How to Get Your Balcony Railing Containers to Sit Square against the Railing

The black iron balcony basket support device doesn't really do that great a job of holding the container square to the railing. What to do?

I took all my balcony rail and wall containers down the other day when that storm rolled in and finally am getting around to putting everything back up. I thought I would share a little trick that both utilizes those little pots that you end up having to through out (because they're not recyclable and, for the life of me, I can't imagine why not cause they SHOULD be) and makes your balcony rail containers actually sit properly square to your wall. Here is the trick.

You get that iron support screwed onto the top railing as per the instructions then you end up with the container like what you see in the picture above. Then you do the following.

This pot actually IS recyclable but I am going to keep it
to use to make the container sit square. It is a 4" pot across
and 3 1/2" high. 

Take one or more of those 4" pots left over from planting your greenhouse plants into your container. You can double up the pots for extra strength or put one on either side to balance. I choose just to double them and put them square in the middle of the iron back support. This limits the ability to actually see them once your container is in place. 

Sitting square in the middle of the iron back support

Now your balcony railing planter sits square! Ta-da!

Now your container should be sitting square. This way water doesn't pour out the front of the container like it use to when the container wasn't sitting straight. Also it looks A LOT better. It's just a problem with skinny railings I find. I have one of these iron supports on the 4" thick side wall and it sits square.

Much better!

The final product. Sitting square and looking good!

I have the other baskets (4 in total) one on the left and three on the right and when they are up you barely notice the containers if at all. It makes the visual line much more impressive, you don't have as much water and earth spillage and it just makes everything prettier. Simple, cheap solution. Enjoy!