3 Ways to Help Your Potted Plants Get Enough Drainage - The Plant Gallery (2024)

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3 Ways to Help Your Potted Plants Get Enough Drainage - The Plant Gallery? ›

The secret is to add coarse materials that create texture and add air spaces in the potting medium. Changing the composition allows for a higher or lower perched water table (meaning less or more water draining through your soil) and can help increase drainage without losing a lot of soil.

The secret is to add coarse materials that create texture and add air spaces in the potting medium. Changing the composition allows for a higher or lower perched water table (meaning less or more water draining through your soil) and can help increase drainage without losing a lot of soil.

Place a layer of drainage material e.g. small pebbles or hydrogranules on the base of the liner. Hydrogranules are baked, expanded clay granules that absorb excess water. Sit the plant in the grow pot on the drainage layer.

Add one gallon of moist, coarse sphagnum peat moss, followed by one gallon of coarse sand, perlite, or vermiculite. Adjust the texture of the medium to create a loose, well-drained mixture. Sand feels gritty and clay feels sticky. If the potting soil feels too sandy, more peat moss should be added.

Potting mixes usually contain ingredients like coarse sand, vermiculite, and perlite, which help facilitate drainage for potted plants.

Rocks in the bottom of containers do not contribute to better draining soils and healthier plants. Instead plant roots encounter saturated soils that don't drain efficiently.

A key practice for improving soil drainage is incorporating organic matter like compost or well-rotted manure. Organic matter improves soil structure by increasing soil aggregation which allows for more and varied pore sizes. Soil aggregates are groups of mineral particles that bind together.

Fill 1-2" inches at the bottom of your pot evenly with rocks. You can use gravel, landscape stones or smaller stones. This is where the excess water will go in your container, to keep it away from the roots. Plants hate having their roots sitting in soggy soil.

For areas with poor drainage to either extreme, too wet or too dry, thoroughly mix in organic materials such as peat moss, compost, shredded bark, or manure. Nutrient-rich, properly drained soil is very important for healthy plants.

Set the pot in a shallow container of water (if size allows), allowing the soil to slowly absorb the water. This technique is known as bottom watering. It may take an hour or more to thoroughly re-wet the soil. Be careful not to leave pots soaking in standing water continuously.

How do you make free draining potting mix? ›

A mixture of 70% garden soil and 30% organic matter creates a good general potting mix for planting up trees, shrubs, perennials and fruit. If your garden soil is heavy, reduce the soil content by around 10% and add some sharp sand, grit, or bulky organic matter in its place to improve drainage.

Newspaper or Cardboard

Even simple, cheap materials can block weed growth from below your garden beds. You can simply lay them on the ground before setting your garden beds on top of them.

To put it simply, you should put a layer of organic material at the bottom of your garden bed, which will break down and enrich the soil. This can include compost, or woody material such as logs, dry wood, branches, and leaves.

Is it okay to put styrofoam in the bottom of a planter? “Using Styrofoam at the bottom of planters is not recommended. It doesn't provide drainage and may eventually break down into microplastic particles, posing environmental concerns,” says Spoonemore.

Make sure the holes are free of roots or blockages so water can drain away freely. If your pots get waterlogged frequently, consider drilling more holes in the pot or transplanting into a more suitable container.

A key practice for improving soil drainage is incorporating organic matter like compost or well-rotted manure. Organic matter improves soil structure by increasing soil aggregation which allows for more and varied pore sizes. Soil aggregates are groups of mineral particles that bind together.

One way of doing this is slowly tilt the pot to its side and then gently tap the container, the soil ball should now be loose within the container. Carefully re-stand the pot up when completed there should be small air pockets between the pot wall and around the soil ball.