This is a great tip for lightweight hanging pots for indoor plants! Pots can get really heavy when using pebbles or stones for drainage, which can be very taxing on the hooks hanging from your ceiling. Next time, try this instead: Use old bath-scrubbies in place of rocks! New ones are inexpensive, or you can recycle old ones you already have. (Just be sure to thoroughly rinse in hot water for a few minutes to remove any soap residue).
It only takes a second to poke around in the scrubber and find the thread that ties it all together- snip this and you'll end up with yards and yards of excellent, lightweight drainage material for the bottom of your pots.
Depending on the size of your pots, you can choose to use the scrubber whole or cut up lengths of the material from just one. (Mine yielded about 9 yds).
I also use a piece of weed-blocking cloth on top of the scrubbie material to help keep soil loss to minimum. I hope you found this tip to be helpful. Happy potting!
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Those lightweight plastic cups that flowers are sold in - I recycle them by using them for drainage when I transplant the flowers into terra cotta pots.
My German daughter-in-law showed me a neat trick for planting in pots. She put a coffee filter in the bottom of the pot then we went around the yard picking up little twigs and leaves.
If you have a pecan tree, or if you buy pecans in the shell during the holidays, you can put those shells to good use.
Ideas for fillers for the base of flower pots from the ThriftyFun community. I have used a small pot upside down in some of my bigger planters.
For indoor gardening, it can be a nuisance to find some pebbles to place over the drainage holes of a plant pot. Use a coffee filter instead.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I have some rather large flower pots and was wondering if I could fill them part way with shredded paper.
You can. It will decompose.
You can use the plastic pots the plants came in. Put them upside down. I use small sticks, shredded paper, or the foam peanuts that come in packages.
Lots of good suggestions but one thing for sure - if you use any type of styrofoam/peanuts please put them in pantyhose or something similar that you can close up/seal so they will not be a mess when time comes to change the plant or soil.
Be careful with foam peanuts as many of these are biodegradable and will disappear.
Unfortunately, most do NOT decompose which makes this a great way to repurpose them!
What do you do with the Coke cans when you place them in the bottom of the potting containers? Are they crushed or left whole cans?
Do I rinse coke or beer can before placing in pots for draining and should they be crushed or bent?
I am wondering would I be able to use normal barbecue charcoal to act as drainage in my garden pots?
By Linda
To save money on filler dirt for you potted plants, use plastic bottles to fill up the extra space. This is a page about filling planters with plastic bottles.
Large planters can be very heavy if filled with soil and drainage rocks. Reuse dense styrofoam to fill the bottom instead. This is a page about using styrofoam in plant containers.
This is a page about diapers for potted plants. A disposable diaper at the bottom of a pot can help hold in dirt and moisture.
ThriftyFun is one of the longest running frugal living communities on the Internet. These are archives of older discussions.
I came up with a no cost idea for lightweight fill to use in the bottom of over sized pots or planters. I have used broken terra cotta pots and packing peanuts in the past.
