Viewing post #699877 by RickCorey

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Sep 15, 2014 4:57 PM CST
Name: Rick Corey
Everett WA 98204 (Zone 8a)
Sunset Zone 5. Koppen Csb. Eco 2f
Frugal Gardener Garden Procrastinator I helped beta test the first seed swap Plant and/or Seed Trader Seed Starter Region: Pacific Northwest
Photo Contest Winner: 2014 Avid Green Pages Reviewer Garden Ideas: Master Level Garden Sages I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! I helped plan and beta test the plant database.
If the problem is too much water in the soil, a short-term band-aid is to set the pot on top of something very absorbent like a towel. Maybe an old pair of denim jeans or several thicknesses of cotton Tee shirts.

Holes in the bottom of the pot MUST be in contact with the towel and soil must come right to the holes so the soil touches the towel, or it won't work. If you have coarse rocks or broken pots blocking the holes, you won't get the soil to touch the towel.

Once the soil makes contact with the towel, the dry towel will pull water out of the soil by capillary attraction. The rest of the towel will wick that water away form the pot, and more water will wick out to keep the towel under the pot exactly as wet as the soil in the bottom of the pot.

Eventually the towel would saturate with water and flow would stop ... BUT ...

If the pot is up on some shelf or stool or cinder blocks, you can trail one end of the towel DOWN and away from the pot. The farther it can hang DOWN, the more gravity will help water flow from the pot into the top of the towel, then DOWN the towel and drip away or evaporate away.

If you do that, you have a continuous wick that uses capillary attraction PLUS gravity to pull excess water, even perched water, out of the pot.

A long-term solution would be to re-pot with faster-draining potting soil. Can you re-pot roses in containers? Can you knock old soil off their roots and still avoid huge transplant shock?

For example, starting with whatever potting soil you use now, add lots of very coarse Perlite, and/or a moderate amount of bark nuggets. Pine, fir and balsam are what I was taught were "best", but some use hardwood bark.

Bark nuggets are coarser than Perlite and MUCH cheaper. They last 3-5 years in a pot, unlike peat moss.

Or, if your current potting mix ALLOWS a plant to become water-logged, maybe shopping for a different starting point would be smart. If you're paying lots more for the plant than for the soil, consider the old adage: "don't plant a 25-cent plant in a 5-cent hole".

I guess that was updated for inflation several decades ago:
“Don't put a five dollar tree in a fifty cent hole,”

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