One of the most common mistakes we make is overwatering plants. It is often thought that the more water we give them, the better they will grow, not in vain, water is life. But this is not so. The extremes are very harmful: whether we water little or a lot, our vegetables will not be able to develop well.
To avoid these problems, we are going to tell you how to improve the drainage of a pot. This way, your little plants will have excellent growth 🙂.
When we want to improve the drainage of a pot we can do several things, which are:
Holes in the plastic pot
If the container in which we want to plant a flower is made of plastic and does not have holes or only has one or two, it may be necessary to make some more. For it, we can use sewing scissors and pierce it.
Sometimes it requires a bit of patience, but if we turn the scissors at the end we will get a hole that will allow the roots not to have to be in contact with the excess water.
Add a layer of arlite balls
The arlite or expanded clay balls will be very useful to improve the drainage of a pot, since they are also very cheap (a 20l bag can cost 9 euros). So that, we will put a first layer of clay before planting the plant, and so we can enjoy our pots for many years.
Mix the substrate with a porous material
Commercial substrates have very important nutrients for plants, but they do not always have good drainage. Because, it is highly recommended that we mix them with some porous materialas perlite, expanded clay or the like. The proportion will vary depending on the type of plant it is. For example: if they are cacti or succulent plants, it is recommended that it be 5: 5, that is, that we mix the substrate with the material we prefer in equal parts; On the other hand, if they are horticultural plants, flowers, or indoor plants, we can mix 70% of the substrate with the material.
Do you know other tricks to improve the drainage of the pots?