Washing flowerpots!

It may come as a surprise that indoor gardening involves A LOT of washing pots for me. While the majority of our gardening is going to take place exclusively outdoors, for those who are interested in expanding their seedstarting indoors, I thought I would share a few tips.

Washing pots is the easiest way to control the spread of bugs and disease. I soak the pots in my laundry sink in warm water with 10% bleach solution. I then rinse them with water and air dry them on a towel I place on top of the washer/dryer.

I try to keep my pots standardized for ease of storage and stack them all up on a shelf.  If I end up with non-standard pots, those are the ones I will use to give away plants in and keep my preferred pots for myself. You may be surprised to learn that I use solo cups as mini flower pots quite often. You just need to remember to drill a hole in the bottom for drainage. They have the added benefit that you can write the plant name with a sharpie directly on the pot. When the plant is repotted, I wash the solo cups like any other pots and reuse them.

Labeling is really important if you want to keep track of what you’re growing so here are 3 ways to do that:

1. for Solo cups and white pots, you can write the name directly on the pot with a sharpie. In the past I have used grease pens and china markers but it’s not as clean looking, and wiping it off during washing is a hassle.
2. write the name on a tape to put onto the side of the pot. My preferred one is masking tape as it comes off easily after washing the pots. I have also used electrical tape which is even more robust, but masking tape works every time,