I've started growing my semps in plastic half-barrel tubs that are about 15" wide across the top and about 10" deep. I've never had good results growing in plastic, so my semps were in 6" and 8" clay pots. I was keeping 2 or 3 pots of each cultivar and was getting inundated with the many pots and the constant dividing and repotting. I started experimenting with these big tubs about 4 years ago. I drilled lots of extra drainage holes in the bottoms and grew on my surplus pups in them and have had very good results, winter and summer. So beginning last fall I've started moving my collection into these tubs...3 cultivars per tub and no duplicates in other pots. I'm hopeful this will be easier and so far the plants love it.

I don't know why these tubs have been more successful than smaller plastic pots I've tried, but my theory is that the larger volume of soil allows a good well-drained soil column to form. Any other thoughts?

The temperature flucuates less in the large containers.

Congrats Paul on finding the "right" containers for your collection. Just wondering...Did you change any part of your soil mixture when you switched? I see that the pot in the foreground is most beautiful, really filled up and one of your fuzzy semps is sprouting offsets like crazy. Will you be separating and repotting that one?

I'm just using the same potting mix I use in the clay pots. Its about 50% inorganics (usually pea gravel or crushed gravel) which makes the tubs too heavy to carry any distance, though. That's one downside of the new containers.

The pot in the foreground is one of the ones I first experimented with. This will be its third season. I just filled the pot with a lot of surplus pups and let them root and grow. Then I watched them to see how they'd do through the seasons. I've enjoyed watching them fill out the planter, but this year I'll divide them up and put them in smaller pots to use as give-aways to friends. I gift out a lot of my surplus plants every year. Semps are so prolific, and I can't bear to throw the extras away.

Semps require more depth of soil than most people think. Those are looking good.

Good to send out goodwill semps, Paul. We had a term in our Semp dictionary for that goodwill gesture...hmm, can't find it in the current version but I think it was something like Sempster, a person who is like Johnny Appleseed, spreading semps around.

I have the same results in south. Semps in wood pots have better survival rate than any location. Soil mix is mostly pine bark dust, grit sand and some rock dust. Wood pot also provide some mobility when there is too much sun or rain. Here is a pot that has seen all 4 seasons. They are about 18 months old. By the way, I started treating semps as winter interest and annual in Texas.

I really like the filled in semp planting. Looks healthy and happy in the wood box

Ridvan, they really do look happy in that wooden box. Very nice.