Gardening Hack for Potted Plants

I have always loved having beautiful pots of flowers around my home. Even in our first tiny apartment, I bought small terra cotta pots for our balcony. Then I found a few flowers in the nursery before the weather turned that late summer.

Why Have Potted Plants

Well it started because I didn’t have another other place to plant!

In our second home, we didn’t even have a balcony, but I bought wine barrels and planted flowers and tomatoes in them.

They flanked either side of the stairs leading into the home even while the rest of the area around was blacktop.

Moving from that small place to our next, there was no way I was leaving behind my beautiful barrels. But we found out that they were so heavy with the weight of the barrel and the dirt.

Our next move was a few states away and the consensus was that I could not take all my potted plants save my one Evelyn rose (for my grandmother).

This house had a huge yard that hadn’t been tended to in many years. There were planting options galore.

Yet I still wanted a few nice pots for around the front and on the back patio.

Potted Plant Gardening Hack

Thankfully I had learned about this amazing garden hack for potted plants before buying all the dirt and shlepping all those pots around to the perfect places.

This may not work in all growing climates, but because we had a fairly short growing season in Eastern Washington, I usually only put annuals in the pots. Mostly petunias and sometimes even patio tomatoes.

Their roots, while deep, were not deep enough that they could handle this trick.

The simple trick is I look in my recycle bin and pull out the plastic containers and place them in the bottom of the pot before I put the dirt in.

It’s that simple.

Really!

A few more tips

It depends on what you have plastic wise, but I usually only fill the pot 1/4 to 1/3 full of plastic.

When I dump in the dirt, I make sure to tap down the pot on the ground to make sure that the dirt is going down and around the plastic and filling the holes in the bottom.

If you do not do this step the dirt will settle over time and you will notice that your plants seem to be sinking. It’s better to get it packed in there as much as you can before planting.

I do this hack for several reasons:

1. It saves on how much dirt I need to put in the pot. Dirt costs money and plastic in my recycle bin does not.
2. It makes the planted pot much lighter if I want to move it (and I always do!) to another spot.
3. It helps with the pot becoming waterlogged and gets more airflow to the roots, which seems to help them grow better.

There you have it! A simple, free trick for your potted plants.