A novel torture device for the garden...

How's this for an unusual garden feature: 

...it looks like a medieval torture device for plant pots, doesn't it? Apparently these short towers of metal, with spiked rings, are vintage bottle drying racks, used in the wine industry, and probably French in origin.

However, they make perfect terracotta pot drying racks - or possibly, the biggest earwig-catcher I have ever seen.

“Earwig-catcher?” I hear you say, in confused tones. 

Yes, in case you haven't heard of that gardening trick, if you stuff a small plant-pot with straw or dead grass, then hang it upside down on a garden cane, pushed firmly into the ground, your earwig population will climb the cane and set up home in the straw, allowing you to dispose of them en masse from time to time.

I don't think this rack is being used to catch earwigs, but it certainly is a novel and decorative way to store small terracotta pots without them crushing each other.

And I suppose that if you wash out your pots, as we are all supposed to do, then it does indeed make a perfect drying rack for them.

Has anyone else come across something being, er, what's the trendy word, “upcycled” into use in the garden? 

 

 

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