New(ish) Square Trough

I made this trough last summer as an experiment in height.  Most of my troughs are under a foot tall.  This one's 17" tall.  It makes a nice counterpoint to a group of low troughs but I felt like it was too narrow.  Yesterday I set aside the short sides of the mold and made two more long sides.  Now I have a square mold.  

Here's the assembled mold (right) and its inner core.  I also had to make two new sides for the core.  The inside of the outer mold is coated with petroleum jelly to ensure a clean release from the concrete. The inner core is four pieces of wood held together with shrinkwrap, not screws.  

In this photo you can see the 1" pink foam board that will result in "feet" being cast on the planter.   There's a 2" piece of cardboard tube sitting on top of the foam.  This will be the drainage hole.

The first batch of hypertufa ready to go.  In the front left of the photo you can see the larger bits of the peat moss that I've screened out.

The bottom of the planter is packed and I'm ready to add the inner core.  That big metal float in the mixing pan is great for really applying pressure to the wet mix.

The core goes in so I can cast the walls.

The mold is fully packed with hypertufa.

I wrapped it up with plastic until I can demold it in 2 days.

It was pretty sweaty working in the garage today.  It's supposed to be 94 on Tuesday when I need to demold.  There's a reason I cast most of these in the early spring and late fall, but sometimes I just can't wait.