Starting plants indoors requires a lot of containers. I have no intention of purchasing pots at the local nursery, so I like to use whatever I’ve saved from my recycling bag. Cut down four-liter milk jugs are a great source of seed starting and growing containers.
I do have a collection of nice commercially made pots which I reuse many times for certain plant sizes at different times. I also have some small yogurt containers that are the perfect size for some plants (like onions). Repurposed containers are also great for giving away surplus transplants – I don’t need to ask for the container back.
It is important that these containers get holes punched into their bottoms for proper drainage when watering.
The right amount of water is a skill that is learned with practice. If the potting soil gets too dry, the water may not be absorbed and just run off down the inside edges of the container and out the bottom. If the potting mix is too wet, it stays muddy and the seedlings drown. The best way to remedy mud is to sit the pots on some newspapers or rags to blot up the surplus moisture through the holes in the bottom.
To avoid too wet or too dry I find the best watering is done in two or three passes. Whether in pots or in the garden beds, applying a gentle amount of water over all the containers or areas and then returning for a second and third application once the first pass has soaked in. Young seed beds could be watered with just two passes if watering a bit more frequently and once one gets the hang of it.
For watering the smaller seedlings, I have a plastic pop bottle with a couple of holes drilled in the cap. I use a bigger juice bottle with a drilled cap for larger plants and a full watering can for the biggest pots.
For many years I used one and two-litre watering cans for all things indoors and just held my finger over the spout to restrict the amount of flow. But that took two hands, so now I can use a capped bottle in one hand and move lights or foliage around if need be with the other hand.
A good-sized transplant can dry out the potting mix even when watered daily and can leave the centre of the root ball dry. I find this happening in the greenhouse with the biggest plants in containers waiting for setting out into the garden. To remedy this, I just sit the pots or containers in a tray of water and let the potting mix soak up all the moisture through the bottom holes.
The holes are also good for soaking up water an hour before transplanting into the garden. This assures the root ball is totally moist before it goes into the ground. When transplanting there’s no worry of over soaking the roots since the new garden bed’s soil will wick away any surplus water once it’s transplanted.
(That was a side trail on watering. Now back to making holes in the new containers.)
To punch these important holes in the bottoms of the various containers including the cut down milk jugs I use a woodworker’s drill Spade Bit. That’s the flat one with the slender shaft and a small sharp point in the middle of the flat business end. I hand hold the bit and it pokes the point through the pot and then stops when the main part of the bit meets the bottom.
My Lovely Wife has tried other tools to make the holes; usually things found in the kitchen like pens or pencils or knives or scissor blades, but those tend to overshoot the hole-making and can be messy as well as possibly bloody.
I find my Spade Bit to be the tool of choice for making the important holes in the pots.
Happy Gardening.
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