Goodbye Traditional Nursery Pots: There's An All-Natural Alternative To Consider

Drowning in plastic nursery pots and looking to make your garden more sustainable? While you can discover many creative ways to reuse plastic nursery pots in your garden, you may not even make a dent if you have a huge supply. Maybe it's time to switch to an all-natural, more environmentally friendly option — like biodegradable bamboo pots.

Considering the way bamboo looks, it's hard to believe pots made from the plant look and work just like plastic pots and even come in a range of colors and designs. Bamboo pots are made in several formulations of bamboo fiber or pulp, mixed with various other materials, such as cornstarch, wheat straw, rice hulls, natural resin, and cornstalks. 

Bamboo makes the pots strong and durable, and many versions can last up to five years. Plastic pots, of course, can last much longer, but plastic is petroleum-based and not biodegradable. When you feel a bamboo pot is no longer usable, you can just break it up and toss it in the compost; it will take up to a year to decompose. 

Porosity is one of the features gardeners look at when it comes to planting pots because it can prevent overwatering (but also contribute to water loss) and provide airflow for the plant. The porosity of bamboo pots varies according to how they are made, but they clearly beat nonporous plastic pots in this area. As with any planting pot, it's still important to check for adequate drainage holes.

As we've seen, several bamboo pot formulations comprise all-natural materials, but beware of non-biodegradable imposters in the bamboo pot space. Bamboo-composite products using chemical additives are questionably biodegradable despite claims of biodegradability. This issue is a much bigger controversy in bamboo products that come in contact with food rather than with planter pots, but given that a main attraction for bamboo pots is biodegradability, you'll want to make sure you're not purchasing a product that contains harmful added chemicals. 

Ready to switch to biodegradable plant pots? Considering their biodegradability, durability, and porosity, bamboo pots may be just what you're looking for.