Cheap, DIY and Recycled Plant Pots

The little Sublime lime in its DIY wastepaper
bin pot.

If you have a sudden influx of seedlings and small plants, then there are a few ways you can scrounge up extra pots very cheaply.


This is the list of things that I have been doing

• Recycle all the original pots that every plant you have ever bought came in (obviously!)
• I had a vast stack of these at one point, as everything I bought went into the garden or into a bigger pot that I had to buy new. Now I've almost run out - and I'm having to find alternatives for certain sizes.
• I have a lot of tiny seedling sized ones, though. I'm going to try growing individual beetroot and carrots in them!

• Random plastic containers around the house (just make sure to add drainage as appropriate)
• E.g. I cut milk bottles in half and use them as seedling trays
• Any bottle or container can be turned into an actual pot
• Try planting a seedling or cutting on the lid and put the jar over it for moisture

• Cardboard boxes outside (will last a while and good for temporary pots, difficult sizes and 'decomposing in place' as very cheap, modular raised beds (complete with readymade mulch flaps!).
• If you have any interestingly shaped ones such as poster tubes or long boxes you can fill it with soil and cut holes along it, then turn it on its side and plant a row of plants.

• Cheap stuff from $2 type shops. 
• E.g. Large plastic bowls and basins (punch holes into them - carefully, the plastic is terrible quality). 
• Colanders are awesome for strawberries if you can find some with the right design. 
• You'll often find much cheaper hanging baskets which you can fill yourself with peastraw or newspaper (instead of getting the nice but costlier readymade coconut fibre basket padding).
• Baskets (e.g. laundry baskets and wastepaper bins) come in a variety of shapes and sizes, have readymade drainage, and often look reasonably nice. Line them with weed matting and you have an extremely cheap air pruning pot.
• These are ideal for plants that need to drain easily
• A large laundry basket is usually much, much cheaper than an equivalent sized pot.  


• Just make a rough 'fabric pot' out of double layered cheap weedmat!

• Or use a reusable bag (one of those sturdy fabric-ish type ones).

• Or just plant directly in the bag of compost - an old standby that I haven't actually done yet, because I feel like I'm 'wasting' the compost. But it's cheap (apart from the effort of hauling it home on my bike trailer - a Burley Travoy Bike Trailer , by the way, and absolutely amazing. I can carry two standard bags of soil on it easily).

Alpine strawberry plant in a sturdy colander.
If I ever want to hang it, I can easily drill holes in the handles as well!

Downsides:

The main downsides to this approach are that some of the containers will degrade quickly or require you to put them together yourself (with room for error creeping in there!).

Here we have a cheap plastic bowl to catch
run off (and keep the roots damp, as it's
a Jaboticaba) and an equally cheap wire
 basket with weedmat.

They may also look pretty ugly.

There's also the need to know a bit about the plants you're potting, as the much wider than normal variation in containers means that some plants won't do as well if you get it wrong.

Upsides:

A great deal of flexibility, both in finding pots and in customising them for the plants and location.

You can pick containers that suit different kinds of plants (such as large shallow ones for strawberries, tall ones for small trees, basket types for plants that don't like wet feet or that you're trying to keep small and air pruned, easy to hang shapes, small pots, large pots... ).

Also, CHEAP. And a great way to recycle stuff or create pots on the fly.

Examples of DIY Containers

Left: Meyer Lemon in its laundry basket. Self contained, and will drain easily.

Right: Strawberries. The large bowl at the bag has random slits and holes punched into the base. It's wide and shallow, so great for strawberries - in fact, I haven't seen any proper' pots that shape for sale at all.

 Left: Strawberry Plants.


• shop bought planters. Nice, but cost five times as much as the other options.
• cheap planters with pea straw
• 'proper' strawberry growbag (green, left)
• a colander (bright green)
• a random white basket tray with weedmat liner
• a sort of plastic sieve/colander (dark blue, top)


Right: Banana Misi Luki. The banana has been very happy in its laundry basket (with weedmat lining). Like the Meyer lemon, it needs to be contained and not get wet feet. This is also going to be easy to move, if it turns out not to work in my garden. But so far, it's doing extremely well.

Left: Plastic cover for a shop bought cake makes a good tray for a collection of chamomile seedlings in peat pots (being raised for lawn edging and eventual replacement. Vastly cheaper than buying larger plants!)

Right: Forget-me-not seedlings sprouting in their DIY basket-weedmat container (now large and healthy - the black edging is hidden under a mass of leaves.

Half a milk bottle makes a great seedling tray! 

Left: Neglected broccoli seedlings that I was slowly transplanting out

Right: Peat pots soaking in water before adding seeds (The far left is the sturdiest tray, but means that you can't use the 'handle' half. You can fit the same number of peat pots in both designs (10)

Left: Another sturdy container with readymade drainage. The broccoli in it is doing fantastically well now (see right/ this post - it's one of the first brocolli batches to flower)



Right: DIY attempt at a self watering hanging container. Half a bottle with holes inside a hanging container (the frame is from an old lampshade!). The sweetpeas and forget-me-nots haven't grown much, but nor have they died (it doesn't get enough light either - I can't reach the other hooks in that corner!).

 I've also got a few other weird makeshift pots around. I'll update with photos of them some time.