Smart Gardeners Hoard Plastic Pots: Here's 10 Reasons Why!

For most gardeners an unruly pile of old pots goes with the territory, and an estimated 500 million are used each year! But with some ingenuity we can reuse plant pots so you’ll never again be left wondering what on earth to do with them all…

1. Make Plant Collars

Cut the bottom off pots to leave a collar. These make fab little protectors for seedlings and young transplants. Just pop them over the seedling and the collar will protect against chilly winds as well as nibblers like woodlice and earwigs.

2. Boost Your Tomatoes

Larger bottomless containers are fantastic for offering tomatoes a little additional support at the base of the stem. Simply fill it with potting mix or soil at planting time and plant into it. The extra potting mix around the stem will encourage additional roots to grow out into it, better anchoring the tomato into place while offering the plant more opportunity to draw up nutrients and moisture. It’s also a great way to extend the root zone in tighter spots like growing bags.

3. Handy Storage

Pots also make handy storage containers for bits and bobs like pruners, twine, plant labels and pens. Fix them somewhere handy – for example to a greenhouse bench – so those things you always need are close to hand.

4. Save on Potting Mix

Large containers can use a lot of potting mix, adding both weight and cost. Many plants don’t need this much depth – for example salad leaves like lettuce, herbs, or strawberries – so save on potting mix by part-filling the bottom of the container with an upside-down pot. Use two pots if the plastic is a bit flimsy or the potting mix potentially quite heavy. Fill in with your potting mix as usual. The result? A lighter container that’s less demanding of pricey potting mix.

5. Make a Bug Hotel

This is a fantastic little project for wildlife enthusiasts of all ages: take a decent-sized pot and fill it with a range of natural, dry materials. This will provide a safe haven for beneficial bugs to overwinter in your garden, so they’re around to eat pests that appear in spring. Autumn is an especially good time to put together a bug hotel like this as insects look for somewhere to bed down for the colder months.

Hollow stems are perfect – bamboo cane sections for example – as well as dry leaves, bark, sticks, straw, and moss. Pack them in so they are flush with the rim of the container, and tightly so they don’t fall out. Pop your bug hotel somewhere quiet and out of the way. It won’t be long before those bugs move in!

6. Control Earwigs

Earwigs are fantastic at helping to control soft-bodied pests such as aphids. But they can also nibble at young shoots and the petals of ornamentals such as dahlias.

Here’s a nifty way to keep them in check where you don’t want them (or indeed encourage them where you do, for example close to fruit trees). Stuff a pot with moist straw, then push the straw-filled pot onto the top of a bamboo cane. The pot needs to be at about the same level as the flowers you’re trying to protect.

The earwigs will walk up the canes and hide in the straw, which they’ll find incredibly cosy and inviting! Earwigs are most active at night, so check on your traps during the day and simply relocate any earwigs you find to elsewhere in the garden by just shaking them out. Or leave them be to help keep numbers of other pests in check.

7. Limit the Spread of Invasive Plants

Some plants are well behaved, sitting tight and growing at a manageable pace. And then there are those rampant spreaders – invaders almost – that need to be disciplined! Potentially invasive plants like mint can quickly get out of hand. A very simple way to stop them spreading is to plant them into a container, then sink that container into the soil.

I like to leave the rim of the pot just proud of the surface – you could always hide this with mulch. Sinking pots into the ground like this means you can enjoy a fantastic display without the worry of invasive plants getting out of hand. It also makes it easy to tailor the potting mix to what’s being grown.

Alternatively, this is a great way to protect plants from the searching roots of nearby trees and shrubs, so there’s less competition for available moisture and nutrients.

8. Make Labels

If you’ve got a surplus of lighter colored plastic pots, consider cutting them down into strips to make plant labels. Having an at-the-ready stash of labels is always welcome, particularly when springtime sowings pick up pace. If you use a pencil to label your plants, you can just erase the writing and reuse the labels next season.

9. Insulate Plants From Cold

Have you ever been caught out by a late overnight cold snap in spring? It’s happened to me before. But rather than digging up recent frost-tender transplants again, rushing them back under cover, only to replant them, an alternative is to simply cover them with pots.

Stack two pots into each other to trap some air and create a bit of insulation, then pop them over your plant, perhaps adding some extra insulation such as sacking if it’s particularly cold. Remove the pots once it’s safe to do so.

10. Get Creative!

Get creative and get crafting! Paint or decorate old pots to give them a new lease of life, plant them up and hang them, or make an eye-catching display to add a ‘wow’ factor to a drab wall or fence. Turn them into garden works of art – a flower pot man for example – be as outrageous and original as you dare!

If All Else Fails, Reuse Plastic Plant Pots as…Plant Pots!

Plastic pots are notoriously tricky to recycle, but we can to reduce the number of new pots we’re using, by simply reusing those we already have. I like to keep a healthy stash of pots, aiming to have more than I could possibly use myself, because that means I’ve no qualms about giving away plants and seedlings – there’s always more than enough pots to go round, whether for a plant sale at my daughter’s school fete, or as a thank you to my ever-generous neighbour Trevor for looking after the garden when I’m away.

Black pots can be hard for the sorting machinery in recycling centers to see, but it may be possible to recycle other pots, either through a kerbside collection or at your local recycling centre. Check with your local authority, municipality or county government.

But if you do find yourself swamped by pots, advertise pots on sites such as Freecycle, or leave them out the front of your house for green-thumbed passersby to take. You could also try offering cleaned pots to a local plant nursery, while some garden centers offer a take-back scheme to recycle them for you.

Prevent Pests and Diseases When Reusing Plant Pots

Wash out used pots to minimise the risk of diseases, fungi, pests and their eggs hitching a free ride from one season to the next. It doesn’t take a moment and, I have to say, the end result’s rather satisfying.

Wash your pots in dishwashing liquid, using a bristly brush to scrub out as much of the old potting mix and any debris as you can. Terracotta pots often have mineral deposits along the outside, which can look a bit unsightly. The best way to remove stuff like this is to use a wire brush to lift it all off, then rinse.

There’s some debate about whether you should then soak your pots in disinfectant. I don’t do this, but if you choose to, you could leave them to soak for anything up to about half an hour. Some gardeners use bleach, but a disinfectant made from citrus extract would be more garden-friendly.

If you’d prefer to avoid plastic pots entirely, opt instead for biodegradable pots made from bamboo, grasses or coir fibre. Or for growing seedlings and transplants, make your own from newspaper, cardboard, or toilet paper tubes.