Hello, I am Matt and this is my first post to the forum. I have just started a collection of indoor plants and I had some concerns. First off I have a Pachira, Ficus Benjamina, a few assorted succlents and a couple of herbs. All the plants are doing well, and even the Ficus has been growing without any leaf drop or other problems (which I am happy about because I heard they can be very troublesome). The concern I am having is with my pots. I have bought decorative pots, but none of them have drain holes in the bottom (except for the succulents). I have been reading that it is almost guaranteed to kill the plant, but I don't like the idea of having ugly plastic trays under all my pots in order to catch the water. I have heard that if you place rocks at the bottom of the pot you can do without drain holes. Is this a good solution? or is it just something to do if it is the only option? Any other suggestions about what I can do to prevent root rot with my current pots would be great. I have been very careful when watering them to avoid this problem and so far everything has been fine, but I want to prevent any future troubles I may have.
the rocks placed at the bottom only hold the soil up to keep the soil from beeing bogged out.. but the water under the rocks still needs to go somewhere .. so it is good to have a tray underneath to catch the water before it goes all over the place!
I think the best alternative you have and yet still use the deco pots is to have your plants planted in regular plastic pots with drain holes that are smaller than the deco pots. That way you can just slide the pots into the deco pots. You can load in gravel in the bottom of the deco pot to keep the plastic pots tops at the top of the deco pot. Then when you want to water just slide out the potted plant and water over a bucket and let it drain out and re-insert into the deco pot. This is probably the easiest way to do this and I think is the practice used by the guys who provide plants to banks etc though it may be that they are doing just what you are by carefully watering the plants. If you opt out for rocks and no insert pot then I would recommend that you use a screen that will keep the soil out of the bottom fill of rocks. You will need to know how much water will fill the area of the rocks and water on that basis. Another trick is to have a plastic tube (like an irrigation pipe) inserted into the pot that goes down to the bottom of the pot and use a stick to measure the presence and depth of the water in the bottom.
I've grown house plants for many, many years in pots without drain holes in them. In fact when I buy an actual planter, most of the time I plug up the drain holes. A lot of the items I plant my plants in are just miscellaneous containers I find at garage sales, antique stores and the like. I am very careful not to over-water and I don't recommend this with ceramic type pots as they hold the moisture much more than plastic or metal. It can be done if you're careful about watering.
I've done both with success. I've put plain plastic pots into decorator ones, and I've also put small stones on the bottom of pots with no drainage holes. Both methods have met with success. Good luck!
