How to Recycle Plastic Flower Pots

People who constantly buy new plants for the garden will end up with a big heap of black or brown plastic flower pots. Rather than throwing these pots away, they can be recycled in many useful ways. For a start they can be used for snail protection. When plants are small they are very prone to snails and it doesn’t take long for even one snail to demolish a little plant with only three or four leaves.

Using Plastic Flower Pots for Protection

But since snails usually do not come out until the dark hours, it is easy to protect plants by upending a plastic flower pot over the top. Push it down into the soil a little way just so wind cannot blow it over. These will have to be removed every morning so that the plants can get the correct amount of sunlight, but it’s an easy job to take them off and then put them back in the evening. Giving plants protection in this way will also help to keep off cold wind and that late frost that often nips at new plants.

Plastic Flower Pots for Storage

Cleaned plastic flower pots make ideal storage containers for bulbs or even produce such as potatoes that need to be stored in the garden shed. They can be used to place garden produce such as carrots in ready for washing before taking them into the house. The holes in the bottom let the dirty water drain away easily and there are the carrots nice and clean.

Garden hand tools also need to be stored all together for convenience. What better place to store them but in a used plastic flower pot? It is highly visible sitting on your shelf or on the floor and all the tools can be taken out to the garden in the pot and kept together easily. Rather than sitting a hand tool down in the garden and losing it, place it back into the plastic flower pot.

Seed packets and fertilizer packets can also be stored in plastic flower pots to prevent them from falling over and spilling their contents.

Plastic Flower Pots for Added Height

Plastic flower pots can be used to give height to a group of potted plants on the patio. Simply up-end a few sturdy ones and sit those rear plants onto the base of them. They can also be used like this as seats for little kids to sit on out in the garden.

Plastic flower pots make excellent containers to start cuttings in. Add a cut-off clear plastic bottle over the top to stop the potting mix from drying out and to create humidity. This is like a mini-greenhouse. Larger plastic flower pots can be painted and decorated in a variety of ways to use as indoor pots or patio pots.

Using Plastic Flower Pots in the Home

Smaller plastic flower pots can be cleaned up and used for storage in the home. Toys such as balls will not fall through the holes. Crafty people could line them will material inside and out to make bins for dry rubbish or to hold crafts or toys. A row of these on a bathroom shelf would look quite attractive holding cosmetics, washers and soap. They can also be used to hold potatoes or onions in the kitchen, or thongs at the back door.

Once we start to think along the lines of recycling there is no telling what else can be done with plastic flower pots.