Root Ball

I planted a few of the bigger tomato plants into larger containers but I had to clean out my larger self watering container before I could put my Gold Medal tomato plants in it. Last year this container was home to a pair of Brandywine Tomatoes. These plants were so big that the entire soil mass in the container was held together by the old roots and the roots extended well into the water reservoir at the bottom of the container.

The biggest annoyance I have with gardening on the balcony is finding space to clean up things like this. If I had a yard and a garden I'd just dump the container contents into the garden and break it up with a shovel. Maybe toss it into a composter. But on the balcony there's no place to dump it and I don't want to just dump it all into the dumpster. So normally I keep an empty tote handy for mixing soil and banging out old root balls. I like to reclaim as much potting soil as possible.