Tomorrow I when it's day time I'll start taking pictures of the MANY other types of pots I have and explain why they are all shit.
I have gardened in very challenging conditions and often had my plants die and I've learned a lot. I want to tell you all at /vis/ about how to actually grow plants in pots and succeed.
These clay terracotta pots (they must NOT be painted/glazed/etc. btw) breath very well, have thickness (thin pots are TERRIBLE), keep the soil hydrated much longer than other pots, and every plant I have growing in one of these does far better than in any other pot.
They will be destroyed if you leave them outside in the winter. Every one of these pots I've left outside has cracked and in some cases broken to pieces. I've got quite a few destroyed pot shards I've thrown into a drainage because one winter I was too sick to bring in my plants and my family didn't want to help so they stayed outside and froze.
These pots are ideal inside of the house or in a greenhouse. If you do use them outside, empty them out at the end of the year dumping all the soil into your compost pile, you're supposed to do this anyways with any potted plants OR if it's an indoor plant you want to keep through the winter you better bring it inside and probably clean up your pot if it got dirty outside. They are good for starting seedings too. They cost more than other pots (in my case every pot I have I've gotten for free) but if you have a hundred dollars to spend one day and you're serious about this hobby you should just be like fuck it and get yourself 24 of them or whatever to start with somewhere cheap or maybe on sale. If you take care of these pots they will last you your lifetime no problem.
Never get a clay pot with paint on it. The paint will just start peeling off anyways in a year or two and make a terrible mess and it prevents the pot from breathing which in turn fucks with the aeration of the soil and the microbial communities and so on which then weakens your plant roots. Glazed pots might not have the problem of paint peeling off but they still suck, they don't breath, and they don't keep the soil moist for an extra-long period of time like a terracotta clay pot does.
Thin plastic pots are the worst sort of pots. Most of my plants are growing in those and they are easy to obtain. Thick plastic pots are a little better but still shit. Plastic pots start degrading also and eventually break, crack, etc. and have to be thrown out and don't last as long. Most thin plastic pots I have that go outside part of the year or are used for starting transplants rarely make it through one year.
With any plastic pot there is no breathing, the soil dries out extra fast includes at the part where the soil meets the edges of the pot, and if the plastic is too thin and not rigid enough the pot deforms and stuff and causes an air gap between its edge and the soil that really sucks.
The other thing about terracotta clay pots is they maintain a stable temperature over a very long period of time while plastic pots do not. Stable temperature is better for the plants and the microbes in the soil.