Alternative for plastic pots
 

Hello gardeners!

I have many orchids and I will not stop on this amount so I am looking for an alternative for plastic pots. I have this typical plastic transparent pots (bought on Orchid flower pot - Orchidea - 12,5 cm - Transparent pink – Garden Seeds Market | Free shipping), I saw that there are also 'double pots' where you can grow two orchids but still I want something else than these plastic ones. What about glass? Maybe you tried something different?

My usual alternative to plastic pots is to use unglazed terracotta pots. However, there so many different kinds of containers that people have tried using for orchids, it would be difficult to list them all.

The most important criterion is good drainage. With a very few exceptions (there are exceptions to essentially all generalizations about orchids), sitting in water rots roots. So you want to be able to have water run through the pot, flushing out the root zone and pulling fresh air in. Then, it needs to have enough air access that the orchid can dry out over a period of a few days. So... anything that meets the drainage criterion should be satisfactory.

If you don't want to have to buy pots, you can use other things, like plastic cups, deli containers, etc. as long as you make big enough holes for that important drainage.

I used to like glass containers for semi-hydroponic culture when I had a compulsion to be able to see the roots. Now that I'm cured of that, glass is too tedious to drill holes in. Give me ceramic every time!

What are your reasons for switching to something else? To use less plastic, or because you are running into specific problems with them? The other thing is, the pots in your link look more like cache-pots, so I'm a bit uncertain if you are looking for other types of outer pots, or the actual pot the plant is in.

To offer suggestions/solutions, we need to know what your objective is?

Not sure if wood would be an improvement for you, but I made some baskets out of cedar slats for my sister a few years ago for her orchids and they seem to work fairly well. Any rot resistant wood should work. Eventually they will rot, but odds are by that time it time to repot anyways.

I use ceramic pots.

I dont know your conditions and why you're looking for alternatives to plastic pots, but try mounting if you can, it gives maximum aeration to the roots and makes the orchid "feel at home" (except for terrestrial orchids of course).

As others have mentioned, you can use terracota or clay pots. Ive also seen pots made out of tree fern fiber or other types of plant fiber (I dunno what it is, looks like string), or maybe you can get a section of coconut shell with the husk and put the orchids in it.

Ive you're growing Vanda, then I've seen some people not use any media and just hang the vanda.