How to Pick the Perfect Pot
Hundreds of pots! Here at en concordia we have pots in pots and pots on pots. We love pots. Because pottery is like plant jewelry. It makes the ‘lewk’.
Here’s our super experienced advice for pot purchasing.
Choose pots with drainage holes if your going to plant directly in the pot. Sure, some people have had great success planting in a pot without drainage, but it’s a lot of work with a high failure rate. You’re going to spend a lot of time trying to defy the odds, because planting directly into a cache pot creates a damp, low airflow situation.
The exceptions to the drainage hole requirement are cacti and succulents. Their water requirements are so low you can get away with a sealed pot. You’re giving them teaspoons or tablespoons of water at a time and this low volume evaporates from the soil quickly. But a sunny location and cactus/succulent soil will be essential for this to work. We do it all the time especially in shallow bowls.
If you’re keeping your plant in its nursery pot and placing it in a decorative pot (which we’re all about), keep the edge of your nursery pot even or close to even with top of the decorative pot you’re putting it in. Your plant wants good surface airflow and no shadows on the crown from being too deep in a pot.
Sometimes, you’ll need to prop up your plant to keep it from sitting too low in its cache pot. Think of a really tall dracaena in an 8” pot and how cute it will look in a 12” pot for scale. It’ll need a lift or it will sit too low. We’d use a glass jar or terracotta pot to give it that boost and we never use any material that will absorb moisture like balls of paper, cloth and cardboard—they can mold and nobody wants that.
If you have a plant that’s out growing its nursery pot or pot with drainage, the rule of thumb is to go up 2'“ in size all the way around the root ball. So a 2” moves up to a 4”. 6” moves up to an 8”. An 8” moves up to a 10” and so on!