I like the bamboo idea but think about the black mold and mildew that usually comes with regular moisture and anything organic (like bamboo). You might consider using a clear sealer on both sides before wrapping your pots. This should give a protective finish that should last a few seasons then will most likely need to be reapplied. I love the Japanese lettering concept too. I am too hot for black pots and my wife wants pretty pots. I of course am into function first and pretty second:). Thanks for the ideas from a fellow container gardener. Happy Growing David

No it won't slide off, you're putting a pretty thin layer of paint on with your stencil brush. If you're not sure what's going to happen, read up on stenciling on the net and fool around with it (on something else) until you get comfortable with doing it. Since you're stenciling on a curved surface, practice that first too. Maybe you have an old vase or something. That can get tricky (for me anyway) even trying to get the stencil to curve to the contours of your pot. You might have to work in small sections that stay flat. And if it all gets to be too much of a pita, you can trace the outline of your stencils and fill it in like regular painting. Excellent advice above about oils and acrylics. Good luck and have fun. Donna

Around here the smallest strawberry pots (red terra cotta) are $10 at the big box retailers but I found some at a large greenhouse way out in the country for $7. If mine sell well I intend to purchase quite a few more. Herbs like Thyme are easy to grow all winter long so they really fill out a pot. I would like to think up some other herb combo to use in them but small thyme plants seem to work out the best (even though Thyme tends to rot here, but you can usually keep the plants alive for a few years). I tailor the combinations towards Italian foods just to give it a theme. I would like to do tea herbs but most of them get so big it just wouldn't work and I doubt anyone will buy one of the bigger strawberry pots. Sales tend to weaken when the prices are over $20 at an open air market. I am keeping my eyes open for one of the dark blue glazed strawberry pots. I have these variegated strawberry plants that would look stunning in a colored container - but most that I find are so expensive, I just don't think they will sell (and I charge a lot for the variegated strawberries also). I once saw a small wire holder that held 4 small clay pots with a basket handle across the top - it was cute enough that I think folks would buy it, but I haven't found that picture and have no idea if it was home made or store bought. I toy with the idea of growing herb collections in plastic bulb crates and "rent" them to folks through the summer (they return the crates when they are done harvesting the herbs). But they aren't pretty and I doubt enough people would buy into to it to make it profitable. I volunteer and help out with a few public garden and gardening enterprises around town and they let me have the surplus. I can get a ton of free plants this way also - but mostly things that are hard for me to carry over til spring. I also host two big plant swaps a year and a seed swap in the winter which bring me all the cuttings I could ever want (plus it gives me an insight into what types of plants people really like to grow).

1) All clay is ceramic. Not all ceramic is clay. 2) All terra cotta clay is clay. Not all clay is terra cotta clay. Terra cotta is both used as a color word, signifying a coloration of clay or ceramic, as well as a word used to describe a particular type of clay. The color use of "terra cotta" is a different use of the term from "terra cotta clay" which is a specific formulation and treatment of clay. Many ceramic pots are described as "terra cotta color" when they do not use terra cotta clay, and that creates a lot of confusion about what terra cotta means. Pots at a store like Lowes or Home Depot marked as "terra cotta" are often not terra cotta clay. See the table in this article that describes types of clay and see the table a few pages down: https://sites.google.com/site/meeneecat/educational-materials/clay-types-geological-origins-working-properties-gccceramics Please note that none of the types of clay listed here are considered terra cotta clay: * porcelain * stoneware (many subtypes) * earthenware (many subtypes) Out of the 12 types of clay listed in that article, only two are rightly called terra cotta clay. I don't make clay so I don't understand why terra cotta pots and molded items always sell for nearly twice as much as non terra cotta pots. Maybe it is an issue with fragility of the clay making manufacturing more difficult?