What do you do with old nursery pots?

[natasha]

Originally Posted by sucuz

Natasha,

Couple of choices to painting your pots. Acrylic paints work well on plastic, terra cotta, or ceramic pots. You can get as creative as your heart's content. Regular cans of spray paint work also. You can put down a base coat, then free spray patterns over it or use stencil cutouts. Lightly spraying layers of different colors so that the background colors show through looks cool also.

If you are painting over terra cotta, just be sure that the pot is completely dry before painting. If there is any moisture, your paint will bubble and peel off in only a short time.

Have fun and send pics of your results for us to enjoy.

i'll try to check on acrylic paints. i have some spray cans too. but now is not a good time to do this project. the weather is too unpredictable. someday it was too hot, sometimes it rains real heavy. anyway, i think i'll just clean and bleach the pots first to prepare them.

[lindafrog]

I had a garden shed full of old pots, trays and other gardening items. I took items to the orchid society meetings and got rid of a few. Then I put a notice up at the local food coop and a listing in craigslist classifieds: jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, events, forums in the free sections. Within an hour inquiries started coming in and I ended up with over 30 people wanting the stuff. I found someone who would drive out in the country where we live and load it all up. They were happy , and so was I knowing the items did not end up in the landfill but someone was going to reuse them.
Happy growing
Lindafrog

[Royal]

Linda,

That's a great idea. There are yahoo groups in different locals too called "Freecylce." The idea is to avoid putting usable items into the landfill by finding someone who might reuse them. I never thought of that.

[natasha]

i just bought some metallic spray paints yesterday. i cleaned 12 net pots in the 3 ft stack. going to scrub them again this evening after a long soak in the bleach solution. hopefully i can spray them on sunday if the weather permits... can't wait to see my gold & silver colour pots i have limited edition gold & silver colour plastic planters - they look very nice. maybe i'll try some other colour next time. then i need to figure out where to put all these!

[Supple1957]

Like some here I use bleach to clean the pots and reuse, but I only do this once then recycle.

[phearamedusa]

The garden center at my Zehr's store offers dropoff for plant containers and related plastics, they in turn reuse of recycle the stuff.

[Junebug]

I clean, bleach and re-use the plastic ones. When they get to brittle I toss them.

Ceramic and terracotta pots get the same treatment and then I bake them in a 250 degree over for an hour or so.
Any broken ceramic or terracotta goes through the same cleaning/baking regimen. They are then busted up into smaller pieces and saved. I often use the smaller pieces as part of my orchid potting mix or place them in the bottom of pots for drainage.

[natasha]

i didn't get to paint my old pots yesterday, it was cloudy and rainy a bit. it is the perfect weather for: orchid shopping! i bring back a phal pulcherrima - the normal one i think, i already have the peloric type... also a noid chid - really i don't know what is it... but its a terrestrial

btw, i wish i can drop off old nursery pots at nurseries. maybe i should ask the uncle there next time.

[Psyguy10]

I always save mine.... i have to force myself to throw away split or broken pots

( yes i have a problem )

[natasha]

Originally Posted by Psyguy10

I always save mine.... i have to force myself to throw away split or broken pots

( yes i have a problem )

i agree that you may have a problem... i would throw away my broken, brittle or ripped pots. in one word - damaged. but i'll save good ones