Up-cycling Clay Pot Shards

Still using limited data on my phone.

In my region of the US, clay planting pots sometimes fracture in winter, leaving me with small piles of shards. I hate to just throw these bits away. Instead, I use the shards as mulch around the base of potted Mediterranean plants to hold moisture in the soil over the dry summers, without adding to the risk of fungus or rot. 

Like lavender plants, rosemary benefits from a rock-type mulch (as opposed to wood chip or compost mulch). As I showed you a week ago, I used a marble chip mulch around the base of my lavender plants. In a similar approach, I use the clay pot shards around the base of rosemary plants. 

I have 2 baby rosemary plants new this season. This morning I broke apart a bunch of clay shards to mulch the top surface of the soil in these planters. Small pieces went directly onto the soil. I broke up the larger chunks with a hammer on cardboard.

I think this is not only practical, but also an attractive look for my rosemary.

Broken and unrepairable items can be given new use with a little imagination. Up-cycling clay pot shards into planter mulch keeps those broken pieces out the landfill.

What’s been your favorite up-cycle?

Internet Woes

Hi friends,

My landline and internet are down and may not be fixed for a couple of days. My cell phone has limited data, so I’m needing to prioritize how I use it. Our house is being reroofed and my husband thinks a wire got jiggled loose. Neither one of us know much about wiring, so we’ll wait until our service provider can come and fix it.

An interesting thing— when we lose internet, we all have trouble adjusting at first. After some moments wasted complaining, I finally got busy with jobs I’ve been wanting to do. I potted another lavender plant into the planter that I spray painted white, I’m baking another batch of French bread, I swept the patio near where my container lavender garden sits, and I spray painted several #10 cans lime green for planting my container basil garden this year. So I guess I’ve now adjusted to minimal internet access. 

What do you do when the internet goes down?