4 Tips For Choosing Pots For Your Indoor Plants

We all love to clothe our plants with pots that add some joy to our homes. But there are four factors to consider when choosing the homes for your plants.

1. Drainage

Lack of drainage is the fastest way to kill your houseplants. It’s one of the major causes, after overwatering, and leads to root rot. You can avoid this by making sure your plant pots have adequate drainage holes. This will help eliminate the buildup of excess water levels in your soil.

If you don’t have a pot with drainage holes, you can place a two-inch layer of stones or pebbles at the bottom of the pot to let the water drain from the soil.

It’s important to use the right pots for the right plants. Let’s break it down:

• Clay pots (terracotta) have high porosity and, therefore, water dries faster in them. Plants such as succulents, hoyas, and peperomias will best thrive in these. Also, if you tend to overwater your plants, clay is a forgiving material.
• Stone or concrete pots have the same effect as those in terracotta.
• In all other materials, water will stay longer in the soil. This is good for any plant that needs medium to moist soil to thrive, for example, calatheas and baby’s tears.

Size


We recommend keeping the width of your pot just a bit larger than the roots to provide room for its growth. A smaller pot size will mean less water retention and no room for root growth. On the flip side, a very large pot will mean too much water retained within soil and may pose risk of pests and even root rot.

Cache Pots



If you have eyes for a cute pot but it doesn't have the adequate drainage that your plant needs, don’t worry. You can use a nursery pot (the type that your plant came in from the nursery) with a Cache Pot. You place the nursery pot inside of a larger pot, called the Cache Pot. They are called Cache Pots because they hide the actual plant container in them.

Now that you know what type of pots your plants need, you can go and find some that both you and your plant will love!