Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is 24 Cell Nursery Trays with 3 Inch Pots by RooTrimmer.  I have used a variety of pots and improvised containers to start my plants with over 30 years now and these are officially my favorite.  I began using these 3 inch square pots as a standard a few years ago, but this year I move on to using them with purpose built trays.

Up until now I have used standard 10-20 flats to organize them and move them around.  The problem is that they don’t actually “fit” in such a tray in that when filled to capacity there is slop in between the pots.  This leads to pots falling over and simply being unstable.  The trays from this provider solve this issue by perfectly holding the pots.  Here is the good news by the way, most of these pots, in fact almost 100% of them are identical.  And if you just want the trays for existing pots you have, you can buy just the trays.

The thing to know though is while such pots are marketed as 3 inch pots like most thing in the nursery space they are actually 2.7 – 2.8 inches in their specifications.  This is typical from small pots all the way up to large nursery pots that trees are grown in.  So if you already have pots of this size and just want the trays you can order just those.  To measure pots you already have do so at the top as in the image to the right.

Now lets dial in why this became my set up of choice.  Starting with the pots there is always a need to balance size itself.  Too small and you have very tiny plants to set out or the need to pot them up which is extra work and more stress on the plant.  On the other hand if you go too large you can’t start as many plants per shelf in a seed starting system.

At one point I was simply melting holes in the bottom of cheap solo cops with a soldering iron.  This works but the cups are honestly larger than need be but worse very inefficient space wise.  When using round containers in this application a huge amount of space is wasted.  The industry standard 3 inch square pots are very efficient and significantly larger than a cell of a standard 72 count six pack.  They are pretty much the perfect balance for most vegetables and flowers for growing to a set out size with no up-potting.

The pots that come with these set also are very sturdy and will last many seasons of starting new pots.  They have great drainage on the bottoms with a bit of lift to allow for water to drain well.  They are also flexible which really helps to remove plants with minimal shock when setting them out in the garden.

Let’s move to the trays.  These things are sturdy.  Now not cafeteria tray sturdy but plenty sturdy for the application at hand.  Even full of freshly watered plants they don’t bend or flex when moving trays.  They are also perfect designed to work with the included pots having a perfect fit and allowing a bit of bottom water reserve.  This reservoir space is about 1/4″ inch deep.  They also have drain holes that are just about a tenth of an inch lower than the outer lip that allows over watering to escape so seedlings do not end up with aerobic root zones.

Simply put these are the right tool for most gardeners and if taken care of should last you many many seasons.  They will also quickly pay for themselves.  Right now well started vegetables are selling for 4-6 dollars a plant.  One 5 pack of these will let you start 120 plants.  If we split the difference at 5 bucks that is 600 dollars of plants at current box store prices.

Next if you want you can also as previously mentioned buy just the trays but you also can buy just the pots depending on your needs.  A standard pack is 120 pots which would fill 5 trays but they also sell in bulk with 1200 packs.  If I were growing plants for resale as starts I would standardize on these knowing I can cheaply replace the pots and use the trays over and over again.

So in any event check out the 24 Cell Nursery Trays with 3 Inch Pots by RooTrimmer today.  They are top quality, the right tool for the job and built to last many seasons.

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com

Video Review of this Item

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