Hi there,

I wanted to plant some succulents in a container with no holes (attached) and was told you can with careful watering and using activated charcoal at the bottom of pot. Is this doable?

@Souzdal
I personally wouldn't, Renzo. Too many variables. What happens when you go on vacation and have someone else looking after your plants, e.g.? I drill holes in ceramic and glass and tin - once even in cast iron. It's a pain, but makes a usable and, often, interesting container. The one in your photo looks great! It just needs a drain hole, IMO.

Either drill some holes or put about 2" of stone pea gravel or chicken grit will work

Putting gravel at the bottom would mainly ensure that any water pooling at the bottom would stay there longer. That is not going to be a viable solution in my opinion.

It is in theory possible to manage the situation without drainage holes but it would take a pretty high skill level (and lots of experience) to know how much and how often to water. Ideally the soil should go properly wet (to saturation or close) without any excess water beyond that point (ie. no pooling) and then not receive any water until the soil goes dry or close to dry at depth. But it would be very easy to err on the side of excess water (leading to rot) or insufficient water (leading to a slow and grueling decline by dehydration). I would not feel comfortable doing this and I have kept succulents here for 20 years. If you're relatively new to growing succulents, the probability of failure would be pretty high.

You also would not be able to leave the container out in the rain without drainage holes. And you would not be able to flush the salt from the soil, leading to a gradual accumulation of dissolved minerals from groundwater and/or added fertilizer.

So basically your best options, as I see things, would be to drill drainage holes or find a new pot.

If you have experience with this and know how much water any volume of soil mix can hold, then this is pretty viable.

Don't fill the bottom with pebbles, gravel or any of the sort. It will create a perched water table at the interface, giving you even less depth for roots to grow without suffocating in water. Fill it up entirely with the medium that you intend to grow in. The coarser, the better.

Don't leave it out in the rain though.

I use the hole saw bits below to drill drainage holes in a wide variety of items in order to use them as pots. I get mine from Amazon. Search for:

"uxcell 5Pcs 16mm Diamond Coated Hole Saw Drill Bits for Glass Ceramic Tile Marble Rock Porcelain Bottles Pots Brick"

I have several sizes but 90% of the holes I make use the type above.

I should add, you'll need a drill that can accept regular drill bit shafts, not quick connect.

When you're drilling the holes, you'll need to do it while keeping the bit and surface wet. I use an old plastic water bottle with a single hole drilled into the top. I dribble water on the bits and the hole cutting area the entire time it runs.

Remember to let the drill bit do the work and not use excess pressure to speed up the hole completion. A lot of pressure can result in wearing down the cutting edge of the bit and creation of large divets

Start the hole by tilting the drill a slight about to the side. This is the hardest part to hold in place while you get started on the hole. Gradually work the drill back to vertical and the entire circular edge of the bit will make contact and start cutting the hole as a circle. Depending on thickness, it may take 20 secs or 1.5 mins.

The description may sound more complicated than it is. I've drilled everything from thin porcelain to very thick stoneware with these bits. They're well worth the money.

I've grown succulents in containers with no drainage holes before, but the secret is that I hold the pot upside-down or at a severe angle after watering and wait a while for ALL excess water to flow out. As you can imagine, this technique only works with firmly rooted plants in small pots. It's faster and easier to just drill a hole and let gravity do the work.

I have a similar set of coring bits to UrbanWild and they are a great buy. I have turned many thrift store finds into plant pots by just spending a few minutes with the drill, the bits and and some water to keep things wet.

The way UrbanWild describes the process is pretty much how I do it. The trick is to use the coring bits and to let the drill bit do the work - aside from potential damage to the bits if using too much pressure you also increase the risk of pot breakage enormously.

And yes, it is clearly possible to go without drainage holes, but it means a lot of extra care is required, that can generally be avoided by a few minutes worth of drilling and spending a few dollars on some coring bits.

It will work, until that one time when too much water is added, or, out of fear, you wait too long to add water and lose a plant to desiccation.

Someone above suggested turning it almost upside-down so it can drip out, but I usually just lay them sideways for a few minutes to see if anything drips out. At time time of year, when it's 95 every day, I don't worry. I'm used to how much water to add to them so they're dry again in 2 days.

I have a few pots with no holes and plants have been growing happily in them for years, but I'm aware of the risk and so they are not my only copies of those plants.

Soil that doesn't drain can also accumulate substances from tap water which can make a plant ill, or alter the PH and cause a plant to become unhealthy.

There is a 3rd option - beyond just risk or drilling a hole, that I don't think has been mentioned here, which is to use that pot as a cache pot to hold an inner pot that has holes. You would take the inner pot out of the outer pot to water, let it drip, then replace it back where it was. To find something that fits, you might need to repurpose some plastic item that wasn't made for being a plant pot but happens to fit in your cool pot. Anything you can add holes to will work.

A 4th option could be to rig some kind of wick setup using a gravity system with a reservoir above the pot and wick going from reservoir to pot.

Best luck!

I use pots with no drainage often, get containers from thrift stores.
I use about 2-3" of pea gravel ( get a big bag for about $5 from HD)
and have not have a problems.
Like most succulents the key is not too much water, they like to be thirsty.

When it works, it works. It's not even a close contest, as far as how many plants I've killed in hole pots vs. closed pots. Closed pots could never catch up at this point.