I understand that the "false bottom" is to act like a reservoir of water so that you don't need to water the plant as often, but question is, how do you know when the reservoir is low or empty? Or are these just a gimmick, in which case I should toss the insert and drill holes.

Here's a couple of pictures of what I'm asking about:

That's a good question. Weather and climate conditions and if placed indoors or out would be a factor. I would only be guessing but when the soil in dry when tested by putting a finger in soil inch down.
Some self watering pots have wicks that run down the side . Check the wick if dry . Sometimes they need to add instructions to these. It's worth a try keep posting on how well it works. It must need special soil to keep watered with a wick, depending on how large the pot is .

Try a Google for more info.

bumplbea said:That's a good question. Weather and climate conditions and if placed indoors or out would be a factor. I would only be guessing but when the soil in dry when tested by putting a finger in soil inch down.
Some self watering pots have wicks that run down the side . Check the wick if dry . Sometimes they need to add instructions to these. It's worth a try keep posting on how well it works. It must need special soil to keep watered with a wick, depending on how large the pot is .

Try a Google for more info.

Thanks. The one inch down rule helps. These would be outdoors, but on a deck. They didn't come with a wick. I'm still googling, but here's a link to a useful article about how to make your own. In my case, Rite-Aid was having a 75% off sale, I got four 20-inch pots for $25. I'm not much of a diy type of person anyway. I probably won't use these until next spring.

http://extension.umd.edu/hgic/...

https://www.ebay.com/gds/what-...

Well, after googling around a bit, I'm not sure about the pots I got. One video suggests they are poorly designed (no fill tube). Another article said they didn't like them at all and gave some convincing reasons why. Since I wasn't planning to use them until next spring, I got some time to think about it. I'll hold off drilling holes until then.

https://containercrazyct.com/2...

https://www.gardeners.com/how-...

Greg Yes, the false bottom is meant to create a water reservoir. The bad news is that it really is poorly designed bc the plants can be drowned. The good news is that you can improve the design very easily yourself, to make it functional!

I wrote an article on this very topic here....
The thread "Article: Self-Watering Pots....A Fantastic Invention!" in Gardening Ideas forum

bloominholes2fill said:Greg Yes, the false bottom is meant to create a water reservoir. The bad news is that it really is poorly designed bc the plants can be drowned. The good news is that you can improve the design very easily yourself, to make it functional!

I wrote an article on this very topic here....
The thread "Article: Self-Watering Pots....A Fantastic Invention!" in Gardening Ideas forum

Awesome! So if I read the article right, I just need to drill a drain hole on each side.

Just one side works.

Oops. Didn't notice how old this was. Might as well leave the post, I guess.

I agree that it's an attempt at a gimmicky sort of watering aid. Soil (it has to be at least a little moist) will wick water, but I think there are two problems here. One is that it's too far for soil to wick. The other is that it's just not big enough to do much good. When I build self-watering planters, I use 1/2" nylon ropes wound up through the soil to wick water from a large space at the bottom below the soil support layer. And that works fine for many days without refilling.

Obviously, yours won't work where exposed to rain. I expect it's supposed to provide some water management indoors. I just don't think it's better than a regular pot without holes and with rocks at the bottom.

If you want to wick, just use nylon braided rope, anything from 1/4" to 1/2", one end down in the water, and the other up through the soil. But you don't have any way to top off just the reservoir, so how will you ever know that you soaked just enough water down to it to have some reserve.

IntheHotofTexas said:Oops. Didn't notice how old this was. Might as well leave the post, I guess.

I agree that it's an attempt at a gimmicky sort of watering aid. Soil (it has to be at least a little moist) will wick water, but I think there are two problems here. One is that it's too far for soil to wick. The other is that it's just not big enough to do much good. When I build self-watering planters, I use 1/2" nylon ropes wound up through the soil to wick water from a large space at the bottom below the soil support layer. And that works fine for many days without refilling.

Obviously, yours won't work where exposed to rain. I expect it's supposed to provide some water management indoors. I just don't think it's better than a regular pot without holes and with rocks at the bottom.

If you want to wick, just use nylon braided rope, anything from 1/4" to 1/2", one end down in the water, and the other up through the soil. But you don't have any way to top off just the reservoir, so how will you ever know that you soaked just enough water down to it to have some reserve.

@IntheHotofTexas

Self watering pots are my particular go-to. This is an article I wrote on them:

The thread "Article: Self-Watering Pots....A Fantastic Invention!" in Gardening Ideas forum

Here's one I did some years ago. It is no longer in service, but I may revive it one day.

A Large Scale Wick Irrigation Experiment

Here's something I played with for a hoop house (before it blew away.) Watering is a potential issue, especially in a Texas summer when containers often dry out between even twice-a-day waterings.

After "turning it on," by day four, all thirteen young plants went through a 104-degree cloudless day with no sign of suffering and no supplemental watering. On the afternoon of day four, I checked them and was dismayed to see that there were signs of moisture, areas of darker soil on the surfaces. Dismayed, because I thought my wife must have watered them and had spoiled the experiment for the day, even though she had told me they were doing fine. I checked them with an uncalibrated soil moisture meter and found that at root depth, the meter showed "5" on a scale of 1 to 10, just where it should be for nearly all plants that don't require especially dry or wet soil. But I found she had not watered them at all. They were being maintained in good condition on the wick system. Every third day the sewer pipe reservoir is visually down enough to take more water, but it clearly could go a long weekend without filling. Obviously, this will not be the case with 80 or even 40 containers on a row and probably not even with a dozen fully mature plants.

The calculated volume of 40 feet of 4-inch pipe is about 26 gallons (208 pints). Estimates of how much water a mature tomato plant needs vary wildly, probably due to differences in climate container size, fruiting or not fruiting, and soil. A mature tomato plant under 30% shade on an otherwise clear, sunny day is said to require anything from two pints to a gallon of water a day. But clearly, if the system is supporting 40 mature tomato plants in fruit, at least two refills per day will be required. I suspect it would always be a matter of keeping an eye on it and adjusting any automatic filling mechanism according to how quickly the water level drops.

Note that in one photo the pots are properly raised so that no part of the internal wick is below water level. Otherwise, it will siphon downward and run out of the pot.

Cool!

IntheHotofTexas said:Oops. Didn't notice how old this was. Might as well leave the post, I guess.

Not to worry, doesn't matter the age of the post if you've got a question or something to add.

As for my original post, I've since done away with the self-watering pots. In the PNW, they're not needed, and I lost a good fern to root rot because of them! I was not happy!

I took all the plants that were in them, carefully removed them, and took out the false bottom and drilled drain holes in the bottom.

Brinybay said:

Not to worry, doesn't matter the age of the post if you've got a question or something to add.

As for my original post, I've since done away with the self-watering pots. In the PNW, they're not needed, and I lost a good fern to root rot because of them! I was not happy!

I took all the plants that were in them, carefully removed them, and took out the false bottom and drilled drain holes in the bottom.

Thank you for updating us on the self watering pot. I with your analysis. The roots can become water logged in the pre made self watering pots. The roots seek out water and build up in the bottom water reservoir becoming water soaked leading to root rot. Inside self watering pot not that great, but outside in summers they work better. That was also my experience with them.

I know this is an old post, but please don't fall for these scams. This set-up, with no drain hole nearly guarantees soil saturation at the pot bottom which in most cases would prove to be deadly; and it does ensure a build-up of dissolved solids (salts) from your tapwater and fertilizer solutions ...... and you'd better be using a fertilizer with an NPK ratio that closely mimics that at which the plant absorbs the nutrients or else the nutrient ratio will quickly become skewed enough that antagonistic (nutrient) deficiencies would have you pulling your hair out. This is a fundamentally poor idea ..... and I put the Ups-a-Daisy pot inserts in the same category.

Al

tapla said:I know this is an old post, but please don't fall for these scams. This set-up, with no drain hole nearly guarantees soil saturation at the pot bottom which in most cases would prove to be deadly; and it does ensure a build-up of dissolved solids (salts) from your tapwater and fertilizer solutions ...... and you'd better be using a fertilizer with an NPK ratio that closely mimics that at which the plant absorbs the nutrients or else the nutrient ratio will quickly become skewed enough that antagonistic (nutrient) deficiencies would have you pulling your hair out. This is a fundamentally poor idea ..... and I put the Ups-a-Daisy pot inserts in the same category.

Al

Like I said to Tex, I personally don't think it improper to revive an old thread. Since the last post, we noticed the leaves of a rosemary bush turning brown. It was in one of those plastic fake-barrel pots. I tipped it up to look at the bottom, and notice it had only one hole in the center of a raised portion of the bottom, IOW, it was another of those so-called self-watering pots!

The plant was mature enough to be able to carefully remove it from the pot, and when I did, I got a whiff of root-rot stench, hooey! I cleaned and sanitized the pot and drilled holes in the LOWEST part of the pot (outer rim). Then I removed a portion of the root ball that was rotted, hosed the rest down real well then put some fresh compost and potting soil in the pot, some transplant food on the root ball, then placed it back in the pot.

That may sound a little crude to some more refined gardeners, but I've used this method before on plants, they all survived. They experience a bit of "plant shock" at first, but always came back fine.

I really wanted to put the rosemary in a REAL wooden barrel planter, but you have to order them and wait (I miss the days when you could just get what you needed that day!) I didn't have that option at that time.

Moral of the story is I think I'm done with cheap plastic pots.





This is what the underside of the pot looked like before I drilled four more holes around the outer ring.

Right, there's nothing wrong with revitalizing an old post. There's a constant turn over of members and new ones can learn from "old" information when it's timeless information, like on this thread.

It seems that the pots with no drainage holes whatsoever are being labeled as/confused with self-watering pots, as this thread continues on. False bottom pots without a drainage hole are not self watering, whether they have a false bottom or they don't. They are pots with a design flaw....plain and simple. They waterlog the plants. So, unless the plants one is growing can survive in swamp-like conditions, all other plants need good drainage. Actual self-watering pots are basically designed like a pot and saucer combined all in one, and there's a drainage hole, but on the side of the pot, about 1 inch or so up from the bottom. This creates a water reservoir for the plant(s), and the hole serves as an overflow. Manufacturers make self watering pots with a false bottom, to hold the soil out of the water reservoir, in order to keep the soil from getting soggy, with a drainage hole of sorts on the side near the bottom for overflow, and the roots grow down to the water reservoir. So the plant has access to water for a spell without getting water-logged.

TRUE self-watering pots really do work, and they allow the plant to stay watered for a couple to three days without the gardener having to water them every single day!! I wrote an article about it, here on the NGA: The thread "Article: Self-Watering Pots....A Fantastic Invention!" in Gardening Ideas forum