Organic gardening containers

by Marie Wolf
(Phoenix, AZ)

I am planning an organic garden for a small courtyard area. I intend to use containers or pots to plant flowers, herbs, fruits and vegetables in. I am concerned about using various styles of pots/containers due to leakage of paints or other non-natural and potentially toxic chemicals. Are their special pots/containers that are best for organic or non-toxic gardening?

Doug says that it depends on what you want to use as your baseline for "organic".

Is plastic organic? Made from a non-renewable source - but generally speaking it won't leach anything (hard plastics don't leach apparently unlike some of the softer plastics) so you could grow organically.

Clay pots are made from a renewable source (clay) but need heat to be fired. And there are absolutely no leaching or problems with them.

Glazed containers are fashionable but frankly, the glazes are the problem. Some "glazes" simply wash off in water (yeah, really - have had this happen) and some are baked right into the clay. Some deteriorate very quickly - and while I know that many noxious chemicals are used in the glazing process, I have no experience/knowledge of their leaching speed or degradation.

Untreated wood is good but it will deteriorate.

Treated wood is a no-no (even the most recent "environmentally friendly" wood preservatives are not trusted by this garden writer - called me biased)

My. 02 - go with untreated wood first and clay pots second.

Follow all the rules for great container growing (make 'em big enough, water and feed properly and you should be fine)