COLUMBIA, Mo. – Want to make your garden or flower bed even more green this year? Forgo those plastic planting pots and go biodegradable.

Starting this growing season, the teaching greenhouses and in-house florist shop at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources will use 100-percent biodegradable pots to grow plants such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, melons and herbs.

The pots, which resemble coarse cardboard, replace plastic pots that might otherwise end up in landfills. The biodegradable pots go into the ground with the plants still inside. Roots grow through the pot walls and into the soil. The pots eventually dissolve into fertilizer.

While the organic pots are a little more expensive than their plastic cousins, labor savings and plant productivity make up for the few extra pennies per pot, said Mary Ann Gowdy, assistant professor of plant sciences at CAFNR.

Commercial landscapers can expect a 20-percent savings in labor – an important consideration where thousands of plants are used, Gowdy said. Plants experience less transplant shock and root disturbance when planted in biodegradable pots.

The pots retain water within their walls, so less water is needed for growth. Water and fertilizer distribution to the plant is more uniform.

Root tips easily penetrate the organic walls during their early growth, so they are immediately ready to branch out into the soil bed and begin taking in water and nutrients. Plastic pots, noted greenhouse coordinator Michelle Brooks, cause the roots to encircle themselves, delaying their spread outward after planting.

No pots in the landfill

The environmental impact is not inconsequential, Brooks said. CAFNR’s greenhouses use several thousand pots during the year. The closest official recycling center for plastic pots is in St. Louis.

The commercially available biodegradable pots are generally made of wood fiber and peat moss. No other chemicals are used in the process, save for a little lime to stabilize the pH of the peat moss.

In the classroom, Gowdy and Brooks refer to the biodegradable pots as “living pots.”

“It is important for us to use these pots because we are interested in our environment and teaching our students sustainable practices,” Gowdy said. “This is an up-and-coming trend. Our graduates need to know about future production practices, not just what was done in the past.”

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