STOP Putting Gravel At The Bottom Of Your Pots!

One of the most common garden myths in container gardening that you see perpetuated over and over and over again, despite it being pretty easy to disprove is the fact that you need to put something at the bottom of your containers to improve drainage. What's up everyone? Kevin from Epic Gardening here. So we're coming at you from houseplant corner and let's go ahead and talk about this. It's really easy to disprove and the solution is quite simple, but we'll get to that in a second. So why do people think that you need to put drainage material at the bottom, like gravel or sand or like broken up pots or broken course material? Uh, they think that, and it actually makes sense why you would think this. The logic is this. We're growing plants in containers. What are the most common killers of container plants? Overwatering, which leads to root rot, which leads to plant death. So it makes sense then to say, okay, well how do we improve our drainage? So we make sure we don't overwater our plants. The easiest solution is just don't actually overwater your plants. But if you don't want to do that, then you will say, okay, well, I'll put some gravel at the bottom of this plant and that'll solve the problem. Well, it's actually not true. And so here's what kind of goes on. You've got your plant here. Let's draw our pot out. Here's our pot top. We've got our nice little terracotta and what people will do is they will add a bit of gravel kind of at this level, maybe an inch or so. So everything in this zone is all gravel. So I'll kind of shade it like that. Everything above right here, that's all soil. The logic is I dump water in, I water my plants, and then if there's too much, it'll just kind of fall out, come out of my drainage hole, which will, will represent like that and it'll probably go into my little saucer, which I have right here, right? It doesn't really happen like that, or at least it doesn't happen as effectively as you would think. So what they've found in studies is that soil with gravel underneath it actually retained more moisture than soil with finer grained particles like sand or even just more soil. And so the reason why is because this soil doesn't start releasing water out of it until it's fully saturated into these larger particles like gravel, which is really ironic because the whole point of doing this hack is to improve drainage and weirdly enough it does not. It actually increases water retention up here in your container. So let's say from here and above and then only when that's completely saturated does it start releasing it. So it does the opposite of what you want. So there's no reason to do it because the actual solution is to strip it down to the basics once again and just use the highest quality potting soil that you can. Really good stuff. And there's a couple of recommendations down in the video description. If there's something that you're looking for, but that just use really good potting soil. Make sure you water your plants well. I have a video up here about exactly how to water your container plants, everything you could ever want to know and then just actually use a drainage hole. I don't know why people kind of went out of favor of using drainage holes in their container plants. To me it just doesn't make any sense. And then you can use a plate or you could use a saucer or whatever you want to, to actually capture some of the water. So that way when you water through, it's just going to be saturated as it normally would in the soil. And then if there's too much, it'll just come out into the saucer and eventually will either evaporate out or maybe sometimes get wicked back up via capillary action and you kind of have like a little sub irrigated system. Now I will say if you must put something at the bottom of your containers, either indoors or outdoors, I like to cut up old natural sponges and throw those in the bottom. That kind of acts as a sub irrigated planter where it will hold moisture and then release it back up into the soil when this soil dries out. There's also products called the hydro box. That's one that I used in my watering video that it's effectively just a commercial version of that sponge effect that I just talked about. But guys, that's it. It's sometimes about getting back to the basics and not over complicating the garden and just using really good potting soil, having a drainage hole and having a nice big enough pot that that suits the plant. That's all you really need. So don't over complicate it. And I will say this, if you like this video, definitely cultivate that like button. Leave me a comment, something that you'd like to see in a future video. Definitely helps the channel out. And the last thing is if you're interested in a little bit of gardening goodness, you can always pick up my book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, link down in the description. All right, good luck in the garden. Contain those plants, keep caring for them appropriately and I'll see you on the next video.