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The Clay Hole University · Project Guides

Making Planters Based on What You Are PlantingPrintable pottery guide

Ask the plant what it wants, then make that: the size, the hole, the feet, the inside and the weight, worked out for twelve common houseplants.

$5.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Beginner
  • 24 printable pages
  • 6 video picks
  • 7-question quiz + answer key

Flip through the free sample
  • Instant download
  • Prints on any printer
  • The lesson stays free
The printable, at a glance

What is the Making Planters Based on What You Are Planting printable guide?

It is the planter lesson on paper: the five decisions every planter makes, a table of twelve common houseplants and what each one wants from its pot, a tick list for every step, videos with QR codes, and six things that go wrong with what each one is telling you. Built to be printed, kept by the wheel and written in.

Prefer to read it online first? The “Making Planters Based on What You Are Planting” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 24printable pages, US Letter
  • 7quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 6hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 15glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For the pot a plant is going to live in

A planter is judged by a plant, not by a shelf

Most planters are made the way most pots are made, for how they look. Then a plant goes in, and the plant has opinions. A succulent wants to dry out completely between waterings. A fern never does. A snake plant will tip over anything light, and an orchid will rot in anything tight.

None of that is settled by skill at the wheel. It is settled by a handful of choices: how big, where the water goes, whether the inside is glazed, what the pot stands on and how heavy it is. Get them right for the plant in front of you and the pot mostly designs itself.

This guide puts those choices in the order you meet them, gives you a table of what each of twelve common houseplants wants from its pot, and keeps the whole job on one page for when your hands are covered in clay.

Look inside

Real pages, for a wheel with a ruler beside it

These are actual pages from the guide, shown here with the sample watermark.

  • Page 3 of the “Making Planters Based on What You Are Planting” printable guide: before you begin, shown with the sample watermark
    Before you beginSix boxes on one page: what you will learn, what to have on the bench, what is worth knowing, the common pitfalls, what success looks like and how to practice. Read it before you sit down and again before the kiln.
  • Page 5 of the “Making Planters Based on What You Are Planting” printable guide: the five decisions, shown with the sample watermark
    The five decisionsDepth and width, drainage, the inside, what it stands on, and weight, each in a couple of lines. If you read one page before you sit down, read this one.
  • Page 12 of the “Making Planters Based on What You Are Planting” printable guide: videos with codes, shown with the sample watermark
    Videos with codesPotters and a gardener, each video with its own QR code. Scan the one that matches the build you are on and it opens on your phone, so the wheel stays clean.
  • Page 18 of the “Making Planters Based on What You Are Planting” printable guide: every planter, and the plant it was for, shown with the sample watermark
    Every planter, and the plant it was forA log to write in: the plant, the size, the hole, the inside and what actually happened. Two rows in and the next pot starts from a note instead of a memory.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

You will be looking at it with clay on your hands

A planter is decided in a few short bursts at the wheel and judged weeks later by a plant. Paper suits both.

  • The table stays open

    The plant table is the page you want beside the wheel and beside the shelf of pots you are choosing from. A page stays where you left it and does not time out.

  • Tick as you go

    Every step ends in a short tick list, so a hole that got skipped shows up as an empty box now, not as a yellow leaf in three weeks.

  • A note for the next one

    A plant tells you what it thought of the pot long after the pot is finished. The planter log is where that goes, so the next pot for the same kind of plant starts from what happened.

  • One page for the bench

    The questions before you sit down, the pot in order, what to check before the kiln and what to do when it goes wrong fit on a single sheet you can pin up.

How this one is built

Rebuilt for paper, not printed from a web page

Every guide in the series is set from scratch for print. Here is what that meant for this one.

  • The kiln rule, put back

    The glaze rules now say what the studio has always said: a kiln cookie or glaze catcher goes under every planter, and a glazed inside sits right over the hole.

  • A finish that survives the kiln

    The lesson promised a burnished shine on a bare inside. The studio’s own burnishing lesson says the firing takes it back, so the guide says so and offers a finish that lasts.

  • The right drill bit

    Drilling out a fired pot now says a diamond bit, water and safety glasses, the way the studio’s fused pottery lesson does.

  • Seedling pots priced properly

    The cookie deal is in, so a set of small pots that share a kiln cookie is understood as the one firing it is.

  • Written for any studio

    Clay Hole facts are named as ours and dated, so a reader working somewhere else knows which parts are a Clay Hole fact and which are a rule of the craft.

  • A quiz that explains itself

    An answer key that gives the reason behind every answer rather than only the letter, and codes that keep working because every link is a short Clay Hole address.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “Making Planters Based on What You Are Planting” lesson, and that lesson is not going anywhere.

People bring me a planter they are proud of, and it is usually a good pot. The trouble is that it was made for a shelf, and a plant is not a shelf.

The hole is the least glamorous part of the whole piece and the one that decides whether anything survives in it.

After that you get to have fun.

Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole
The series

Build a little pottery library

Every printable guide in The Clay Hole University series takes one free lesson and rebuilds it for paper, with workbook pages, a glossary and a quiz with a worked answer key. Each one keeps its number for good, so a guide you buy today is the same guide in the same place next year.

Put any five printable guides in your cart and the cheapest one is on us. Put in nine and the two cheapest are on us. It happens automatically at checkout, no code to remember.

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Sits next to

Three lessons that pick up where this one leaves off

Each one is free to read online, and the codes in the guide take you straight there.

Questions

Good to know

How is this different from the free lesson?
The teaching is the same, and the free lesson is not going anywhere. The guide is that teaching rebuilt for paper: a learning dashboard at the front, a tick list at every step, a one page summary for the bench, a planter log to write in, a glossary and a quiz with an answer key that explains every answer.
Do I need a wheel?
No. The guide covers the wheel, the slab roller and slab molds, and pinch pots, and one of its videos builds a bonsai pot by hand from slabs. The five decisions are the same however you make the pot.
What if my plant is not in the table?
The table covers twelve common houseplants. For anything else, look at the roots and at how the plant likes to be watered, find the closest row, and use the five decisions to work out the rest.
Is this too early for me?
It is marked Beginner. Nothing in it needs a new hand skill: every decision is made from the plant and a ruler before the clay is touched, and none of them takes practice to get right.
Can I use it for a planter that lives outside?
Yes, and the guide says what matters. What cracks a pot in winter is water sitting inside it and freezing, so the hole, the feet and an emptied saucer count for more than the clay.
Do I need a fancy printer?
No. It is set for an ordinary home or office printer on regular US Letter paper, with nothing important near the edges, so normal printer margins cut nothing off.
Does it print in black and white?
Yes. It is designed to stay readable in grayscale, and the workbook pages are mostly ruled lines and text, so a plain black and white printer does them justice.
Can I print just part of it?
Yes, and most people do. The plant table, the one page summary and the planter log are the three worth having by the wheel. They are numbered pages like any other, so you can print those and leave the rest on a screen.
Can I read it on a screen instead?
Yes. It is an ordinary PDF and it reads fine on a tablet or a phone. The workbook pages are the ones that want paper, because you write on them.
How does delivery work?
It is a digital download. The link arrives by email and on the order confirmation page right after checkout, so you can have it printed and beside the wheel the same evening.
What happens if the guide is updated?
Every edition carries its version number on the last page. When we correct or improve one, the new edition replaces the old one in the shop, and we can send the updated link to anybody who already bought it.
Can I share it?
It is licensed for your own use. Print as many copies for yourself as you like, on as many of your own devices as you like. Please do not pass the file on, upload it or use it with a class or a group without asking us first.

Ask the plant first, and the rest is making a pot

Measure the roots, cut a real hole, put something under it, and pick the inside the plant is asking for. Do those four and the rest is ordinary pot making. Skip one and the handsomest pot in the room becomes a very slow way to lose a fern, which is why this one is worth reading before you open the clay rather than after.

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