Plastic Bottle Planters

 

I've been thinking about what to do with the plastic bottles my hubby's favorite grape juice comes in. Multiple ideas have come to mind and today, I got to work.
 For this project you'll need a plastic bottle of your choice, cut in half (top and bottom), a piece of rebar roughly 6' long and 1" PVC pipe roughly 5' in length. An assortment of tools would be quite helpful, potting soil and an assortment of flowers to plant.   Here's a look at my wheelbarrow full of supplies, let's get started! 

 











 I don't know the technical name for this tool (I call it a pounder) but it really helped to easily get the rebar down into the ground roughly 1 1/2 feet. Hardest part was holding it over my head to get it over the top of the rebar. Worked like a charm.

 Here's a look at the bottle bottom. I need to drill a hole. I used a 1/2" drill bit since that's the only size I could find but a 1" would have been perfect.

 Also, cut the PVC pipe to the desired length for the placement of your bottle. I have mine roughly 18" off the ground, and slide it over the top, followed by the bottle bottom.
I used a sawsall to cut the pipe, if you've never done this be careful, it likes to jump around. A hacksaw would work as well.

 I added some potting soil into the bottle and started planting. I chose three different plants; a beautiful lime green potato vine, 'burgundy star' petunias and 'dark knight' sweet alyssum.

 For the top part of my planter I used the top of the bottle with the hole for pouring. My PVC pipe didn't quite fit into the hole so I used the sawsall to give it a quick shaving. It looks nasty but it worked wonderfully. I simply slid the shaved PVC pipe end into the pouring spout on the bottom of my new planter and slid the whole thing over the piece of rebar.

 Since the hole is larger and would allow dirt to run down into the pipe I used some mulch to clog the hole a little and then went ahead and planted the upper planter. I left the rebar sticking out at the top so I used another small piece of pipe to finish it off (and will be adding a cap once I make a run to the hardware store, didn't have one of those laying around).
As I'm sure you noticed I didn't bother to take the labels off of the bottle (lazy, I know). This was a quickie project so I didn't take the time and the flowers will fill in so quickly they'll be hidden anyway. You could also paint them and the PVC pipe if you chose.

 I have enough flowers to make a total of 5 but only had enough rebar in the desired length to make two. The others will have to wait.
Here's a look at the second one. There will be grasses and a lilac in the back, coneflowers all around, daylilies to the left with a rose bush and privets with Russian sage on the other side. Once it fills in it should be gorgeous!
If you look closely you can see the first one in the background.

 Here they are from the other direction.

I can't wait for them to fill in and to get the others done. Hopefully in a couple weeks I can try out another one of my ideas using these same plastic bottles.