New Custom Outdoor Planters -First One This Spring

New Hypertufas to be made.

It is early in Ohio Zone 6 to start making new outdoor planters with hypertufa already, but I am impatient so I have already started a planter. I made it Thursday outside in the garage and with the temperatures in the 50s, it wasn’t too bad.

As I explained on Facebook, this is a special outdoor planter to donate for a great cause. Our Greene County Family Violence Prevention Center is holding a dinner and auction as a fundraiser on May 1. Hopefully my hypertufa planter will be a nice donation when it is sold at the auction. 

All morning we have had rain, but this afternoon the sun has come out. I am out in the garden checking things over and I swear I try not to, but I am seriously thinking about changing things all around. My husband hates when I do that, not to mention my son. He is the one I am always asking to move this heavy pot, move this heavy rock, etc. But I do see some areas that need improvement, which means moving all the hypertufa troughs, bowls and planters into a new location.

Not the giant outdoor hypertufa planter, my T Rex, though. He is just fine where he is now. …..today. I may change my mind though.  But you see, I always get this vision of how it might be if I just moved a few. Just a few feet that way…..or that way?

Back to my new hypertufa planter.

It seems to have come out of the mold really well. It has good definition on those crevices that go down the sides and I have roughed up the exterior with a rasp and a wire brush.

I had put cement color in the wet mix and at this point, it is a dark charcoal. That will lighten as it cures and the moisture comes out of it, but I really like the look.

I have re-wrapped this newest garden planter and put back in the basement for another period of curing. Probably two weeks or more. I feel that it is still too chilly outside to allow it  outside overnight. We are into the 30s overnight and will probably have some nights that drop even lower.

Maybe it is fiction, but I have heard that cement doesn’t cure well if the temperatures are below 40, and since my hypertufa planters are made with Portland cement, I need to follow the rules, right?

So it is wrapped again and down in the basement. I will let it cure there for 2-3 weeks, then bring it out for leaching and drill holes before I deliver it for the auction well before the May 1 dinner.

Have you started making any garden planters yet? I have a whole garden to fill, I have to get to work!  I have promised myself that I will make the super large ones this year, so if I want to get them planted early so they have time to fill in well this year, I have to get to work.  I sure hope the old electric cement mixer has survived another year in storage!  Wish me luck.