I’ve turned some old bottles into pots and I’ve seen lots of warnings that they won’t get enough drainage. I’ve added a layer of rocks at the bottoms to help with this but I’m not sure it’s enough. I love the look of the pots and am wondering if there’s anything I can do to improve the setup or changes I might need to make to care because of it
Honestly, I've found mint growing from broken mortar in bricks, and attached to a slimy rock in a stream. The big concern with these systems is that roots can drown easily... They need a certain amount of air. You might consider planting containers like this with a layer of LECA or pumice in the bottom, and extra perlite in the soil, but see how these go-- they might be fine.
1 like The main thing you'd want to do is make sure, when you water them, the water never completely covered the rock layer.
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I use a few one vases like this, and best I can tell, water them extremely slowly so that the most water stays in the soil, not down at the bottom with the rocks. Like someone else said, don’t fill with water over the rocks layer because then there’s really no air for the roots. Perhaps even one of the terracotta spikes you can fill with water to slow-feed the roots would be great, but as long as you watch/can see the levels in there. Should be fine until it needs repotting (watch for algae though since it’s sunlight through a damp environment).
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You can make self watering planters easily with plastic bottles! Cut them in half, flip the top part with the cap upside down and put it inside the bottom part. Heat up a screw driver and poke a hole in the bottle cap then shove any old cotton wick through it, then plant whatever you want to plant inside the top part of the bottle. Make sure the wick is long so it touches the bottom of the bottle and the top of the upper half (that you’ve flipped). then you can just fill the bottom reservoir :)
I looked into this option when making these but couldn’t come up with a good DIY way to do this with the glass bottles I’m using
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You could try switching the plants to semi hydroponic. Use leca for the whole container. It does take some effort to switch plants over and takes time for them to adjust. I also like the look and have propagated plants in leca and clear glass vase.
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