Mouldy pots

[soozze]

All my terracotta pots look awful now. All white mildew and mould.

I spent ages trying to clean them last summer and i'm not relishing the thought of doing them all again!

Should I be painting them or replacing them with another type of pot? Or do I just have to deal with cleaning them every year? The few painted ones I have don't seem to be affected.

And what is the best way to clean them? Most of them need to keep the plants in while this is done.

Many thanks

Give them a good scrub with Jeyes Fluid, leave in on a wee while then rinse off. Let them air in the sun.
It will not do your plants any harm to sit on a piece of plastic while this is getting done plus you can inspect roots, split overgrown clumps then freshen up the compost.

Thanks jeremyspants. I'm in two minds now though. I've had a look around the web and even found people selling the pots with the moss already on them - www.daisyfieldsoregon.com/index.php?cat=14

Do most people leave it or clean it every year? I don't really remember seeing very white/green pots around...

Mind you my plants probably could do with a root inspection and general freshen up.

Sometimes a little bit of ageing gives a terracotta pot nice character but as long as the inside of the pot gets a freshen up then it should deal with any nasties that have gone there to lurk over winter.
I would worry more about the mould as it could be a potential source of infection for your plants.
It also depends what you are growing in them as well. If you had great swathes of ivy tumbling out of them then you won't see the terracotta but I personally would clean all my pots and shuffle the plants around a bit. It is a good way of inspecting for winter damage too though you get a terracotta putty type of thing nowadays to mend splits and cracks.
You can paint the bottom of the pots with PVA glue to protect them a bit.

i like the shabby chic rustic look meself.

tho i can see why the checking out inside the pots is a good idea.

I went out today and tried to see them in a new light. I think I will clean some of them - one in particular looks much more like mould than moss. But I'm thinking about leaving the one with strawberries in and a couple of the more interesting looking pots.

I'll have a go at inspecting the insides but I don't really know what I'm looking at yet.

Thanks for your help