About containers
 

hello to everybody! I have a question (well, a couple of them) and i hope you can help me with them :)

So, about containers that can be user for SH. I can find a lot of orchid pots with holes in them and that is what confuses me and i`ll tell you why.

1. If i use pot with holes in the bottom of the pot with plastic saucer as a water reservoir - should i provide additional holes in the pot for better air movement?

2. if i do NOT have to make them than is it the same as using, for example glass vases without holes and with some water on the bottom of the vase? I saw some people grow orchids like that, but i have some concerns about that method and the main is air movement.

3. if i should provide extra holes in the pot - how many? because i saw some pots with pre-made holes in them from bottom to the top and i just think that it can be too much air and for some orchids, especially for those that love moisture it will be too dry.

4. If anybody has an experience with any food containers that you use for SH - can you recommend any brands? amazon has tons of them :(

thanks in advance!
P.S. sorry for possible mistakes - English is not my native

I don't add any holes beyond what I need for drainage. As far as using plastic food containers, since I try to have my plants outside as much as possible they tend to degrade after a year or 2 of exposure to UV. If you grow exclusively indoors, they'll probably be fine. I prefer glass so I can keep an eye on the roots, particularly during the initial transition to s/h. Drilling holes in glass is easy if a bit tedious, as long as you start with reasonably thick glass and don't put pressure on the drill.

thanks! I was thinking about outdoor growing, that is why i mostly asked about brand of containers as i know some of them can be not ok under UV and heat. Did you ever have any issues with glass as it can heat water even more?

Never.

The holes serve to set the depth of the reservoir and to allow flushing. There is plenty of air flow around the LECA pellets.

Adding more holes will facilitate evaporation of the water from lower in the pot, defeating the wicking.

I have never, in almost 30 years of S/H growing, seen or heard of roots overheating from exposure to light - if the pot warms, the water evaporates faster, cooling it.

Thanks Ray! I was trying to grow Phal in glass vase and while making research about it i found some ....hmmm...suggestions (?) that glass can be as a lens that will condense sunlight in one spot and it will almost make a water boil. Never saw it by myself but maybe i just didn`t have enough experience lol

I use 1 quart plastic soup containers from Smart & Final. They sell them in packages of 25 for very little money. I have seen S&F in Miami so you probably have them, too. The S&F stores here also sell heavy cream for my coffee for about 1/3 what it costs in supermarkets.

You can drill two small holes with a Dreml tool or a drill, and a conical sanding burr. Ray recommends they be an inch / 2.5cm from the bottom. Don't make the holes too big. The medium falls out, and it's hard to fill the pot while water runs out. Make the holes small enough and close enough together you can occlude both with the heel of your thumb when holding the pot to fill it.

Completely filling every S/H container at every watering is important to flush salts and to replace all the air.

You can mimic S/H drilled pots by standing regular pots in dishes of water, and always keeping water in the dish. You still need to water by completely filling the pot to the rim each time. This can be hard with a standard pot due to the large holes. In this case I would put the pot into another container without holes for watering.

I would NOT use the standing dish technique where mosquitos are a threat. If you use the standing dish with a clay pot, the evaporation will keep the roots cooler than they would be with a non-permeable pot.

Non-drilled glass can be used. Fill the container to the brim, then empty most of it.

Extra holes would lead to the reservoir evaporating even faster. LECA provides plenty of air to the roots. I suggest not making extra holes.

Regarding water-filled glass vases heating roots... almost everything on the Internet, news or educational, is mostly wrong, written/video'd by idiots or crooks.

An uban legend which very clearly demonstrates that a little knowledge can indeed be a dangerous thing!

---------- Post added at 04:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:16 AM ----------

So you use the good stuff in coffee too, eh? If you use whole milk at all, try pouring off 10%-15% of it and replacing it with heavy cream. Shake well before using! I made an interesting discovery with my winter set up. It's a converted shelf unit that I built a tray into for regular terracotta pots. I used rubber roofing material to line it, and I find that, particularly with larger pots, the weight of the incoming water forces the pot down into the rubber and creates a seal which makes completely filling very easy. I just have to remember to tip the pot slightly after a minute or so to let it drain.

My experimentation led me to there being 2 holes of 1/4", 6mm diameter, about one inch, 25mm up from the bottom in the sidewall, placed as close together as possible without intersecting.

In larger, taller pots, I'll occasionally make the reservoir deeper. The proximity of the two holes is for guaranteed drainage - a LECA pellet can block a hole, but if the other hole is very close, that pellet will prevent the other from being similarly blocked.

Cream is for coffee and milk is for tea. Skim milk is for the deluded.