Plant Cuttings And Chalkboard Pots

It's been a while since I've posted. Seems like I'm staying busy, busy, busy lately. So, I'll give a quick update before I get to the main part of my post. Thanksgiving was wonderful. We spent the first part of the day with family. Then, in the evening we had our best friends over for a great night of eating (again!), playing Wii and just hanging out together.

We unfortunately had a death in the family - my husband's uncle. The service was this past Sunday. I wonder why it is that sometimes it takes something as tragic as a death in the family for all of us to get together? Even still, it was nice to get to see family we haven't seen in a while - and for me to get to meet some that I had never met before. Did I mention we've been married 14 and a half years? LOL!

We've also been busy getting the house decorated for Christmas. I love this time of year! It really makes me want to hunker down and nest. We are supposed to be getting our first snow of the season this week! I'm dreaming of a white Christmas... I will post pictures of that soon.

OK. Now to my main post. I like to try to be frugal whenever possible and I also like the satisfaction of doing things myself. At the end of summer I just hated to see my beautiful geraniums die out, never to be seen again. So, I did some research. Evidently, if you took a cutting off of your geranium plant and put it in a pot of water it would send out new roots. You can then pot them and overwinter your new plants inside. Then, when Spring time rolls around, you can put your new plants in the ground and it didn't cost you a penny. The same thing is supposed to be true for many plants. I have successfully tried this in the past with rosemary and pothos or philodendron.

So, I did what I just explained to you with some geranium clippings and lemon balm (which smells divine BTW). I was happy to see it was a very successful experiment, as you will see here in a minute. But, I wanted a way to keep track of which clippings were which and didn't want to use the typical marker stake. I decided to paint out my el cheapo terra cotta pots with chalkboard paint.

You'll need your own el cheapo terra cotta pots, rubber gloves, a foam brush and a can of chalkboard paint for this project. Krylon makes it in black and green. I just happened to have a can of black on hand from a few other projects.

Following the directions for dry time, give your pots and saucers 2 coats of chalkboard paint. I didn't paint the entire inside because it won't be seen once my plants are in there. Now, you can either paint the entire pot, like I did - or you can just paint a square to write on. I have done it both ways. Just make sure that after your final coat of paint has dried and cured, that you 'break' the surface by rubbing the side of your chalk all over it before writing on it.

Check out the roots on that lemon balm!

Here I am taking one of the rooted geranium plants and potting it.

Viola! New, free plants that can go into the ground in the Spring and pots that keep track of what's in them. Or, you can shake it up and write a seasonal or inspirational message on them. It's up to you.

Now, I just need to figure out where to keep these bad daddies all winter long!