One of my least favourite gardening tasks is cleaning my pots.
Like so many of us here I love to recycle and all of the pots I use for planting seeds and pricking out I have recycled year after year. They've all come originally from the garden centre when I have brought seedlings but now get reused season after season.
I remember years ago reading somewhere that it is vital to clean your pots thoroughly before planting into them so that there are no diseases or nasties from the previous inhabitants passed on. I'm now quite particular about ensuring my pots are clean before I plant the next lot of seeds or seedlings.
If the weather is wet when I decide it's pot cleaning time I will rinse them all in the laundry sink, drain them and then soak them in hot soapy water with a bit of disinfectant or bleach added before rinsing them again and leaving them to dry.
If the weather is fine I rinse the dirt off with a hose and then fill a plastic tub outside with the same hot soapy disinfected water, then rinse them again with the hose and leave them in the sun to dry.
It's a laborious and not very glamorous garden task but I definitely think it's worth it.
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