Help: How do I Keep My Pots from Shattering?

[NJCher]

I didn't get everything done in putting away the garden last fall and I have a lot of terracotta pots out there with frozen earth in them. Soon it will start thawing/freezing/thawing/freezing and this is what shatters the pot.

What should I do at this point to keep that from happening?

I'm thinking I might have to drag them in the house and thaw them very carefully and then store them in a protected area. But that is a lot of work. Anyone else have a better idea?



Cher

[XemaSab]

1. I've heard that the thing to do is buy a plastic liner for your pots

but I don't have any suggestions for the immediate future. :shrug:

[Blue Gardener]

2. Terrra Cotta is porous

And absorbs the water from the dirt. When that water freezes and expands, the pots can break. Can you warm them just enough to dump out the dirt? We have above freezing weather coming tomorrow here in Iowa, maybe when the warm weather gets to your area you can get the dirt out of the pots before it freezes again. Still I don't know of any way to salvage them all at this point. Maybe you can make toad houses out of the broken ones. :hi: