2 Inch Nursery Pots for Starting Seedlings – Item of the Day
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 2 Inch Nursery Pots for Starting Seedlings from The Hydroponic City. These are a fairly generic item so if you find a similar item from another supplier you prefer by all means go ahead and order from them. That said I know this supplier has a good solid product that won’t fall apart, they ship fast and get everything to you as promised.
Now why’d I switch to these last year vs. cheap solo cups? Space and number of plants, it is that simple. I have started doing many of my starts in the house vs. in my shop, not all plants but the most critical ones that need an early start, think peppers, tomatoes, egg plants, some special flowers and herbs, etc. In that area I have a shelf that can hold about 24 plants in solo cups but it can hold 96 each with these pots.
That is 96 plants vs. 24! I still use Solo cups a LOT for starts that do happen outside or in the shop later in the year though. If you do this melt your drain holes with a cheap soldering iron vs. using a drill and you won’t have little micro plastic fragments all in your soil.
Last year I moved to starting a lot of stuff inside the house simply because it is warmer than the shop and that leads to faster germination and growth. As batches get going good I move them outside and plant the next batch of stuff inside. I will absolutely use some larger pots this year for some things but these will let me get a ton of peppers, eggplants, herbs, tomatoes, etc. going in very little space.
There are two reasons for this gain in total plants to the area. First is simply they are smaller, which has the added benefit of using less potting soil per plant. Good soil is generally more expensive or labor intensive (if you make your own like I do) than any other item in your starts. The other is the square shape. While round pots are great cylinders do not fit as well in a space as squares do.
Just think of all the empty space when you put round pots in a space vs. square where they fit tightly together. So how big are these guys. The supplier didn’t really put anything to scale them with in images so I will say they are just a tiny bit smaller than a “large cell 6 pack” and quite a bit bigger than a standard cell six pack.
The image below, shows three of the pots next to my hand and some standard industry 6 packs for scale. As you can see they are about the same size square as the larger industry standard six pack but about the height of the smaller 144 cell count six packs for 10/20 trays.
I have been asked on social media I was, “why not just use the larger six packs”? Good question and I can’t fault anyone who does. The truth though is I like the ability to move different seedlings around if one is growing too slow, etc. This lets me adjust them to light height, etc. I can also easily plant some out and hold others in reserve with no wasted spaces on my shelves for more seedlings.
Simply put they are big enough for a 6 week grow out of peppers and tomatoes and fine for a 3 week grow out on squashes, etc. so they are the most efficient size for the job. If I want to grow a few more plants out to lager sizes then potting them up is also easy.
These pots are flexible and sturdy in feel so it is easy to pop out seedlings out and I expect to get a few seasons at least out of them. Priced at only 20 cents each that seems like a solid bargain. This is my second year using them so longevity is an estimate at this point but as of now they look as good as the day I got them. All in I am very happy after a season of use and most of them had at least two rotations in a single season.
So is there any downside to these? Well, sorta kinda but not really.
Some reviews complained of “oil on the pots” and I would agree they have some and it appears to be mineral oil. The reason why is clear, pots like this sometimes really stick together in packaging to the point where getting them apart is a pain in the ass to say the least. I just rinsed them with hot water and have had zero germination issues, no retarded growth etc. No one in the reviews reports anything like that either. So I think the manufacturer is just using common sense here to provide a product that is easy to use.
In any event Seed Starting Season is coming fast so check out 2 Inch Nursery Pots for Starting Seedlings today and note that I am linking to a quantity of 100 but you can buy as few as 10 or as many as 1000. I chose 100 because it’s where the big price break comes and lets you trial them before going all in if you need more of them. Buying 500 to save 2 cents a piece doesn’t make a lot of sense if you end up hating them.
* Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com
P.S. – True to the name of the supplier these would also make great pots in a hydro or aquaponics system, main due to the ample sized drain holes. On that though I would keep them for short duration crops, vs. large long growing stuff that needs more root space.