Heard a guy at the hardware store say stop stacking round pots on flat shelves, try vertical hanging instead

I was grabbing some potting soil last weekend and overheard this older dude talking to the cashier about his greenhouse setup. He said he used to lose so much space stacking round nursery pots on shelves because they never sit flat and just slide around. He switched to those cheap hanging shoe organizers you can get at the dollar store and hooks them on the wall. Now he fits like 30 small pots in a 2 foot wide area that used to hold maybe 8. Ngl I went home and tried it with my herb garden and it actually freed up my whole work bench. The trick is using pots with drainage holes and not overwatering so they drip on the floor. Has anyone else tried hanging pots for seedlings instead of shelf stacking?

3 comments

3 Comments

faith273d agoOG Member

Read some gardening blog that said stacking pots traps moisture underneath them. Causes root rot and mold. The vertical thing makes way more sense because air can actually flow around everything. My neighbor tried it with strawberry plants in a gutter hanging system and they went crazy producing. Said the pests couldn't reach them as easy either. The shoe organizer trick is genius though never thought of that. Might grab one this weekend for my basil starts.

joseph_bailey3d ago

Wait, does your neighbor's gutter system just hang from the side of their house or did they actually build a whole frame for it? Idk, I've been nervous about trying that because I'm worried about the weight of wet dirt pulling the whole thing down. But man, hearing that about the strawberries makes me want to give it a shot. The shoe organizer trick is definitely genius though, I might just do that for my basil too. I hate dealing with root rot, lost a whole batch of mint last summer from stacking pots in a shady spot. It's just so frustrating when you think you're being smart about space and then everything dies anyway.

the_felix2d ago

Is it really that big of a deal though? @joseph_bailey seems way too stressed about losing some mint plants. Stacked pots work fine if you just move them around once in a while.