About a month or so ago, a friend took me on a fleamarket trip out of town where I picked up several treasures that would find new purpose in my garden, including this old cast iron tea pot.

Drilling a hole for drainage was no easy feat. Uli has lots of experience using cast iron as planters and on her suggestion I used a fast-speed bit meant for steel, starting with a small pilot hole and increasing the bit size slowly from there. I was only able to make one hole as I gave my brother our old drill with a cord. Our newer drill is cordless and just doesn’t have the juice to drill through cast iron. I broke a bit in the process of creating this hole and have since given up on trying to make holes in the other rust cast iron cooking pot that I bought that day. They were $10 each, which was a steal as I saw others going for $30.

Since the drainage isn’t great I chose a plant that I felt could handle it. I went with this ‘Grapefruit’ mint since I knew it would quickly drape over the sides and soften the look of the pot further.

And this is what it looks like today!

Here’s a shot of it before I drilled a hole and planted it up.