Instead of Expensive Planters, Why Not Try Plastic Tubs That Cost Less Than $10?

By Jill Brooke

There are now over 16 million newbie gardeners and Jill Sokol is one of them.

The mother of three was planning to create a garden on her deck but discovered that pots can be expensive. Beautiful yes. But she didn’t want to spend “$75” or “even more” on large pots like these.

As a New York-based real estate broker, she looks at the bones of something and then tries to find solutions.

While shopping at Target, she saw these plastic tubs with rope handles and said, “This may work”. Cost? “$8.99.”  

“I also was spending money on plants and since this is my first time gardening, I figured better to spend the money on the actual plants since I had a budget,” she explains.  

She also was going to need eight large pots which doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out was going to be “very expensive.” 

She certainly wasn’t going to spend almost $800 just on pots.

Now for less than $100, she has all these pots growing on her deck that she can easily water.  She has a blueberry bush, a raspberry one and is also growing lettuces, eggplants and tomatoes. 

“I’m loving this,” she says, echoing the sentiments of many people around the country.  

Plus they matched her deck colors!  How perfect, right? 

This would be an idea that Ron Finley, the gangsta gardener would surely approve of.  He shows how one can even convert an old drawer into a vegetable garden. But haven’t seen him yet use a plastic tub. 

All a gardener really needs is soil, fertilizer and water. And when you read that plants need good drainage, don’t worry?  All you have to do is dig a hole, pour a little water – and if the liquid is absorbed – you have good drainage.

As you will see, there are a crop of options once you have the basics.

And then maybe once you are more comfortable gardening, you may want to invest in some special pots – like these from Wayfair and La Fuente Imports – because they also add beauty to the experience.