What do you line pots with?

What do you line your pots with? I been repotting plants into gal pots today. I put a coffee filter in the bottom or griprite shelf liner in the bottom of my pots to keep from losing so much dirt. Just wondered what everybody else uses if anything?

mystic - i do not put holes in the bottom of my pots. instead i drill several holes about the size of a quarter around the outside of the pot about 2 inches from the bottom. this way there is always 2 inches of water at the bottom to keep the soil from going completly dry. i saw this on a gardening show years ago.

Herbie good idea , all my pots have holes in them. I do that with with 5 gal buckets when I use them for pots.

I put a few inches of styrofoam balls. The kind that comes in packing. You would think the soil would fall through but it doesn't. It also makes the pot lighter.

mystic, I've used coffee filters, used bounce sheets, a layer of rocks, even a handful of dry leaves. Whatever works! It depends on what's available and the mood I'm in . . .

Cheri'

mystic I also use the coffee filters in pots & window boxes.

My favorite thing to use is the replacable filter material from my central heating and cooling unit. I always spray it clean with the hose and then remove the sides which leaves just the filter material. You can pull the layers apart and use just a thin layer at the hole and it will hold the soil in. Friends are always happy to save those for me. What else would they do with them?????? I also use styrofoam peanuts, dry leaves, pot chards, pebbles, and coffee filters.

I use bark mulch.

Coffee filters for the smaller pots (3", 4", quart and gallon-sized); a sheet of newspaper for anything bigger.

For the "permanent" planters (indoor pots or containers that will stay planted up all summer) I put an inch or two of the styrofoam packing peanuts, as someone else mentioned.

I like the coffee filter idea, Lord knows I have alot of those. Ive always just grabbed some small rocks from outside and put a layer on the bottom of the pot. Now that Ive cleaned up so much at this house the small rocks are getting hard to come by, who knew rocks would be hard to come by. LOL.

Deaven, that is exactly what happened to me with the little rocks. That is what I did for years. I love it that someone else has been trying to scrape up enough little rocks to put in the bottom of pots. I thought I was the only one! LOL!

I use my scraps of weed block or burlap....sometimes just newspaper depending on availability of the first two.

Weed block scraps! Great idea. I hadn't thought of that.

I just hate to throw anything away :-)

Unfortunatly me too rykerbear, thats why I have so much clutter in my house. I am such a pack rat. But it always holds true for me that when you need it you threw it away yesterday and the trashman came this morning.

I agree wholeheartedly :-)

RikerBear
Marc

Some great ideas. I would never have thought of the weed block either. I use the packing peanuts in my large pots so they are not so heavy to move. Last year I used shredded paper in the bottoms of my big pots , seemed to work ok, guess I will find out for sure when I drag them all out of the basement.

Mystic, I get to drag mine out the 15th of this month. When do yours get to see the light of day?

Elena I will start dragging them out probably in a couple of weeks but won't be able to leave them out, Mothers day weekend is usually my safe date. But I will start moving them out some and repotting them.

Mystic, I can start taking cuttings and repotting mine in about 10 days . When that time comes, let me know what you will have extra and maybe we can swap cuttings, etc.

I use the peanuts from packages. It works great as the roots will go through it. I repotted something and the rooted were sticking thru some of the peanuts. Also if put in the landfill they never disenigrate. Helps pots to drain.

gosh, I never thought about lining my pots but obviously I should be. I use weed block for my pond plants though.

All depending on what type, size pots and what is planted in the pots, but mostly I have used ; used coffee filters, newspaper, broken pieces of clay pots, rocks, egg shells, anything that I happen to have available;but my favorite is cheap sponges.

I heard of one suggestion, never tried it tho. For plants that aggressively send their roots out through the drainage holes, line the pots with copper foil. Copper repels roots, or so it is said. It is also supposed to work to keep invasive plants in their own place. Now if I can just find a source for copper foil...

And as an added bonus, it also is supposed to keep slugs far away.

I use door screening material. I bought a roll at Home Depot years ago, and I still have tons of it. Also, it is reusable....and if I repot a plant, I keep the screen material in the old pot for it's next inhabitant. It is flexible, lasts forever, is neat and relatively cheap. lol I also like it that it doesn't take up any space, so my plants can stay in their pots longer before having to be repotted.

I love the screen idea - screening is definitely cheap, easy to cut, flexible, etc. Hmmm....

One thing to keep in mind with those packing peanuts (you can guess how I found this out!) is to use those that are NOT biodegradeable. Those made from cornstarch will dissolve pretty quickly, which defeats the purpose of using them ;o)

If in doubt about yours, toss a few in a little water and wait to see what happens....BEFORE you cover them with several inches of soil and plants.

The problem I've found with the peanuts is that when it is time to repot, and especially those big pots, when you dump the plant out, peanuts can fly all over the yard. I use coffee filters for small pots and pieces of paper towels to cover the holes in large pots (5 gal. and up). Once the dirt has settled, it doesn't seem to matter that the toweling disappears. Good ideas everyone. I love the furnace filter idea. Now I know what to do with the old ones. You can also buy air conditioner filter by the foot and I've used it in smaller pots.

In pots that have no drainage, I use charcoal. Back in my apartment dwelling days (that translates to early 70's) someone told me that was what they used so I have been doing it ever since. I always had huge potted plants-still have the children of a couple of them- so it must have been okay with the plants. I would not recommend the kind with lighter fluid though.

Charcoal is great for keeping the soil sweet. Not quite sure what lining a pot is but I do put in drainage (same thing?). We use anything to hand, broken up polystyrene from packing is a favourite if we need to move the bigger pots although that's coming to an end now that the ducks have found a taste for it. Broken up concrete from the bit of patio that was removed, rubble, balled up newspaper for plants that require more moisture, broken crockery, bricks and tiles.

Brick pieces, stones, broken pots, dry leaves. These are what I have been using. But from hereon, after this interesting thread, my vision has widened! Thanks to the person who started this.

What are these coffee filters?

In some of my pots I have problems with big black ants that make a nest in the pot making the drainage hole as the entrance. They remove quite a lot of soil each day from the pot (what else they have to do?). Now, I'm going to try some net/mesh to cover it from inside to prevent such invasions. Materials containing cellulose are unthinkable because the termites attack in no time, so newspapers are out.

Dinu; coffee filters are what we use in our coffee pots. The filters , usually made of a paper product comes in different sizes and shapes, some disposable and some aren't.
Sample pic. shown.

CoCo that picture is GREAT! Definitely worth the thousands of words we might have to write to try to explain a very common household item here in the U.S.

Dinu, in case you aren't familiar with them, the filters are made of thin paper, kind of like tissue paper you might wrap a gift in? Or newspaper-weight paper. When they get wet, they'll let water through (since they're designed to allow liquids to pass through), but they won't disintegrate as quickly as paper towels, toilet paper, newspapers or "kleenex" nose tissues. They're very inexpensive - I buy them 500 at a time for a few dollars.

Thanks Coco for the picture. I was wondering how I was going to explain that. lol You and Terry took care of it for me.

Thanks CoCo for the 'picturesque' explanation.

We use stainless steel 'coffee filters'. The upper compartment's bottom has tiny holes (when buying coffee powder we have to ask for the ones that are meant for the filter and the powder is a bit coarser). The paper filters are not in vogue here. Our steel filters are easily washable. Coffee powder is put there and boiling water is added to it. The decoction will slowly drop down to the lower compartment. But how will the decoction drop down through the paper filter? Where will this filter be kept - on top of a cup or something? Are they stiff enough to be kept on top?

I think some thin paper cups meant for supplying cakes are available in the market here. Have to make a search. I know small disposable paper cups meant for (tea, coffee, etc in parties/gatherings) are available. Will have to give them a try this season when I start seeds.

The pots available here have holes at the side of the bottom, but rarely can we find holes at the bottom centre.

Good thread. I use coffee filters for smaller pots. For large pots I put peanuts in grocery plastic bags to keep them contained, ever since I emptied a pot and the peanuts flew about everywhere. Before putting in the bags (loosely filled) in the pots I put pot chards over the holes or coffe filters. Another thing that works well is shade screen like what is used to shade greenhouses. Easily cut and longlasting. Donna

I've used those styrofoam peanuts to take up about half the space in really big clay pots, but I save those plastic mesh bags that grapefruit, and veggies come in and tie them up in those, so they can't escape. Also, you can hose them off at the end of the season after you dump your pots (Don't dare leave them outside with dirt in them in zone 5) and reuse them in spring. I turn the clay pots over and hide them under the deck to overwinter. No water collects in them, no cracks.

I had been using the scraps from landscape fabric and thought it was a brilliant idea until I went to transplant the brugs into larger pots. The roots had growin into the fabric and I ended up breaking a lot of roots in the transfer from one pot to the other. I like the idea of the coffee filters, think I may need to try that one.
The landscape fabric was great for things that don't have huge root systems, but I would stay away from it for brugs!
Thanks for all of the great suggestions!

Thanks for that suggestion, Alice. I have used the coffee filters for years with no problems. I also use left over hay that has been covering the cannas through the winter, fall leaves that I have bagged for that purpose and the central heating and cooling unit filters that I pull apart. I have huge pots that I plan to use styrofoam in about 1/3 of the pots today. I have always filled those suckers completely full of dirt and they have been very heavy and take a lot of soil to fill them. The roots of the annuals only go a portion of the way down anyway. I have to take it all out in the fall in order to store the pots. That will be so much easier to disassemble this fall and my back will be so grateful that someone gave us that hint. I will also save on soil so that I can fill other pots. ....no more that big, however.