In order to keep your potted plants healthy, whether they are indoor or outdoor, appropriate drainage is crucial. This procedure prevents water from collecting at the pot’s base, where it may breed bacteria, fungi, and root rot.
We have excellent news if you discover that your favorite pot doesn’t have a drainage hole in the bottom: practically any container can become a plant’s contented home! No matter the vessel, we’ll demonstrate how your favorites can maintain good health.
This glass jar was chosen to hold a little Swedish ivy plant. For our illustration, we wanted to utilize a translucent container so that you could see the layers clearly as they were being applied.
How can I provide indoor potted plants drainage?
In between waterings, drainage enables the plant’s roots to aerate and “breathe.” You should always make sure your plant has a place to drain after each watering because collected moisture or standing water can cause major health issues like root rot. This is similar to how excess water is absorbed into the earth in their natural environment.
For potted plants, the most typical method of drainage is to have a drainage hole in the pot and a saucer below to catch the water. For instance, here is how a conventional terracotta pot is constructed. If your pot includes a drainage hole, we advise using a saucer or dish underneath so that water doesn’t scratch the floor or other surfaces. But what if your pot doesn’t have a drainage hole?
What kind of houseplants don’t require drainage?
The majority of gardeners wouldn’t want to rob their plants of moisture and soil that drains well. However, choosing plants that don’t require drainage holes is one of the best ways to proceed if drainage is a serious issue or you want to try something else. The maintenance requirements are greatly reduced because the majority of these plants are also houseplants.
What precisely are these plants, and how are they potted? In this post, we will go through 13 such plants in detail that never require drainage holes. Continue reading to learn more.
What is placed beneath indoor plants?
Look for a container that will conceal the grow container you are using for your plant. The grow pot should be placed inside the decorative pot on top of a layer of non-porous material, such as gravel, marbles, or pebbles, that is about an inch or two thick.
Why don’t all plant pots have holes in them?
Have you ever questioned why some of the most gorgeous planters lack drainage holes? Would it work for your beloved indoor plants?
Cachepots are plant pots without drainage holes that are frequently used to conceal grow pots for indoor plants. Overwatering is more likely to occur when plants are planted directly into attractive pots.
Do plant pots need to have holes?
The plant suffers in a number of ways when there are no drainage holes in the pot. Root rot can occur when water collects and makes the soil wet. When you water with a fertilizer solution, salts also accumulate in the soil and cannot be washed away by pure water since there are no drainage holes. When water covers the area between soil particles where air should be, it deprives roots of essential oxygen. This happens when water collects at the bottom of the pot.
Do houseplants require a saucer?
Drainage is one of the most important factors you need to pay strict attention to when it comes to any sort of plant, but even more so with indoor plants. The bottom of decent containers will therefore typically feature drainage holes, as you may have seen. However, a common factor that people frequently overlook is where the extra water will go. The use of a saucer is then necessary.
So why are saucers required for plant pots? Plant pots employ saucers to catch the water that drains from your pot even though they are not required. It might easily run over into your carpets, floors, and furniture without this. By collecting the extra water after each watering, your saucer will stop any spills in your house. You must be sure to empty the saucer after watering your plants and giving the water a chance to drain for a few minutes.
Beginners frequently forget to remove the water from the saucer. But your plant could suffer a great deal from this. If the saucer is full, it won’t move, even if you have some well-draining potting soil and many of holes in your pot. Because the roots of your plant will be submerged in water, this could cause root rot. Make careful to tip the extra water in your saucer away after each watering to avoid this. Additionally, it is advisable to tip it away anytime you see more water collecting. After the initial watering, however, this is improbable.
Do you water indoor plants from the top or the bottom?
To remove excess salts from the soil, plants that are typically watered from the bottom should periodically be watered from the top. As previously mentioned, watch out that plants don’t sit in water for an extended period of time before part of it is absorbed by the soil.
How frequently ought indoor plants to be watered?
Although watering houseplants may seem like a straightforward operation, many people either overwater them or neglect them until they get parched. Generally speaking, the potting soil for indoor plants should be kept damp but not soggy. In the spring and summer, they typically need watering once or twice a week; in the fall and winter, they require less watering. However, this isn’t always the case, depending on the kind of houseplant.
- Only give orchids a small bit of water once a week to water them.
- Succulents and cacti need relatively little water. When the potting mix has dried out, only water.
- Water citrus plants more frequently and consistently than you would other houseplants.
The Westland Watering Indicator makes it easier to know when to water. This watering stick is very simple to use and may be used all year round. Just insert the stick into the pot of compost. The indicator will then turn red to let you know when the plant needs extra water. When no additional water is required, the indicator will turn blue. Within two hours of watering the plant, the indicator’s color should shift from red to blue.
Another crucial factor is the type of water used on indoor plants. This is due to the fact that many plants are sensitive to the salts and chemicals found in tap water. So it is advisable to use rainwater to water your plants.
Feeding
To promote lush, robust growth, indoor plants must be fed while they are developing. Only while a houseplant is actively developing, not when it is dormant, should it be fed.
During the growing season (spring and summer), the majority of indoor plants need typically be fed every other watering, or around every 10 to 14 days. In the fall and winter, feed indoor plants after every fourth watering because they will need fewer nutrients.
Using a liquid concentrate feed is a good approach to feed houseplants. These are a fantastic way to feed and water your plant simultaneously. They work best, though, when the mixture isn’t created too powerful or too weak. Given that it is filled with the necessary nutrients, Westland Houseplant Feed is a fantastic plant food for indoor plants. Additionally, it contains a simple measure doser that requires only a squeeze of the bottle to fill the dosing chamber. Any extra plant food will be removed by the doser, leaving you with a 5ml dose to mix with 1 liter of water. This indicates that the combination you use to feed your plants is the proper strength.
The list of specialized feeds for various types of indoor plants that include the precise ratio of nutrients required for their growth is provided below.
- Feed for succulents and cacti offers nutrients that improve flowering.
- Citrus feed: provides nutrients that promote fruit development and set.
Do plant pots used indoors require a hole in the bottom?
Plant roots don’t prefer to stay in water, with the exception of a few aquatic species. They must exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen with the surrounding air, because too much water seals up the soil’s air spaces. Without drainage holes, plants in containers are more likely to become overwatered. The soil at the bottom of the pot may be drenched with water even if the soil surface appears to be dry.
Root rot, a dangerous ailment that can quickly kill your plants, can result from waterlogged soil. Yellow leaves, wilted leaves that don’t recover after watering, and leaf drop are symptoms of root rot. The roots of the plant may be sticky, mushy, or black or brown if you take it out of the container.
To avoid salt buildup in the potting soil, it’s also important to make sure that pots have enough holes. Salts in fertilizers and tap water can damage plants. Some of the salts are excreted by plant roots along with the water, and over time, these salts build up in the soil. Salts are flushed out of the soil when you water deeply and allow the water to escape through the drainage holes in the bottom of the container.
Without drainage holes, salts are never eliminated from the soil; instead, they just keep accumulating, giving your plants an unhealthy environment. If salts do accumulate in your potting soil, you might notice that the plant’s leaves are becoming brown at the tips and margins or that a salt crust has formed on top of the dirt.
To prevent dripping on the furniture or floor, many homeowners store their indoor plants in saucers while they are not in use. This is acceptable, but watch out for water that may collect in the saucer and wick back into the potting soil. Make careful to frequently empty the water from each saucer. Another option is to water your plants in the kitchen sink, move them back to the saucers once they drain, and then do it again.
What do you place in the planter’s bottom to provide drainage?
Use a layer of plastic bottles at the bottom of large planting containers to help fill them up with soil. The tops should still be on the bottles, which should be empty but not crushed. Both water bottles and half-gallon jugs are acceptable.
Fill the container’s bottom with as many bottles as you can, but avoid packing them too firmly. Add the potting mix once the bottles have been stacked. The container is lighter and easy to transfer to various locations in your yard when plastic bottles are used.
Pots should be raised off the ground.
The most important factor in determining whether plants planted in containers survive or not may be adequate drainage. Extra moisture in a garden bed percolates down to deeper soil layers and then drains into the surroundings. Plants, however, risk drowning or decay if a container or the potting soil doesn’t drain adequately.
Every container needs to have enough drainage holes so that any extra water may be drained. Usually, saucers that match the containers are provided alongside them when they are sold for indoor usage. You must make or increase the drainage holes if the container you buy doesn’t have any or has insufficient drainage holes.
- Make drainage holes in the bottom of plastic or metal containers using a hammer and pointed instruments like an awl, screwdriver, or big nail. You could also drill a few decent-sized holes with a drill. You might find pre-stamped drainage holes on some plastic containers; all you have to do is apply pressure to push them through.
- Use a drill with a masonry bit to attach containers made of ceramic and terra cotta (remember to wear safety goggles).
In general, a container is better if it has greater drainage. Compared to under-watering, drowning or decay harm a lot more plants.
Make sure that soil doesn’t wash out of drainage holes. Put a permeable substance at the bottom of a container to conceal drainage holes before adding potting soil. Use a piece of vinyl window screen or landscape cloth that won’t break down but yet enables water to get through. Insects may not climb up into the container if drainage holes are covered.
Never fill the bottom of a container with gravel, rocks, stones, or pottery shards; doing so will not help or enhance drainage and may even cause obstruction.
Don’t let the earth touch the containers. Place a container away from any surface that can obstruct the flow of water out of drainage holes. Pot feet are the simplest and most efficient technique to lift containers out of all the options. You can get pot feet from nearby garden centers and nurseries or internet suppliers of gardening supplies. Depending on the size of the container, three or four pot feet will usually do the trick. If the container is large and heavy, you may also use a planter caddy with wheels to lift the container off the ground and make it simple for you to transfer it if necessary.
Do plant pots need to be elevated above the ground?
For container gardens, pot feet built from a variety of inventive materials offer a lot of advantages.
Through Mary-Kate Mackey
The unsightly stains that appear beneath your pots after a season or two of sitting on a porch, deck, or patio are some of the most neglected effects of watering containers.
It’s annoying to have to scrub this off or to keep seeing rings of dark container water buildup. The usage of pot feet can stop the entire process.
Yes, I am aware that pot feet are rarely included in lush magazine spreads on container gardening, but including elevation in some way—and there are many—eliminates the need to completely clear up the area.
In addition to making your job easier, raising containers with pot feet can increase the lifespan of wooden steps, decks, and porches. The health of the plant’s roots is also influenced by the airflow under a container. Lifting your pots a few inches is crucial even on stone, tile, or concrete when you’re not concerned about rot.
There is also a copper-coated pot foot from Britain that is said to prevent slugs and snails from entering pots; I haven’t tried it, but it would be rather useful here in the soggy, rainy Northwest.
Pot feet made of bricks or stones are essential if you have containers in your garden beds. A beautiful nine-foot-tall Norwegian weeping spruce that was growing in a sizable pot resting on dirt was lost to me. It continued to wilt and die back. I continued to water it despite not realizing that the soil and the pot bottom had sealed together. I very well drowned my tree.
As a result, prop up your containers with anything. And right now, if you have plants lying on the ground, go outside and lift one edge of each container to see if they are free.
Okay, what supplies are available for the pot feet? Over the years, I’ve accumulated quite a collection. Look for plastic rings or wedges of different sizes that can elevate the container by approximately a half-inch if you prefer the floating appearance of no plant feet showing (great for current styles). That’s adequate to get the job done. The risers also endure a long time because the plastic is protected from the sun. Potrisers is one such brand.
I like to show off my pot feet. I’ve amassed sets of three-foot-tall pots made of terra cotta, concrete, and high-fire glazed ceramic throughout the years. Some are wacky, while others are simple. Make sure the feet on your containers are as frost-proof as the pot itself if they are to be displayed permanently.
I use concrete bricks that make a triangle on the ground so the pot can rest on them because they are inexpensive. I’ve occasionally discovered river cobbles of a comparable size that work just as well. Just watch that they don’t bury themselves in the ground. I attempt to match the container and feet because the feet come in all sizes.
I often use two sets, or six pot feet, to provide support under containers that contain water and water plants. You might wish to do the same in locations with strong winds. The addition of pot feet can make containers slightly more prone to being knocked over in a strong gale, therefore it’s preferable to use another set if you believe you might need it, even if three feet will typically be sufficient.
Have you discovered any inventive materials that may be used as pot feet? Tell me what has worked well for you. Raise those containers, along with the decks, porches, steps, patios, and garden beds that they are held in, for happier plants in the interim.
Mary-Kate Mackey is the co-author of “Sunset’s Secret Gardens153 Design Tips from the Pros,” a contributor to the “Sunset Western Garden Book,” and the author of several essays for Sunset, Fine Gardening, and other magazines. She also writes a monthly blog for the Hartley Greenhouse website. She is an instructor at the School of Journalism & Communication at the University of Oregon. For Diggin’ It, she discusses water in the garden.
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