Tag Archives: pot

A Zero-Waste Seedling Bag You Can Plant Directly into Soil

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I tried baking, painting, and gardening to pass the time during the pandemic in my small city apartment. While the pandemic is long over, gardening continues to be a better part of my life. It helps soothe my mind and provides home-grown vegetables and herbs. One thing that I despise about procuring seedlings from local nurseries is the plastic grow bags they come in. If you are anything like me and do not like these seedling bags, industrial designer Jacob Boyd has come up with a biodegradable solution that brings people and urban farms closer.

Meet Bough Pot, a biodegradable seedling bag made from recycled pulp, bound by rice paste. Born out of a collaboration of Vancouver-based Jacob Boyd with Carleton University and a local community center, the plant vessel is a way to connect community center users and urban farms. The pot is produced in the centers using 3D-printed compression molds.

Designer: Jacob Boyd

The Bough Pot is designed as a holistic system to link users with urban farms. In winter, community center visitors are gifted a pot with a vegetable seed sown inside. Users take care of the pot through the germination phase of the seed and in its early life stages. Once the soil temperature rises in spring, the pots are returned to be planted at local urban farms. The entire process helps foster farming practices in community center users’ homes and produce a higher yield of food in urban farms.

The Bough Pot is fully decomposable and can be directly planted in the soil with a seedling inside. This way, the roots of the plants don’t get disturbed and the breaking down of the pot will act as a food source for microbes. It offers a healthier alternative to germination or seedling trays and take better care of the plant.

Boyd has designed the Bough Pots in different sizes with impressions on each vessel. These impressions help the pots ‘nestle’ when placed together, allowing users to make custom arrangements. The plant vessels are available in a handleless and a handled version. Handled variation makes transportation easier from farm to home, and vice versa. Boyd has made these open-source molds available for free to facilitate wider use.

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Mapu Speakers bring technology and craftsmanship together

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There are people that love to pit technology against art or craftsmanship but those of us who know better know that the two can actually complement each other. There are products and designers out there who seek to fuse the two together and even bring innovation and improvements to the two worlds. One such product is a speaker that uses natural materials and is created by traditional craftspeople.

Designer: Mapu

The Mapu Speakers is a line of speakers that are made from natural materials like clay, wood, cork, and wool and handcrafted by traditional craftsmen in Chile and Portugal The goal is to create a new generation of craftspeople, “building a bridge between ancestral knowledge and technology”. Aside from having quality speakers so you can listen to your music, audiobooks, and podcasts, you also get a piece of art that you can display in your space.

The wooden cones and caps that are in the center of the driveractually optimize the high frequencies so you get a “vivid, spatial, and engaging sound”. The wool is used for the internal acoustic insulation while the leather and cork are also ideal for insulation due to their high tensile strength and heat resistance. The spherical shape of the vessel also adds to the sound quality that you get so you know that it’s not just beautiful but you get a pretty good speaker.

The Mapu Speakers are also 80% biodegradable so that’s another bonus for those who are looking for something pretty different for their speakers. The Mapuguaquén is already sold out on their website but the Mapu Preto and the Mapu Soenga, available in mono and stereo versions. The vessel-like shapes of the speaker line make it pretty attractive even if you don’t know yet the handicraft story behind it.

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Futuristic indoor pot concept turns your plant into a virtual pet

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We all know that plants are living things, but we also often just treat them as objects simply because they don’t behave like animals and humans. It’s almost hard for us to wrap our heads around the fact that the mostly stationary creatures in pots are alive until they show signs of withering and dying. We’d probably have a completely different attitude if those plants started to show expressions or visibly react to changes in the environment and human interaction. That’s the kind of paradigm shift that this smart plant pot concept is trying to develop by creating a holographic representation of the plant that makes you feel like you’re taking care of a pet instead of just a succulent.

Designers: Dingyu Xiao, Bouyan Pan, Jianshen Yuan, “me me” (Suosi Design)

Plants are like pets with very stoic personalities. They don’t immediately react to the way you take care of them but the effects reveal themselves sooner or later, whether they’re good or bad. The delayed feedback might sometimes make us also slow to respond, sometimes leading to a detached and impersonal relationship that could lead to the plant’s untimely demise. Of course, we could just use one of those smart, self-watering planters, but that widens the gap even further.

Planpet is a smart plant pot concept that tries to create a more personal connection between humans and plants by giving the plant a face and changing the way we see it. There’s a glass cube standing on one end of the box-shaped pot, right beside where the actual hole for the plant is. This cube isn’t just some extraneous embellishment, however, and is actually a holographic display that shows a miniature 3D representation of the plant with one big difference: it actually has an expressive face.

The idea is that the user will select a virtual character that best resembles the type of plant being put in the pot. But more than just a passive face, this virtual plant will change its facial expressions based on real-time soil and environment analysis. It will react when you give it enough light, when you water it, or even when forget to take care of it.

Planpet is pretty much like Tamagotchi for plants but with more significant consequences in the real world. Rather than waiting for the plant to dry up and die before you get a clue, seeing the expressions the “plant pet” makes gives more immediate feedback and warnings when things aren’t going well for the plant. It still won’t be able to dynamically respond to your actions or commands unless you add a pinch of AI, but just having a face that can express some emotions is enough to really make the plant feel more alive, driving home the responsibility of raising a plant just as you would a dog or a cat.

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This non-toxic Dutch Oven helps you craft culinary masterpieces with ease and confidence

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Cooking should be an enjoyable and satisfying activity, and while that might be the case for some, it isn’t always true for everyone. Some deplore the multiple steps involved, especially when it comes to cleaning up the mess afterward. Others are also wary of cookware options available, not just in terms of design or performance but especially when the safety and cleanliness of cooking equipment are concerned, which affect both the taste and safety of the food. Not all cookware puts this feature as a priority, focusing more on convenience or appearances at the expense of people’s health. Fortunately, there are exceptions to the rule, and this do-it-all Dutch Oven brings safety, convenience, and taste together in one uncompromising cooking tool.

Designer: HK Kim

Click Here to Buy Now: $186 $219 (15% off with coupon code “yanko”). Hurry, deal ends in 48 hours!

It’s too easy to take for granted how the kind of pot or pan we cook our food in can actually affect the quality of the dish. Some pans might not heat evenly, for example, while others have a coating that could change the taste of the food in some manner. Worse, however, is how toxins for metals or their coating might be released into the food thanks to the heat, poisoning it and your body little by little. This kind of safety isn’t always at the top of manufacturers’ lists, but the Hesselbach Dutch Oven actually makes it its number one priority.

PuraSteel™ – PuraSteel™ combines the heat retention of cast iron with the rust-free resilience of stainless steel—all while being non-toxic.

PuraCotta™ – Offers a non-toxic, non-stick surface that enhances the flavor of your food.

The pot is made from a proprietary PuraSteel material and coated with PuraCotta to deliver the same kind of durability and performance you’d expect from similar cookware, but with the dangers of toxins and poisons that can be found in heavy metals like iron as well as by-products from hard anodization. Even the lid doesn’t have a screw for the handle, ensuring that no rust will ever fall on your delicious dish. With this focus on safety, you can cook to your heart’s content, knowing that you and your loved ones will be eating scrumptious and clean meals every time.

The Hesselbach Dutch Oven’s special materials also means that it has exceptional heat retention, ensuring that the pot heats up quickly, spreads evenly, and keeps a consistent temperature for long periods of time. This makes the Dutch Oven great for searing and frying, and it can keep the food warm longer even after you’ve removed it from the stove. And because food is cooked more evenly, food naturally tastes better, especially when there’s meat involved.

Of course, these aren’t the only feats that this exceptional Dutch Oven is capable of. Whether you’re simmering or baking, its unparalleled heat distribution makes sure that no part is undercooked or overcooked. With its versatile performance, you can switch from flame to oven to induction without missing a beat. And when the cooking and the eating are finally done, the ultra-pure ceramic surface makes it easier while using less soap. And, yes, you can even put it inside a dishwasher for an even more effortless time.

Hesslebach Founder – Driven by love and necessity, HK Kim channeled his mastery of metals into pioneering a culinary revolution for health.

This non-toxic Dutch Oven isn’t just a safe and versatile piece of cookware, it’s also quite the looker, too! With a modern and sophisticated design, you can start serving directly from the pot, making it the centerpiece of your dining experience. With its uncompromising safety, exceptional performance, and elegant aesthetics, the Hesslebach Dutch Oven promises a safer and cleaner cooking experience so that you can enjoy making the dishes you love to share and eat with the people you love.

Click Here to Buy Now: $186 $219 (15% off with coupon code “yanko”). Hurry, deal ends in 48 hours!

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Odd planter concept lets you enjoy observing your plants grow in a fun way

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Different people tried to cope with the pandemic quarantine in different and sometimes creative ways. While some were content to catch up with their TV shows and games, others took up new hobbies to while away the time. One of the more popular ones seems to have been growing plants indoors, which is not totally new but also not something adopted by the masses. Even here, there’s a variety of goals and purposes to indoor gardening, though a majority seems to have been focused on the more aesthetic benefits of having lush, green living things inside the home. Ironically, these people seldom go out of their way to grow those plants in equally aesthetic pots, something that this design concept tries to solve right from the start.

Designer: Adrian Min

You can’t just use any container to serve as a plant pot, of course, regardless of how pretty that container might be. There are a few factors to consider to allow a plant to thrive and survive, which is often what informs the design of a planter. These more functional planters, however, aren’t what you’d always call presentable, definitely nothing you’d proudly display on your table or shelf. That doesn’t have to be that way, though, and this “Odd Pot” concept marries form and function in a way that looks not only appealing but also playful.

It’s definitely an odd one for a pot, though mostly because of its unconventional shape. It comes as a tall bowl that stands on three short tapered legs. Instead of a typical brown clay, the pot seems to be made from some terrazzo material, probably ceramic. A removable disc knob juts out from the pot’s back and is the primary mechanism for its highlight feature.

This feature comes in the form of a half capsule that adds something interesting to the presentation while also giving the viewer a different way to look at the plant in the pot. This “cover” is made from glass but has different textures as well as transparencies. One is completely smooth and transparent, while another is smooth yet frosted. Perhaps the curious one is the ribbed clear glass that adds an interesting play of light with its reflections and refraction.

While the Odd Pot retains pretty much the exact same function of a regular planter, its form takes the presentation to the next level. With its stumps for legs and an “arm” that extends from its body, it almost looks like an anthropomorphic version of a planter. It might even remind some of the “sus” characters from a popular game from the past year or two. Granted, the pot’s design isn’t going to be conducive to all kinds of plants, particularly the ones that grow tall or wide. But for most succulents, it will do just fine and will even add a bit of character to your plant decoration.

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This self-sufficient plant pot is also a beautiful desk light and decoration

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People have different reasons for raising different kinds of plants in different locations. Some grow vegetables outdoors both as a hobby as well as a source of fresh food. Others have indoor herbs they could pluck out and add to their food in a flash. There are also plenty that raise green things to add some literal life into rooms and houses, giving them both something to do and something to look at when stuck at home like in the past two years or so. Despite being less involved than growing things you can eat, raising houseplants isn’t trivial, especially with all the different factors involved. Fortunately, there is a growing number of appliances designed to make that activity almost dead simple, and this smart, self-watering pot is made to look just as beautiful as the plant that it puts on display.

Designer: Ivan Zhurba

While there are definitely plants that require very little maintenance, like succulents that have become a bit trendy recently, most small plants you’d want to grow indoors need more than just watering each day. In fact, it might be bad for the plant if you shower it with water that often. The plant will also need sunlight, which might not be available all the time or in all places in your house. Fortunately, the Vivo Pot takes care of both for you.

At its core, Vivo (no relation to the smartphone brand) is a self-sufficient and self-watering pot, allowing you to almost have no involvement in the day-to-day maintenance of the plant. It also has COB (chip-on-board) LEDs that deliver the light that the plant needs to grow. Admittedly, there are now a few devices or designs that offer the same capabilities, but what makes the Vivo Pot different is that it is a sight to behold on its own, whether it has a growing plant to show off or not.

When completely closed and unused, the pot resembles an egg, which is a fitting metaphor for the start of life. Curved grooves swirl around its body, giving it a distinct dynamic look that turns it into a decorative piece that sits on your desk or shelf. Of course, the pot is meant to be opened, and the height-adjustable lid rises to make room for what would be the plant of your choosing.

This lid contains those bright LEDs, turning the Vivo Pot into a desk lamp as well. Of course, it wouldn’t be wise to rely on it as your only desk lamp since it simply augments rather than replaces your light source. To give off an even better atmosphere, there is a ring of light surrounding the plant, showing it off and giving you a unique night lamp should you need illumination in the dark. All in all, these are quite simple ideas, but the beautiful way they are combined together is what makes this concept design just as refreshing as the verdant life that’s growing inside it.

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California DAs can now use an app to clear thousands of pot convictions

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A pilot scheme in five California counties has automatically identified around 75,000 cannabis convictions that will be dismissed or reduced. Now, district attorneys across the state have access to Code for America's Clear My Record software to exped...

Amazon Prime Day One best-sellers that are still up for grabs: Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, Instant Pot DUO, LifeStraw and more

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If you have not joined in on the biggest summer sales event of the year, now is the perfect time as Amazon continues to offer more than 100,000 Prime Day deals that are live now and are still to come...