Got this from a Plumeria list but some here may want to try it.  You can put zebra stripes on your pot or paisley if you want.  You can turn 1) 25 gal pot in to hundreds.  No idea what this costs to do or where to get the acrylic fibers.

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/4100783/945587349/name/Hypertufa%20Pots%2Edocx

Or

http://www.marthastewart.com/268962/hypertufa-pots

Bob, i will be making some of these in a few weeks. i plan on making some big ones.

Gardenweb has a hypertufta forum with lots of links, photos and ideas too.  You can build benches, pots, or statues with that stuff as long as you have a form, which can be almost anything!   A little creativity can go a long way with hypertufta!

I've wanted to play with it for a long time, but no place to do it at our current residence.  The new property has this really cool, spacious boat garage under a patio deck, and JD is going to build me a potting shelf with a sink to be used for wine-making and potting.  Hypertufta needs shade to dry, so that spot will be perfect.

Would love to see photos of what you guys make!

Suzi

In my chicken feed store, they sell long 8" boards for making permanent raised beds, that you can un-do and take with you, if you move. the looking boards were made of cement and some wooden chips in it, much lighter...perhaps this same composition, this is an excellent idea for those large plants, perhpas with reinforcing wire mesh to hold the shape.

Good luck, Dennis!  Hope you find the plastic reinforcing fiber.   Show us photos!

Thanks Bob! I got a couple of pounds of it.

Where did you find it?  I haven't been able to.

oh boy oh boy oh boy

this thread is awesome. 

On doing more research I'm definitely not making the 30 gallon pots I wanted to make.  Turns out to make a 21x21x24" (30 Gal) rectangular pot with 3/4" thick walls as mentioned by Martha I'd need just over 1 Cu ft of hypertufa.  The best engineering students have been able to come up with is 58 lbs/cu ft.  A 60 lb pot is out of the question.  A 15 Gal pot would weigh 30 lbs.  Also out of the question.  And there's no guarantee a 3/4" wall would be strong enough to withstand moving in to the garage every winter.  Back to scrounging plastic pots for me!

So I'm out.  Good luck to the rest of you!

I love it. I have huge oak wine barrels to use. I will stop by Home Depot. Yay, I have a project! Thank you for sharing this :-)

I tried something similar 3 years ago, I used stuff I had laying around at the time, don't remember the exact mix now but it was cement, flexible tile adhesive, PVA glue, and some fiberglass strands, with chicken wire and wine barrels for molds, they wore really strong but also really heavy, looked beautiful... Ended up leaving them at the old house when we shifted. 
Jennifer make sure to line the inside of your barrels with plastic makes slipping them out so much easier.     

Greetings All

I started experimenting making my own hand-made Hypertufa flower pots this Fall. Ingredients include equal parts of Portland cement, regular peat moss, and perlite. Most fig gardners have two of the three around the house already.

In addition to flower pots I also recently turned out a bird bath.

Here are a few photos before I zip off to work. I'll add a few more later. Since the birdbath top is pretty large, I embedded chicken wire into my mold, this gives it a nice structure for strength, like mini rebar.

Beautiful, Mike!  How much did they weigh?

Hey Dennis

Before you make any large hypertufa pots or planters, I'd suggest that you make a smaller batch of hypertufa and construct a few experimental flower pots so you get a feel for the thickness or thinness of the material. If you are going to have an outer container, and an inner container, the material can be much thinner. If you plan on just putting hypertufa over top a mold, it has to be much thicker, less wet, and just moist so it holds it's' shape. Like a very dry cottage cheese.

Here's a picture of outer, inner design with inner molds in place:

Bob, don't rule the pots out yet. I got my fibers from Amazon. I don't think those I plan on making will be more than an inch thick. I've researched these in depth. I like Jennifer's idea using one whiskey barrel. I bought one of those but returned it. My pots won't be exactly 30 gallons. What I want is a completed Hyper pot that measures 17" deep and 23" in diameter. In planning something this size, it requires some research. A whiskey barrel would work but I wish the barrels were 6 inches taller!!!!!!! I found a large round pond insert that I will be my base.

Mark, many thanks for the photos, they speak volumes!!!! I like the basket idea and I might try that.

Assuming those are the outside dimensions of a cylinder and you have a wall thickness of 1", your pot will weigh a minimum of 51 lbs.  If those are the inside dimensions it will be heavier.  One thing I notice is that all the big pots I see are typically 3" thick, not 1.  If you don't need to move it much these are great.  Mine go in & out of the garage and so I can't handle the weight.  5541 cu" is a lot of soil, too.  When wet from fall rains I'd have a pot over 200 lbs to try to bring in.

OTOH, 2 rows of these flanking the driveway could be great.   :)

I've wanted to make some containers like this for years. I want to make 'troughs' for succulents. But there always seems to be so much other stuff to do. My plan was to use an inner and outer mold, and the walls would be rather thick. Much like Mark's creations.

Something like this.. photo from 'the internet' (the lower left one looks like a dishpan was used as the outer mold.)

Not large enough for figs, but I just found what appears to be a very nice, detailed tutorial for making troughs for small plants.

http://cactiguide.com/article/?article=article15.php

A link to my facebook hypertufa album 

Have made different mixes with good results on small pots.  Never made a big one.  In my experience the curing time in a plastic bag is critical.  A month seems to be pretty good.  Going to pick up some more materials and get to making some fig pots.  

This pot was formed in a large plastic salad bowl with trash bag liner. :) 

 

Im looking for bigger containers, but these seem really heavy. Ill stick with my plans of making wood boxes. Sounds like a fun and rewarding project though.

How hot do those get in direct sunlight?  Seems like they would absorb quite a bit of heat..

I was thinking they would provide good insulation.

I have a plastic liner that fits inside of a whiskey barrel.  It has a lip on it which is good for pulling out but I have not tried making any pots yet.   I also got some 55g plastic barrels.  I have an idea.  I may try one this weekend.  I want the thickness to be at least 2 inches thick.  I got some fiberglass flakes to strengthen the pot.  I need to play around with this.  More to come....

dependind on the ratio of cement/perlite/moss, the pots can be quite light and porous, I would imagine. 

I am also an aquarium nerd (not just fig nerd) and we use similiar recipes to create custom rock formations in our reef tanks.  Some artists over at reefcental have created some truly amazing homemade rock structures, usually using cement/perlite/crushed oyster shell.  water pours through them like a seive.

I would expect moss to break down over time.  fiberglass fibers or plastic hardware cloth makes a better substrate IMO for lending mechanical strength to the composite.

Here are my 2 chosen molds. I may make a square exterior mold because I want my pots to be the America depth as these 2 pots. The one on the left holds 30g. The one on the right holds 25. Whatever I make will be a self watering test pot.