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Anyone got a good place to get pots? I'm looking for 4-6 inch in quantity maybe 30 - 50 or something. I'll be using them for veggie starters so nothing fancy. I have a few and have been saving butter tubs, sour cream containers, etc for transplants but I don't think I'm going to have enough.

Thanks,

Dono

I bought my plastic pots from a local nursery. I think I bought a gross of each size ... 2, 4 and 6 inches. This was back in the 1970s and the pots weren't all that costly at the time.

I know you can buy them online. I think our local recycling operation (BRING) accepts used pots that are in good condition and resells them inexpensively. Other than that, maybe someplace like Craigslist or Freecycle might have them.

I tried freecycle no reply. I haven't tried Craigslist yet. The Mo Botanical Gardens collect most of the used pots around this area for recycling. I tried to call a nursery today but they were closed probably due to the snow.

Just wondering if there was a good online place I could go to if all else fails.

She beat me to it: FreeCycle. (Canned "speech" coming up.) Almost 7,000,000 people worldwide participate on FreeCycle lists and that there are about 6,000 lists worldwide. There are ten lists in Berlin, Germany; someone asked whether rural areas had FreeCycle, and I found the list in White Horse, Yukon Territory; it had 126 people when I looked. So...

Check out https://freecycle.org and do a zip-code/city/county Search on the landing page to find the list(s) nearest you. Read them for a couple of days? a week? until you find the list whose character feels most comfortable to you.

Now post your WANTED announcement. Understand that it's usually the FreeCycle custom that those who are getting do the picking up. Occasionally people will bring things to you, but usually the recipient goes out and gets the goods.

I've been active in FreeCycle since 2005 or 2006. My raised beds (Spring 2008) were made for a total investment of less than $40 or so due to free materials obtained via FreeCycle.

Pots for starting seeds? Probably dozens of them out there! Don't let those poor pots languish for lack of a mission! Give them a home!

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9, three FreeCycle lists

Thanks Cynthia but I already said that.

I'm sorry it didn't work. See if any of my suggestions below give you some ideas for trying again (maybe not...but I can always hope ).

The style of asking may make a difference, depending on the list you (this is now a generic "you" = anyone reading this message) post an announcement on.

Which of the following (hypothetical) WANTED requests might evoke the desired result? That is, people emailing you with an offer to come pick up some planting pots.

1) WANTED: Small Planting Pots [name of town]
==>I'd like to get a head start on my spring garden, and start veggie seeds in small planting pots. If you have unused, unloved plastic, paper, peat (or even clay!) planting pots, especially small ones, I will give them a mission in life and an appreciative home.

Thank you!

or (and I see this a lot..)

2) WANTED: Pots
==>I'm looking for pots for seeds so I can start my veggies for spring. If you have extras, please let me know; I can come and get them.

Thank you.

I have no idea whether you wrote an announcement like #1 or like #2 (this post is more of a "general FreeCycle insider view" compendium of advice), but #2 makes the reader do a LOT of work:

First, s/he needs to figure out what kind of "Pots": kitchen pots? garden pots? oh, probably garden pots. OK...plastic? clay? cardboard? peat? (and the reader hasn't even gotten past the "WANTED" line yet)

Second, what town/neighborhood are you in? In many places, this makes a difference; people like to feel that they're helping a "neighbor" or "someone I could know." Weird, but there it is.

Third, and now we're finally reading the text..."pots for seeds" Aha! That's what he wants! "Start my veggies"--for non-gardeners, even people who live with a gardener, starting seeds when there's snow on the ground seems, um, odd. So those non-gardening partners and all those non-gardening households who have someone else's stuff in the garage/on the porch won't make the connection between their pots and your seeds.

The word "extras" seems to be an unspoken taboo on FreeCycle. One of the lists I belong to is probably the most unconventional in our country (it even allows cross-talk and conversational threads), and the other two are pretty vanilla: Wanted, Offered, Taken, Received, and the occasional Thank You, FreeCycle! But no one on any of these lists, nor on a fourth to which I belonged for two years, has ever used the word extra that I can remember. "I can come and get them" isn't special; it's expected.

True-life example: When someone asked for a crockpot and DH and I had just retrieved one from the depths of his mother's garage, never used, in original packaging from the mid-'70s, I was careful to refer to it as "that" crockpot. Then, one wonderful day not a month later, a "WANTED: Crockpot" post showed up. I had already given away my old 2-quart crockpot in an upgrade to a 4-quart, but now I had "that" crockpot. The requester said that, due to the cold weather, she had realized that she really needed to set up dinner before she left for work in the morning and that it would make a real difference to her state of mind coming home if she knew that a warm meal was waiting for her because of a crockpot.

A match made in heaven. But I didn't have an extra crockpot; I had hers!

Somebody is bound to have your planting pots; try another list, if there is one, or try a different announcement. Some lists have rules about not asking more often than once a week--each list is free, within limits, to set its own policies--so check with the moderator to make sure you're not doing anything against that particular list's rules.

The one absolute, ironclad rule for FreeCycle is: No money changes hands. Nowhere, nohow, notime, noway.

Cynthia

Thanks again Cynthia though you and I have been over this before. Advocating freecycle to others on this forum. But thanks for the advice I normally set it up the way you would, to the point and with my locale.

I actually tried this late last year and had a line on some but it went dead. They told me to check back later after she got rid of something big that was in front of where the pots were stored. But now she won't respond to my emails. Try and try again but I can't wait to much longer it crunch time.

Again thanks for you advice.

Well, fie on her! and her pots! Find another list. This one doesn't deserve your efforts.

May that woman trip on her excess pots because she was too rude to acknowledge your messages and, in tripping over them, injure herself to the point of embarrassment and make a mess, breaking the pots so that the ONLY good they are is as circle templates for small children! Causing her much sweeping and cleaning while she is dirty, dusty, and inconvenienced! Causing her to regret not having responded while she could to that gardener in January!

Ooooohhh, the dog-in-the-manger attitude has *always* irked the daylights out of me. Can you tell???

Cynthia

Easy now it's not the end of the world.

But glad to know you got my back!

Kids and I started watching Angel and Buffy episodes from Season 1 (recording 4~6AM telecasts and catching up on full episodes on-line) -- and maybe watching 2~4 episodes a day is doing stuff to my imagination -- maybe that's why as I was reading Cynthia's "curse" what popped in my mind was a black cauldron of bubbling, glowing green liquid...

Good luck Gixx. You might consider my new experiment (What? Applestar has a *new* experiment? Imagine that! ). Since traditionally, seedling and transplant trays were made of wood, I'm using cardboard: 3" deep for starting seeds and 6" deep for transplants to be later planted in the garden. Amazon shipping boxes are often the right size. Cut slits or punch holes in the bottom. Can't speak for the 6" deep since I haven't grown anything to that size yet, but my first 3" mesclun box is sprouting right now. To transplant out, you're supposed to cut the soil into blocks a week earlier (For the 6" I'm thinking just as you start hardening off) -- tips of roots are pruned off and grow side roots. More roots mean more nutrient/water uptake (similar to Soil Block as well as Bonsai Growbox theory).

For 4" you can always use cut-off 2L soda bottles and 1/2 gal paper milk and juice containers. (I'm going to try using the 1/2 gal paper containers on side for deeper rooted seedlings.)

I'm not sure I'm following you Apple are you using straight up cardboard (sheets of it) than making boxes out of them or are they small cardboard containers that you use as boxes? I have a bunch of cardboard around but not quite boxes without some modification.

To maybe cheer up Cynthia I do save everything that could be made into a pot. Sour cream containers, butter tubs etc. even gallon milk containers for cloches or possible upended watering devices. I don't throw hardly anything into the "trash can" it's either recycled, composted or reused.

I need to hit up my neighbors for their waste I already have a call in for any gardening containers but I don't think I will see any of those till it's too late.

We need more Mexican night for the sour cream tubs that is.

p.s. Me experiment, never, I would never think of such craziness.

Oh, it was a true enough curse, all right. Profanity is totally irrelevant.

Cynthia

... Gixx sorry, yes, I meant cardboard boxes. Using them as seed and transplant "flats". Since I'm growing indoors not greenhouse, and need a solid bottom tray/container to prevent drips, the flimsiness of wet cardboardbox (as opposed to wooden flats) is not as much of a concern for me, and the used cardboard box can be used in the compost pile or as mulch later on. For extra side-support, I fold down/in the top flaps.

Don't forget to ask your neighbors for the 2L plastic bottles and 1/2 gal milk/OJ containers.

Alright cool, after a lot of searching I found them.

I called my local garden shop and asked if they had pots fro sale, they said yes. I couldn't' get a price out of them at first maybe it was the connection. But come to find out FREE is a dang good price. I think I will be stopping there in a bit after I get lunch for my daughter.

All good things things come to those who wait.

So, no need to cobble junk together?
Here's the mesclun box. The outside of the box looks dry-ish but the soil inside is actually nicely damp. With the old wooden flats, the wood supposedly absorbed the excess moisture, avoiding soggy soil, as well as provided insulation.
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image6319.jpg[/img]

I'm also trying TP rolls as bottomless pots for these onion seedlings that are just starting to sprout:
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image6321-1.jpg[/img]

gixxerific,

Like AS I too sometimes use flats for starting seeds. Here is a picture of last years Pepper seedlings.
[url=https://img261.imageshack.us/I/pepperseedlings.jpg/][img]https://img261.imageshack.us/img261/9112/pepperseedlings.th.jpg[/img][/url]
Yes, they're crowded and I did transplant them to individual '4-packs' soon after this was taken. This container is a Styrofoam mushroom package recycled from the grocery.

Another source of small flats is the plastic trays some retailers package meat in these days. They remind me of bonsai pots and they are useful for a lot of things.
[url=https://img43.imageshack.us/I/trayh.jpg/][img]https://img43.imageshack.us/img43/1416/trayh.th.jpg[/img][/url]


Norm

Good deal, Gixx! [img]https://bestsmileys.com/thumbs/3.gif[/img]

I love doing business with local shops. Usually, once they get to know you a bit, they'll help you out as much as they can.

Well the FREE pots ended up costing me $5 but what are you gonna do I wasn't going to leave empty handed. I had to almost beg for these but I got 50 four in. pots that were used I'm soaking them now in a bleach solution.

The free ones were 1 gallon and up a little big for starters I would think.

Apple I like the idea of toilet paper rolls. I might have to dig some out of the pre-compost pile.

Gnome I have onions going now in 2 different reclaimed thing like you. One is a salad container (Styrofoam) the other a to go platter from a restaurant.

You'll see them on the left the to-go container is on top of the Strawberry planter the salad container is behind it. Along with Brussles sprouts in the Dixie cups a tomato in the middle and radishes in the red pot to the left. A real pot pouri of stuff I know but what are you gonna do. Oh and the Tupperware was used as a humidity dome for the Brussles.

[img]https://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj185/gixxerific/Gardening/DSC03302.jpg[/img]

Came back to add:
FWIW, Paul Stamets in one of his writings recommends using USA made cardboard boxes rather than those made overseas for growing mushrooms. I believe it had to do with chemicals -- can't remember if it was in the paper, glue, or ink... or even fumigation during transport. (Although after some of the stuff I've been reading lately, I wonder if ones SOLD FOR THE CANADIAN MARKET might not be safest, if such a thing can be obtained....? Road trip to Canada! )

The nurseries here in Mexico all plant in the bottom half of soda bottles..small and 2 liter size. I buy small starters in beer cans too. Large hanging plants are grown in the bottom portion of 5 gal. water bottles. Put the word out in your neighborhood and you should have plenty in no time. I have also purchased plants in heavy black plastic bags of various sizes. They probably come on a roll. The Mexican people do a lot with little and can be very resourceful.

Thanks for the ideas. I already picked up enough pots to start my own nursery without spending a dime.