OK, they had clay pots. But that seems pretty heavy for a tree or tomato plants.
What did the old timers use?
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Burlap as I recall. At least at the local nurseries. Potted up if you could call it that, from bareroot shipments, no doubt.
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How long ago? Clay pots were cheap and considered disposable, smallest I remember still in use from the early 60’s were ‘thumb pots’. Some sort of waxed paper, small square pot right off flats in the greenhouse were in use in late 60’s.
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In the early fifties I worked for a neighboring farmer digging and potting mums in rolled up pots made from tarpaper. I seem to remember that they were kind of rolled up in some kind of form and stapled. I worked after school doing that for three or four years. Got paid 75 cents an hour. I thought I was getting rich. Now I wonder how much topsoil left those fields. Most trees were sold in burlap.
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Tomato, cabbage, pepper, etc were sold in bundles of 25 bare root with a rubber band holding them together. Sometimes they were placed in a brown paper sleeve. Trees in bulk are still sold bare root. I’ve purchased many pecan trees bare root and transported them home in large plastic bags. Burlap wrapped trees used to be widely sold retail.
Why don’t we do bare root tomato plants today? Because cell plugs work far better and are more profitable. Anyone notice lately that most tomato/pepper/cabbage plants are now sold in single cups about 2 or 3 inches diameter for a LOT more money?
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How long? Way back, 1920s, 1930s or so. Any time before plastic.
Waxed paper? That was what my school lunch sandwiches mom made came wrapped in the 1960s. It would be nice to be able to go back in time to archive all this stuff no one ever thought about.
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Yep, inflation / shrinkflation.
I can’t figure out how people justify some of the prices.
Thanks.
You could buy decent Amish topsoil in bags back in the 1990s. Now when I wanted some bagged topsoil from the box stores, I found out is just some fine mulch of some sort.
Everyone and their brother in law are selling gritty, heavy biochared compost here. The social media ads are full of them.
Add water and it flattens and sinks. Then hardens.I add wood chip compost and manure to make it usable.
Metal (steel) pots in 1960. I remember my Dad landscaping his new tract house in Orange County, CA. He brought home many plants in metal pots of quart size to large (20+ gals?). Bigger trees were in burlap. We had a tool with opposing fixed blades you put on the edge of the pot, then stomped on the foot rest to split the pot. He also got ground covers in flats, but I don’t remember what they were made of - probably thin wood or thick cardboard (I think I remember cardboard from those days).
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I had forgot about those tin can pots and that cutter. 
You reminded me of the powdered milk tin cans people used all over Lebanon for planting young trees. An earlier form of recycle, reuse…just hammer a few holes at the bottom and you’re good for a couple of years before the can begins to rust away…
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My favorite is the cup of 2-4 lettuce seedlings out front of the supermarket that costs more than the bag of romaine hearts you can buy in the store.
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I just ended my plastic feed bag experiment. Just way to goopy even with the bags out of water for a week. Quite a bit of soil was lost as well. Strange, 4 of the 6 actually took and are budding well.
I’m actually trying to grow perennial plants like Thimbleberry, Salmonberry, Blue Elderberry, Clove Currant, Oregon Grape, Salal, hops rhizome in 9x12cm burlap bags, it’s my first time doing so, and I’ll see how they fair come hotter weather. I hope they will develop a more uniform root structure due to the amount of air surrounding the rootball, lessen the chances of root bounding like in pots. I’m also trying to grow things in half inch thick cardboard tubes, cut 7 inches tall with a chop saw, dipped in a food grade glue on each side to prevent the roll from unravelling from water/rain, I’ll see how they fair, it’s only for a season and I’ll eventually plant and sell the rest! Trying my best to limit how much plastic I use in my nursery, but it’s difficult of course.
Early to mid-sixties.