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Historical cost of plant pots

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BobbyD
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Historical cost of plant pots

#494772

Postby BobbyD » April 17th, 2022, 11:52 am

Sitting at the intersection of gardening and finance does anybody have an idea what 50 1L plant pots delivered to your door would have set you back in the days of clay?

bungeejumper
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Re: Historical cost of plant pots

#494932

Postby bungeejumper » April 18th, 2022, 9:59 am

No idea, plastic pots were invented in the 1940s and were big sellers by 1960. How far back to you want/need to go?

(An interesting historical link at https://journals.ashs.org/downloadpdf/j ... le-p28.pdf , BTW)

I have a number of head gardeners in my genealogy, mostly working at grand country houses. I believe the usual practice was to send the boy down to the railway station with a hand cart. :D

But enough of such frivolity. Can you imagine what the ancient Romans must have said when they invaded Gaul with all those clumsy great amphorae, only to discover that the Celts had been using lightweight wooden barrels for centuries? :lol:

BJ

BobbyD
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Re: Historical cost of plant pots

#495502

Postby BobbyD » April 21st, 2022, 2:22 am

bungeejumper wrote:No idea, plastic pots were invented in the 1940s and were big sellers by 1960. How far back to you want/need to go?

(An interesting historical link at https://journals.ashs.org/downloadpdf/j ... le-p28.pdf , BTW)

I have a number of head gardeners in my genealogy, mostly working at grand country houses. I believe the usual practice was to send the boy down to the railway station with a hand cart. :D

But enough of such frivolity. Can you imagine what the ancient Romans must have said when they invaded Gaul with all those clumsy great amphorae, only to discover that the Celts had been using lightweight wooden barrels for centuries? :lol:

BJ


Hmm, I guess I'm working in the basis that I remember clays being the standard domestic pot, atleast in the houses I frequented as a kid, which was well after the 40s and even some way after the sixties albeit they were nice not grand houses.

Having just had 50 of those very thin, flexible but so far surpringly tough pots delivered ro my door for a little over a tenner it got me wondering what the equivalent would have cost when they were thicker, heavier, more fragile and required firing. I can't believe there isn't a decent saving in distribution alone, let alone manufacturing.

bungeejumper
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Re: Historical cost of plant pots

#495564

Postby bungeejumper » April 21st, 2022, 10:09 am

BobbyD wrote:Having just had 50 of those very thin, flexible but so far surpringly tough pots delivered ro my door for a little over a tenner it got me wondering what the equivalent would have cost when they were thicker, heavier, more fragile and required firing. I can't believe there isn't a decent saving in distribution alone, let alone manufacturing.

Oh, I do agree. The old pots would have cost a fortune, especially by the standards of half a century ago. They used heavy and hard-won materials, they weighed a ton, they were susceptible to picking up moulds and diseases - and after all that, they would crack in a frost, or if the plant's roots got too big. (Ours still do break, but I glue them back together with epoxy. :lol: ) I'd doubt whether many of the old pots lasted more than ten years. But don't they look so much nicer?

Having said that, modern materials are much more efficient for growing plants. The link I gave earlier describes how American researchers in the 1940s were impressed at how well plants fared when grown in old tin cans, as distinct from clay pots, where the roots developed more slowly - and it details how this eventually led to the push for plastic pots.

Personally, I use old half-litre yoghurt pots to grow plants on these days - I just drill a drainage hole at the bottom, and they'll probably be good for twenty years. Now all I have to do is figure out a way of recycling our pile of maybe 300 black plastic pots from the garden centre, which no waste recycler seems to want because the optical sorting machines can't work with black plastic. Harrumph, you'd have thought they'd have got that issue sorted by now, wouldn't you? :|

BJ

PS: O/T, I know, but I'm a firm convert to deep root trainers such as https://www.haxnicks.co.uk/products/deep-rootrainer . Thirteen quid for 32 plugs seems like a lot, but they last five years and more, and nothing gets deep-rooted plants off to such a good start. My beans, sweet peas and sweetcorn are roaring away, as usual. :D

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Re: Historical cost of plant pots

#495612

Postby BobbyD » April 21st, 2022, 1:45 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Oh, I do agree. The old pots would have cost a fortune, especially by the standards of half a century ago. They used heavy and hard-won materials, they weighed a ton, they were susceptible to picking up moulds and diseases - and after all that, they would crack in a frost, or if the plant's roots got too big. (Ours still do break, but I glue them back together with epoxy. :lol: ) I'd doubt whether many of the old pots lasted more than ten years. But don't they look so much nicer?

Having said that, modern materials are much more efficient for growing plants. The link I gave earlier describes how American researchers in the 1940s were impressed at how well plants fared when grown in old tin cans, as distinct from clay pots, where the roots developed more slowly - and it details how this eventually led to the push for plastic pots.

Personally, I use old half-litre yoghurt pots to grow plants on these days - I just drill a drainage hole at the bottom, and they'll probably be good for twenty years. Now all I have to do is figure out a way of recycling our pile of maybe 300 black plastic pots from the garden centre, which no waste recycler seems to want because the optical sorting machines can't work with black plastic. Harrumph, you'd have thought they'd have got that issue sorted by now, wouldn't you? :|

BJ

PS: O/T, I know, but I'm a firm convert to deep root trainers such as https://www.haxnicks.co.uk/products/deep-rootrainer . Thirteen quid for 32 plugs seems like a lot, but they last five years and more, and nothing gets deep-rooted plants off to such a good start. My beans, sweet peas and sweetcorn are roaring away, as usual. :D


Will read that article, 2.20am after a generous nightcap didn't seem quite the right moment!

My overriding memory of those pots is a triangular section having been pushed out of the side, and the sound of clay on clay when they were moved. I must admit I'm not particularly attached.

I'm gradually upgrading an inherited mess of different sized and shaped pots accumulated over years from garden centres and skips by someone whose major motivation was an aversion to waste rather than an actual plan for what to grow in them. Many of them were fit for no purpose other than mouldering in an old potting shed which has itself been gradually disintegrating for a couple of decades. I'll take fit for purpose, uniform, and easy to label with a permanent marker as significant and cheaply won bonuses, although having numbered the pots I have now added excel to my list of gardening tools.

Those deep root trainers look interesting. I have 2 different sets of pots after plants graduate from 6cm pots, both broadly similar but one deeper, and I have noticed that plants coming out of those are big enough to 'skip a level', so depth of pot has already piqued my interest. Numbers aren't really a problem, everything I grow grows at exactly the same time and I've settled on around 60 plants as being the sweetspot between harvest, effort, and tonnage of compost required!


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