Homemade Garden Pot Cover for Rains

In a previous article, I discussed a simple homemade solution to prevent rains from overwatering your potted outdoor garden plants. Not all plants are created equal, and some, like the Mandevillas cannot tolerate continuous daily rains. The homemade solution in the article made use of an old dining table placemat for an effective garden pot cover.

If you don't have an old placemat or something similar, there's another way of making a garden pot cover.

Here's how you can make use of disposable plastic trays that are found in supermarkets and bakeshops. The procedure is essentially the same as discussed before but with a few modifications.


Homemade Solution using Disposable Plastic Trays

You've seen them before, these plastic disposable trays used to line and protect the bottom of consumable items. In supermarkets, you'd probably see them in the fruits, vegetables or frozen goods section. Bakeshops use them to line the bottom of their cakes and rolls.


Whatever tray you use, be sure they're thick and sturdy enough to withstand rain and won't tear easily with high winds. You will need to take into consideration the top rim area of your garden pot. But usually, the bigger the tray, the better. Ideally, they would work with square or rectangular garden pots.




In this particular DIY project, I chose these plastic trays that used to contain bananas. I measured the top rim area of the garden pot and found that I need three of these trays to cover the garden pot's top.



How to Assemble the DIY Garden Pot Cover

Materials
  • Disposable Plastic Trays - 3 pcs
  • Packing tape or Duct tape
  • Scissors
  • Nail
  • Vise Grip or Pliers
  • Candle





Procedure
  1. With a pair of heavy duty scissors, cut one long side of two of the trays as shown below.


    These 2 trays will become the ends of the garden pot cover. For the third tray, cut both long sides. This third tray will become the middle tray.

  2. Join all 3 cut trays as shown below.


  3. Join together the sides of adjacent trays with packing tape as shown below. Wrap the packing tape on the top and bottom surfaces of the trays so it goes all the way around.


  4. Do the same procedure for marking, punching and positioning the stem holes as in the previous article, Prevent Overwatering - Garden Pot Cover (steps 1 - 9).




  5. When positioned on the garden pot with 2 garden plants, the cover should look like the one below.


  6. Cut the 4 lip corners of the garden pot cover like the one below.


    Doing this will prevent rain water from staying in the garden pot cover's gutters and will instead trickle out from these cut corners.




  7. To prevent winds from displacing and repositioning the garden pot cover, secure the cover to the pot with a tie wire as shown below.


Here's the newly assemlbed garden pot cover in action.


Notice how more than 95% of the rain water that would otherwise soak the inside soil of the garden pot easily flows and trickles out from the garden pot cover.




Go ahead, post your comment below!

Unknown said...

Silly question, but can that be easilly removed for when you want it to be watered? I'm also just thinking about how this would work with plants with more leaves without damaging the plant while trying to fit it through a small hole.

Blackdove said...

Yes, just lift the plastic and water.
The foliage of plant isn't inserted into the hole. Fashion the holes so just the stem passes through it SIDEWAYS. There's a companion article: Prevent Overwatering - Garden Pot Cover, as a link in this article.