Grow Your Own Magazine

My garden grand design features a large stone trough (about 8'6" long )

I've been trying to source one and people are quoting prices in excess of £1400

I read an article a while back about tufta (sp?). Pouring a cemety type mixture into shuttering ?

Any ideas on how to make one look like the real McCoy ?

It's going in a wet shady area so should moss up quite quickly.

I would ask a builder to knock it up for you, they would be the best judge of mixture, and have the ability to get the right colour/consistancy. The problem with shuttering is the board and the joints have texture, I think you would need to either need to line the shuttering with heavy plastic to alleviate this problem, or you could get it sandblasted after you have finished to get that beaten texture. Yoghurt is supposed to help speed up the aged process with algae and moss so I'm told.

You probably know this already Maf but there are handy 'moss' recipes here:

mossgraffiti

and here:

Heavy Petal: Operation: Moss graffiti

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http://thankyouforthedays.blogspot.com/

In the woods there grew a tree
And a fine fine tree was he

I remember when we painted our concrete 'japanese lantern' with yoghurt to try and 'age' it - our old cat Charlie came along and started licking it all off!

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

Hi I make these and to make them look really good you can scrape groves into them to make them look like proper stone then you paint them with potassium permanganate this neutralizes the cement in the trough allowing you to plant up quite quickly if you then brush some live yogurt on to it and leave in a shady damp environment you get good moss growth on them.
Hope this has helped....