Gardening for wildlife is being adopted by an increasing number of gardeners each year. One form of wildlife gardening that is growing by leaps and bounds is gardening in containers.
While container gardening is nothing new, growing plants that are of value to wildlife is. Container gardening for wildlife allows gardeners to attract wildlife to small places. In addition, is allows people that are physically unable to engage in traditional gardening to continue their hobby.
One of the problems that plagues container gardening is moving large pots from one spot to another. A large container full of soil is very heavy and difficult to move about. In addition, it can be quite expensive to buy enough soil to fill a large pot.
An excellent way to solve this problem is to fill third to half of the pot with a lightweight filler. Innovative gardeners are using variety fillers such as plastic bottles, bags and nursery pots as fillers Some even employ large chunks of Styrofoam. Others are using organic fillers such as pinecones, and wood chips.
If you want to make container gardening for wildlife less expensive and easier, you should consider using lightweight materials as fillers.
If you have used this technique, I would appreciate it if would let me know if your efforts proved to be successful.
I use chunks of styrofoam broken into 4 to 6 inch pieces, 1/4 to 1/3 inch deep. I have reused the ones in pots many years later, they are dirty but still in good shape, not breaking down into little balls of styrofoam.
Years ago I filled the bottoms of large pots with Styrofoam peanuts and perlite. After a year or two it all pancakes under the soil weight and formed an i.impenetrable barrier to water drainage.
Styrofoam is probably the best filler I’ve used because it weighs nothing and doesn’t break down over time.
I have used fillers for my container gardening. It mainly consist of pinecones and leaves. It works very well.