To lighten the weight of a planter (indoors or outside), fill the bottom quarter of your pot or planter with packing peanuts or styrofoam. This is really a four in one tip:
It lightens the total weight
It enables you to 'stretch' your potting soil
It is good for the roots of plants
It aids drainage
And it keeps that expanded foam out of your local landfill!
One way to tell if the peanuts are biodegradable is to wet them with water. The white ones I had disintegrated when wet, the green ones did not. I am not sure if the color is significant, but that was the results of my little experiment.
One way to tell if the peanuts are biodegradable is to wet them with water. The white ones I had disintegrated when wet, the green ones did not. I am not sure if the color is significant, but that was the results of my little experiment.
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Tip: Packing Peanuts For House Plants
Archived on 01/31/2007
Looking for uses for packing peanuts? Use them to create a drainage layer in the bottom of your planter. This is wonderful for large planters because it helps keep them lighter when you need to move them. Make sure to use styrofoam peanuts. Biodegradable peanuts are great, but they will not work as a drainage layer since they will decompose.
RE: Packing Peanuts For House Plants
Is it true that biodegradable packing peanuts make a good fertilizer, (organic?)
Diane
RE: Packing Peanuts For House Plants
Although I cannot vouch for this myself, I have read somewhere on the web that one can identify biodegradable "packing peanuts" by their green color. Non-biodegradable "peanuts" are, supposedly, white.
Ralph
RE: Packing Peanuts For House Plants
Way back in the 70's I used the the packing peanuts in pots that hung in the neat macrame pot hangers, to keep them from being too heavy. I also put them in the kid's beanbag chairs. The bags seemed to go flat after a while, and that add some more puff to them. Broken up styrofoam packing can be used in both planter and beanbags!! Worked well for us and it was cheap!!
Post by trashcrafter
RE: Packing Peanuts For House Plants
This is a great idea that I've used several years now. I did find that if you pack the "peanuts" in an old pantyhose leg, it saves picking out all those "peanuts" when you repot or empty pots in the fall.
