The Cones Go Indoors

It's getting cold out! It's been below freezing for a week or so, and there was frost on the ground today. So it was all just a matter of time before some of the plants outside die, something I always find sad.

So this year: I'm bringing some of them in! The cones are super-easy to transplant.

1. Grab the cone
2. Lift it up
3. Take it in the house

But the hard part is, where to put it? Outside I have these in a number of containers, mostly dishpans. They are not pretty. I'm working on "pretty". Also, the containers are too large for our little shelf. I don't have room for many plants indoors, and the collards, kale, and lettuce can stay out there. I brought in the tomatoes, aloe, and started a few more experimental plants.

First, I have a new subirrigation planter made from clay, in the back. It is very heavy, and has holes for the cones. It only holds the bottom of the cone, which is fine for most plants. The BIG aloes I have in a bigger clay pot, which gives more mass.

Some of the others I moved to other clay pots The one in the front is a new one I bought, a small aloe of a different species. The cones is sitting in "The Blue Man" (token to the Blue Man Group, which I love). Basically any clay pot will work, if you stop up the drainage hole. The one with multiple holes though, is easier to water. There is a water hole in one corner. I have a couple more in the works which are more cylindrical.

Then we have the bigger plants. Here is a dwarf orange, sitting in a bigger cone. The cone sets in a 7 gallon bucket, with the top edge turned over, and a Christmas cactus planted around it. The white pipe is to make watering easier. The bucket holds the water and keeps the plant stable. The bag makes for good root aeration and self-pruning.

Here it is at a distance. I pruned the tree, trying to make it bushier by next spring. This was basically a twig last spring, It had frozen when I left it outside, and I was pretty sure it was dead. But it's looking better now, and grew a good two feet. This window gets a lot of sun, so it should be pretty happy for the winter. All it needs is a "wrapper" around the plastic bucket to make it prettier.

For smaller plants, I'm thinking the cones could be just suspended from a rope or hung from a railing or fence. We have a  lot of fencing around ... if the cones are set into a plastic container, like a half of a plastic bottle, or a coffee bag, they can be hung anywhere. I also like the idea of just a rope just hanging from the rafters. Maybe two ropes, with bamboo tied in like a rope ladder, then having lettuces hanging all over it. Or long bamboo poles, to make a lettuce or strawberry "wall".

Though it would be nice to engineer it so there is only one watering point, rather than watering each plant. Possibly if the plastic container had a hose coming out of each one, it could water the next one down the ladder.