Coir pots
 

Any bad points? I have several peppers in coir pots at the moment. Do they
decompose quickly? I just replaced my sickly pepper with a new one and
noticed the coir pot had basically not even decomposed a little even after
being in the ground for 3 weeks.

Paul

Coir pots
 

Paul M. Cook wrote:

Any bad points? I have several peppers in coir pots at the moment. Do they
decompose quickly? I just replaced my sickly pepper with a new one and
noticed the coir pot had basically not even decomposed a little even after
being in the ground for 3 weeks.

these fibers come from coconuts.
coconuts can float in the water a
long time without decaying...

if there isn't a good reason for
leaving the coir around the pepper
plant i'd remove it.

chopped up it would probably make
an excellent amendment for clay or
a top mulch.

if i were on a tropical island i'd
set up a solar oven to char it and
then use the char to build more
topsoil.


songbird

Hi Paul, Yes, as a commercial nurseryman, I have dabbled with various 'eco' pots, sometimes as a result of outlets (like Eden Project) demanding it. The coir pots are ok and do take quite a while to start to decompose but I found that the first bit to breakdown was the rim, often when trying to move pots around on the nursery and bearing in mind most nurserymen are very good at moving pots in volume quite quickly (I can pick up and carry 4, 2 or 3 litre pots in each hand in one go) you cant do that with plants that have been in coir pots for a while as all that happens is that the rims break ! Another seemingly very good idea (again demanded by Eden) was pots made from potato starch, when new they looked and handled exactly like the equivalent plastic pots that we use, except they were a buff colour. We potted up loads of plants in these but after a while the sides of the pots started to sag and if you wernt careful and had then too wet and too close together, they were rooting together so, that idea was abandoned as well, and they were expensive !
Alot of the modern black plastic pots are now made from recycled plastic and commercially as yet, I havent seen anything better for both durability
and handling but for the hobby gardener, I can see the attraction, especially in these days of being 'eco- aware' .
Lannerman