A gardener can never have too many pots ! And in this day and age of sustainability and saving the planet , trying not to us plastic pots etc is important .
So I have recently been on the hunt for used old terracotta pots in various sizes. Of course others also see the value in such pots, so when you can find them they are not always cheap. However I had managed to buy a few online but then you have the added cost of postage.
I decided to try and only look for pots that were being sold close enough that I could go and collect them and did find a couple of listing from someone local. Much to my surprise I won all three lots for the maiden bid and so arranged to meet the seller, a trader, at her lockup.
So yesterday we went and met the seller , who asked if I'd be interested in any of the others she had ? Naturally I said maybe depending on what she had, so she brought out a crate full of old terracotta pots plus a few others.
I made an offer, she countered and then we met in the middle.
The crate plus
these as well ! There is around 115 plus pots in the crate including these so it works out around 50p a pot ! When you consider that these pots normally start at around £4 for the very smallest , I think I got a great bargain.
Today, Sunday, I spent several hours scrubbing some of the pots with warm soapy water and letting them dry.
I started with the twenty four I had won plus some others I had bought elsewhere and also did a couple of lines out of the crate.
I still have these ones to clean but wanted to get some of the others planted up with some geraniums and pansy we'd bought a week or so back.
I managed to pot up twenty one pots with the geraniums and pansys, was very pleased thinking now all the bedding plants were potted when...
I noticed these still needed doing!! But it was too late to do today as the wind was picking up and it was starting to feel more like mid winter than mid spring! I still had to pack up all the clean pots and water the newly potted plants, so these will have to wait for another day in the week ahead.
But a good few hours work achieved despite the cold and wind.
WHAT A FIND!! Congratulations, Dee, these pots are as rare as dragon's teeth near here. I bought one in a garden sale, one that would be considered a 1 litre pot today. It cost me £3.50 and I thought I had a bargain.
ReplyDeleteThe plastic debris is the one thing I dislike about being a gardener....well, that and the necessity of getting veg in the ground regardless of high winds and torrents of rain this spring!
Thanks Jenni. I was so over the moon to get these for such a great price. And now a friend, who saw the post, as offered me the ones from his husbands dad's shed! for free!!
DeleteSo although a five hour round trip, we'll be getting more quite soon!