Garden Gate e-notes: From our garden to your desktop.

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make your own pot feet

Designer pot feet look great but they can get expensive if you have a lot of containers. Now, while the garden is resting, is a good time to get a head start on making your own. Diane Johnson of Minnesota makes her own and saves that extra money for more plants. How? With soap molds from the craft store. You’ll also need mortar mix, vegetable oil or spray, water, a container and a stir-stick for mixing. If you want a specific color, get some concrete dye, too.

To make a set of pot feet like the one in the photo above, add water slowly to the mortar mix until it’s the consistency of a thick cake batter. Now’s the time to stir in the dye if you want colorful pot feet. Spray the mold lightly with vegetable spray and pour in the mix. Then tap it gently to get rid of air bubbles. Let the mold dry for 24 hours. If the mortar is dry to the touch, go ahead and pop the feet out of the mold. Let them cure another day or two to harden. After that, your new pot feet are ready to hold up containers.

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problem solver

Common buckthorn
Rhamnus cathartica

IDENTIFICATION — Growing quickly to a large shrub or small tree up to 20 ft. tall, common buckthorn has sharp spines at the tips of the twigs that can be dangerous as you walk through brushy areas. If you scratch the bark of this woody weed and it’s yellow underneath, you’ve found common buckthorn. Late in fall you’ll also notice that the foliage stays on this pest long after other leaves have fallen. And look closely at the leaves — there are usually three to five pairs of veins in each one.

FAVORITE CONDITIONS — Common buckthorn prefers places in part shade in moist to dry soil.

HOW IT SPREADS — Birds eat and spread the seeds of the 1/4-in.-diameter messy black fruit in fall.

CONTROL — When the plant is a seedling, pull or dig it out of the ground. If it’s too large for this, spray the plant with a nonselective herbicide, such as Roundup^® Poison Ivy & Tough Brush Killer Plus in spring or late summer. Or cut down the tree and dribble or brush on a systemic stump killer around the edges where the sap is flowing. It’s absorbed into the wood and kills the roots. Be careful, it can kill any plant it gets on.