Pot Cleaning & Storage

I recently aquired quite a few used pots from a girl going out of the nursery biz. She had, what I thought, a great idea.

She puts her used pots into a heavy-duty plastic garbage can as she empties them. When filled, she fills it with water and adds a gallon of bleach, she lets it sit for a week, drains the water and simply keeps the pots in there for the next year. No more bugs, no disease, not exposed to elements, and sizes right where you can find them.

What aboput scrubbing out all the dirt? And, are the pots stacked together? If so, do all surfaces get disinfected?

Cleaning up after "the summer party" is a chore. But no scrubbing?

What does she drain the water into?

After getting about halfway through my annual pot and tray cleanup (the rest will get done next weekend), I'm resolved to next year take a bucket of soapy, mild bleach water with me as I plant, and toss the cell packs and smaller pots in there as I go. A quick rinse with the hose, or a dunk into a second bucket of clean bucket, spread them out to dry, then stack them up for storage. I'll probbaly still pull them out and give them a quick bleach rinse before I use them - especially the small cell packs, but at least I won't be dealing with baked on/caked on dirt next fall :o)

Terry, sounds like a good idea to me. It will be on my list of "Things I Should Do but Probably Won't" LOL

Darius, do you also have a list of "Things I Should Do And By Golly I Think I Just Might" ?? *grin*

Nah, but I'll put that on my list of "Things I Should Do but Probably Won't" LOL!

Great idea Terry. I store my pots on my back patio and they get so dusty/dirty from the highway. After I washed and dried them I stacked them and put them in plastic bags.

I have a long list of "Things I'm Too Lazy to do." I think there's room on the list for at least 2 or 3 more things...

Wow, I cleaned over 100 assorted pots today by hand. First I rinsed them all out then one by one I scrubbed them in a bucket of water with Dishwasher soap and then rinsed them in a clear bucket. I used the dishwasher soap, as it doesn't get sudsy and has bleach in it.

They are all dry and stacked and on a shelf in my garage for now. I will be using many of them for trading next week for my SoCal RU and they will be ready for me to pot up my seeds this winter.

PHEW, that was a lot of hard work and my back hurts from standing all day on the patio. Maybe next time I will try your recipe Violabird.

Donna

I wash by hand in either the sink or bathtub. Then I store either in outside wire rabbit cages we no longer use or in the plant room in the house.

I have learned to look thru potted plants' roots carefully for slugs in the soil or bottom of the pots, etc. Soil with has slugs in it is either burned or has boiling water put on it. I then give the whole plant and root system a good washing with soapy water and then rinse it off. I had some of that yesterday in a plant that was given to me.

There is a previous thread discussing this and it said that there are some diseases that bleach doesn't kill - it recommended using an ammonia solution instead. Here is the thread - the cleaning info is about half way down.
http://davesgarden.com/t/383164/ammonia