>> However, I find they can dehydrate quite fast. I use those saucers to catch water and which the pots sit in.
>> The pea should not be overwatered but it cannot be allowed to dry out.
You might want to modify those saucers a little. Elevate the pots an inch or two so they never sit down IN the water. The thing that the pots sit on needs to be pretty flat where the holes in the bottom of the pot sit on it.
Then set some absorbent fabric like cotton flannel, toweling or denim over the elevating platform and let it dangle into the water. This will wick water up to the bottom of the pot.
The must be contact between the toweling and the soil THOUGH the holes in the bottom of the pot. That allows the dry soil to draw water from the mat, which then draws water up from the saucer.
The soil in the pot does need to "wick", but it no longer needs to hold two days worth of water.
This makes a lot of water available to the plant without drowning the roots. If they can't pull water up fast enough, you might need bigger holes in the pot, more holes, fluffier capillary mat so it touches soil firmly through the holes, a faster-wicking mat, say two thicknesses, or less elevation between the water surface and the base of the pot. And/or top-water heavily just before you leave so that soil is as wet as is safe before you leave. Then the saucer just augments what is available to the roots.
I have not tried this with a big pot, or a deep pot. If all the holes in a deep pot are "smothered" by wet fabric, you might need a few holes in the side of the pot, near the bottom, so that air can still enter the pot "from below". Or leave some of the bottom-holes open to the air, and set the other holes on the wet fabric. (If you have a fine-textured potting mix, air might not be able to diffuse fast enough from the surface all the way to the bottom of the potting mix. Extra holes let air diffuse in where it will do the most good. )
P.S. Another solution is to pot them up into a really big pot that retains a lot of water, perhaps adding "water crystals" to the mix.
Just beware making a potting soil that holds so much water in its fine texture that the water fills the fine channels and void spaces, denying air any path to diffuse through the soil. That would rot your roots.
http://garden.org/ideas/view/R...
Sorry about the double-right-side on the saucer. I couldn't make that appear at all as a WMF, then it showed up TWICE as a JPG. Oh, well.
