As many of you know I am a sucker for mason jars, doilies, and instant gratification projects so I figured I was destined to attempt this! After all - pilli pilli promised it as a 5 minute DIY and it seemed easy enough to squeeze in my busy schedule right? Yup she was spot on - check out my upcycled before and after:
Hooray! I successfully turned that ugly pesto jar into a lovely new cactus pot! Just in time too - I don't think the noddy cup was going to last much longer:
I'm sure you're wondering, "why would you plant that little stub of a cactus in a paper cup in the first place?" Well I assure you I didn't do it just so I could write this blog post (although sometimes I think about posts based on lamer excuses). I've been wanting to get my hands on one of those cacti for quite a while. My grandma used to have a huge one by her front door and I remember visiting her as a kid and thinking how cool it was that you could pull the little leaves off the ridges of the plant and it would ooze milky stuff out of it (aren't all kids into that sort of thing?). I'm not entirely sure where that giant cactus of hers ended up but I've been wanting to get my own for years ever since. I've tried to find one in a store or online but it turns out that's a pretty hard task when you don't actually know what the plant is called. I had pretty much given up hope until I spotted one of those tall milking cacti at one of my favourite mexican restaurants! I decided to try my hand at growing my own from a clipping of their plant and headed up to my mom's house to steal her plant potting supplies. Perfect! She had little pebbles, soil, and the all important root hormone powder to help my little cactus stub establish itself. The only thing she didn't have was a pot to plant it in so we improvised with the paper noddy cup. I was planning on transplanting him into an actual pot once I could find a suitable one and pilli pilli doily jars seemed like the perfect match! Doesn't the little cactus look at home in his new jar?:
I think so! Plus I saved that old pesto jar from a livelong existence on a shelf in fraser's studio as a paintbrush water container. Perfect! Now I just need to try to not kill that plant! What do you think?
http://www.desert-tropicals.com/Plants/Euphorbiaceae/Euphorbia_trigona.html
ReplyDeleteThat giant cactus was Uncle Percy's, and when he died, it went to live at Grandma's house. There's also a huge on at Sitka Studio in Tlell! Do you think you could steal me a chunk? I'd even accept it in a doily jar if it's got a fox on it!