Do you have old flower pots, planters and containers sitting around the yard with dead plants in them or old tired looking soil and don’t want to throw the pot away? You can easily clean them up, upcycle them or even repurpose them. Here’s how to reuse your old gardening pots.
How To Reuse Your Old Gardening Pots
There are two kinds of flower pots that I work with. There are the ceramic (glazed) pots and the plain clay pots. The ceramic are more decorative and they are sealed; so the water does not drain out and needs a hole in the bottom of it or the plant can easily be over watered.
The clay pots are more natural and I like the way the color of the pot looks as a backdrop of the flowers. They do need to be watered more often though because the pots “breathe.”
If you find you need a pot for a new starter or a plant you just couldn’t resist that you saw on sale, you first need to scrape all of the old plant and soil out of the old pot. Then rinse off all of the soil left. You can take any old silverware brush (the one with a long handle) and brush out the soil.
Once all of the soil is out, wash the pot out with soap in a tub outside. Make sure that you rinse the soap off well, and let it try out in the sun. This is especially important with the clay pots, because the clay will absorb the soap and this may kill your new plant.
Now that you have a clean, fresh, dry flower pot, take an old pantyhose and cut a piece off to fit in the bottom of the pot. This is to keep the soil from escaping out the bottom each time you water.
Some say to put pebbles or broken flower pot pieces in the bottom, but then some of the soil will still drain out of the hole, so I like to use the stockings. Then I put about an inch or two of small rocks or gravel as the drainage base.
Next, fill the pot with your new soil of choice and put the new plant on top and fill the rest of the pot around the edges and push the soil slightly (not too hard) so that you won’t have air pockets around the roots.
I also like to put a few flat pebbles on the top so that when I water the plant, the soil won’t compact on the water spot and leave a hole on the top of the soil. This way you don’t have to keep adding new soil to the water spot and it is decorative and more natural looking with the pebbles.
Be sure to find a nice, sunny spot for your new friend and water as recommended.
How do you like to reuse your old gardening pots?
