How to Grow Cacti in Plastic Pots? A Brief Guide
Several years ago, people in the UK and southern France already discovered that cacti grown in tin pots and tin cans looked much healthier than plants grown in clay containers. At first people thought that perhaps the metal, as a trace element, was affecting the plants' growth, but experience showed that it was simply the dense pot walls that led to this result.
Pictured: growing cacti in plastic flower pots
Today there are plenty of containers made of dense materials, especially plastic, that are suitable for growing plants. These containers must of course allow excess water to drain away easily through holes or slits in the bottom of the pot. In addition, people need to make sure that the walls of plastic flower pots are sturdy enough that they will not bend and deform under the weight of the soil and the plants, otherwise the finer roots and stems may be torn off. At present there are many plastic flower pots in various shapes and colors, and on the whole they are suitable for growing cacti. Plastic flower pots are relatively light, plants are easy to remove from the pot when repotting, and the pots are easy to clean and then use again. In addition, they are also relatively inexpensive. To ensure that cacti have sufficiently balanced soil temperature and moisture, people should of course also define a minimum size for plastic flower pots.
Square plastic flower pots are very interesting; they are often called square pots and are sold in several size specifications. Such pots save space, leave no gaps when placed side by side, and give the impression of a seamless, unified cactus landscape, while the advantages of growing plants individually are retained at the same time.
The square pots generally sold are too shallow for some cactus enthusiasts, especially for cacti with tuberous roots. Others prefer shallower pots, or they want all pots to remain the same height regardless of width, thereby reinforcing the impression of the seamless cactus landscape mentioned above. However, particularly tall or particularly shallow pots must be coordinated with the usual temperatures, the water-storage capacity of the soil used and the watering method. The bottom of a plastic flower pot can be cut open effortlessly with a fine-toothed saw or a heated knife, and then easily and firmly glued back together with a suitable adhesive, so that people can glue the lower part of a larger pot to the upper part of a smaller pot, thereby obtaining a particularly shallow, flat pot. Conversely, people can glue the lower part of a smaller pot to the upper part of a larger pot, thereby obtaining a particularly deep pot. To allow the solvent to evaporate completely, the plastic flower pots should be placed in a ventilated spot to air for a few days after gluing. In this way, some cactus enthusiasts have kept all their pots at a uniform height (except for the plant containers used for growing columnar cacti), so that all the pots and the surface and substance of the plants have the same proportional relationship. Otherwise there is a danger that, on the one hand, a small pot has already dried out completely, while on the other hand the lower soil layer of a larger and deeper pot is still relatively moist. A larger number of pots grouped together requires a uniform watering standard, but at this time plants grown in small pots may also receive too little water, while those planted in large pots receive too much. The slender roots of tuberous-root plants grown in shallow pots often curl up pitifully, but even so these plants still grow quite well.
The recently introduced particularly deep plastic square pots are very suitable for growing cacti of tuberous-root genera. It is just that the choice of sizes and styles available for such pots is still limited so far.
Sometimes cactus collectors grow cacti in both plastic flower pots and clay flower pots at the same time. In this case, the plants grown in plastic flower pots need only about 1/3 of the water required by plants in clay pots, because the breathable walls of clay pots cause the large amount of water evaporation mentioned above.
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