyore]

washer??? I've seen that arrangement and it looks rather cool.

[dlb]

Yes! Thank you.
Dora

[Eeyore]

Don't you hate those moments when you know exactly what you want to say and it's right there on the tip of your brain but you can't remember the words?