How do you clean your containers between uses?

General Gardening
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I grow a lot of container plants. I have a big range of pots, from Spang terra cotta to plastic pretend-cotta to 5 gallon buckets and barrels and nursery pots.

Sometimes I need to transplant trees for size. Sometimes a tree dies, of disease in roots/soil or just because it was a drama queen. So I end up with pots I want to reuse for economical reasons.

How do you all clean your pots, particularly for those where there may have been disease suspected? Right now, I tend to rinse mine out and overwinter them outside here in 6b and hope that kills stuff. But maybe it doesn’t. I’m starting to use exclusively compost and bark free potting mixes from Promix, including some that includes biofungicide for those that struggle with fungus.

I searched around. There are a lot of results for sterilizing potting mix, but not about the pots themselves.

Any suggestions or recs would be appreciated!

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For anything where disease was suspected I use a dilute bleach soak, about 1 part bleach to 9 parts water, leave it for 10-15 minutes then rinse well. For general reuse I just scrub with hot soapy water and let them dry out fully in the sun. The drying out step is probably underrated, a lot of pathogens don’t survive long in dry conditions.

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Same for me. 5% bleach in a huge container that I can dip them in and leave for an hour.

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im not a fan of bleach so i use 2c vinegar, 1c peroxide with a squirt of dawn w / hot water in a tub and soak for awhile. i dont rinse. dry in the sun.

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Water and a scrub brush. If disease was suspected I treat with an appropriate pesticide.

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Dawn dish soap and clorox bleach.

I normally do that just before I reuse a container.

TNHunter

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7

About a few months of not being used haha

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Yep, and sunlight is also an excellent antimicrobial, at least for certain things.

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2nd the dawn dish soap. Fill up a kiddie pool and throw them all in there.

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@Gkight.. one spring years ago…when I was still growing my own tomato plants..

I reused a previous years container after simply spraying it out good with water only.

A few weeks in all my tomato plants wilted and died.

Learned my lesson … I wash with soap and bleach from then on… and no more problems.

Don’t be afraid of bleach.. when forest farming ginseng you purchase stratified seed … and properly stratified ginseng seed is partially split open with little root tails sticking out a little.

It is highly recommended you soak the seed in a 10% bleach solution for 10 minutes.

I did that.. with every pound I bought.. and had very high germination rates.

A little bleach residue is not going to hurt your plants. Sure rinse them good after washing but no need to overdo that.

TNHunter

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bleach burns like hell when i get it on my psoriasis on my hands. vinegar does too but not as bad. the smell of it gets to me also. i too soak seeds but use peroxide and water. does the same. when i get scions on trade i also dip in peroxide.

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Oh it’s more out of laziness. I grow my vegetables in raised beds and so far I haven’t had any fruit trees become diseased.

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Well, this is making me think I need to do a better job cleaning plastic containers! I usually just blast with hose on high pressure. If it’s a container I scavenged from someone’s recycling day pile, I do spray it with a bleach solution as I’m cleaning it.

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early summer after i plant out my veggie starts i take all the empty pots and trays and junk

i lay em out in the sun. i use one of those crappy “mixing miracle gro” spray things you put on the hose and i add a little dawn and a couple drops of bleach. then i spray hell out of all the stuff.

then i turn it all up so it dries out in the sun. then i put it all away for the year.

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