Ready to can and self watering pot

I couldn't resist heading out to Eastern Market to see what goodies I could find. I got there at about 4:30 and wandered around quite a bit not buying anything but taking in the venue for what it is. I must say I didn't really find anything truly interesting to me today and had no real inspirations to buy large quanities of something that would most certainly tie me to the kitchen for the rest of the weekend. First I picked up some asparagus for $1 a bunch then added the cut little Gerber Daisy plant for another buck. Chatted with the corn people for a bit and bought 6 ears for $1.50 (probably more than I needed to pay but I was feeling generous. Then wandered over to the cute vege guy that goes out drinking too much the night before and picked up some banana at normal store pricing. I wandered around a bit more checking out mangos and what not. The big guy that always wears the suspenders and strikes me as the type that should have a pipe hanging from his lip was selling strawberries for $1 a container and the old Italian next to him had red grapes at $2 a case and cucumbers which he was getting rid of for $1 a case. Ok twist my arm. After yakking with these two fellas and even getting a hug from one who stated I was "just too cute" I scooped up a case of cukes and was handed 2 free bags of his red grapes. I loaded up the car and actually left when I decided that I could make chocolate covered strawberries so I turned around and headed back in to the jolly overall wearing farmer and purchased 2 containers. At home I kept maybe 8 of the cukes and dropped the rest along with a bag of grapes at the neighbors to do with as they pleased.

Another self watering plant experiment. Could I have just gotten lucky that the first pot like this did so well because of the nature of the pots used and plants planted? Time to do another test! I have my $1 Gerber and I picked up a $3 pot at Walmart. I couldn't find another pot to fit inside the green one so I figured I'd try using just the pot the darn thing came in. Here's the story...

Take a ceramic pot and if it has a hole in the bottom plug it up with plumbers putty by rolling a gob into a cylinder, sticking the cylinder of putty through the hole then smashing down the putty on both the inside and the bottom. I added a little more to the inside before smashing it.

The inner pot sat a little too low and would make it difficult to grab the edge to remove it for watering so I added some pea stone to bring it up to the proper height. Fill'er up with water and see if it leaks. Nope! Drop plant in water. La la la some time later I check on it and decide that it's taking on quite a bit of water. Is it because of the soil or maybe the 8 holes in the bottom of the pot.

Hmm. Remove some of the original soil from pottom of plant and add some of my own (must admit though they look exactly the same). Using the same principal as plugging the green pot I plug every other hole in the bottom of the Gerber pot (yes, I had to pull the Gerber out to do all this). La la la. A while later I don't see water pooling at the surface so I'm guessing my adjustments are all good. Looking at my new little pot I decided that between the pot and the plant that there was just too much green. So I decided I'd decorate the pot! Using some of those flat glass marbles used in vases with flowers and hot glue I had at it. Oooh, it looked so cute! Then I filled it with water and lo and behold all the glass pieces literally fell off! Oh my... darn it!

Update: I have since redecorated the pot with a glue that I'm hoping will work and I picked up these cute little beads at Michael's to add some more flare. Here's a picture tonight. I haven't put any water in it yet! I'll have to get a better picture of the finished pot that's better, but for now this will due.