Justaguy, Tom Mobley has a had unbelievable success with just 14 14 14 in his pot n pot method. I am totally new at this business, my dad who just past away this year at 99 always had a large veggie garden in NC, but I was never interested until now at 72 ! I have put some MG in the water once they started blooming, but this first big beef is unbelievable (seems to be my favorite word this morning :>)). Our weather here is very subtropical, I have two very large mango trees that people said would not survive this far north and west (away from the Atlantic and gulf stream), but put them on the South side of my 12 cbs wall of the hangar and they have done extremely well. People keep tomatoes producing here from fall until June when it apparently is so humid that they fail to set new fruit. Typical day high here summer is 92 and 90% humidity and 70 low at night. Lots of rain in summer, we've had zip where we're located here west of port st lucie this winter and spring. Sorry about how dark the pictures turned out and with my palmetto background it is really hard to see how large the first bigbeef is in the bucket. Will try again to make a picture. bernie

When one asks for opinions, they might be rough and unvarnished. You hopefully wanted folks' honest thoughts though. It looks like this may be your first post at Gardenweb, surprised I didn't notice that yesterday, I usually do. Welcome! I would keep those pots, as I agree with your opinion of their appearance. My style is that usually chop/dig a triangle out of a pot with a hand pruner. I haven't the patience to wait for a small hole to drain, and pots need to be able to drain as fast as water comes out of the hose, for rare occasions when I find that necessary. The nail thing above is so civilized, but would be too small of a hole for life at my house. "I saw a claim that this air space also allowed for more oxygen circulation, but who knows." Like said above, air can't get in there, how would it circulate? The only drawback I know to putting plastic pots outside is their light weight. The wind can blow them over a lot easier. The empty reservoir at the bottom would make them more top-heavy. I might fill that with gravel for outside use, taking some precaution to make sure nothing shifts to block the hole added to the true bottom. With the way the bottom is such a drastically smaller diameter than the top, this is already top-heavy, if filled to near capacity. With a hole in the bottom, they would be excellent pots, with the whole bottom surface able to drain freely. Your idea about not snapping the bottom sounds great for later repotting! You could still use them inside after adding a hole. You'd just need some type of added saucer/something to protect porous furniture/windowsills. That defeats the saucerless look for which the pot was designed, but should be a way to use them inside & out and have great looking plants growing in them, just like any other pot with a hole in the bottom. The saucer doesn't have to be ugly. I'd check the thrift store for interesting plates, saucers, glass dishes. If they're not used to fill with excess water, they should stay clean and nice looking, not caked with limescale or brown dirty rings. Since you get to decide where the hole is, might as well make it at or near the outside edge. Then you can tilt the pot toward the hole after watering and know that the reservoir is empty, further dripping should be minimal. Though you might not invest in multiple 'nicer' pots now, or at any single time, if you start collecting them slowly, you can sit the ugly pots inside them and have the best of both worlds. Another tactic is to have dangling/ground-cover type plants cascading over the sides, to hide the pots. "I've always disliked the traditional ceramic planter with saucer setup, because if the water does happen to flow out, it makes a big mess since the saucers don't collect much. However, I've recently been buying a lot of this type and will likely use more of them from here on out." If you water plants at a sink, then put back on drip saucer, you...

Petrushka that information was so helpful! Thanks so much for taking a look at the link for the soil mix and weighing in. I went ahead and ordered three bags of it based on your assessment. I have three 3-foot plastic window boxes that I will place side by side across the ledge. They will definitely be heavy once full, but the reservoir is refillable from the top so hopefully I can just use a watering can to do that and it won't be necessary to move them. The ledge is simply a visual divider between by living room and dining room which both have 2-story ceilings, so there will be open space on both sides of the planters as well as lots of open space above them. While I know I'm pushing my luck with 12 feet between them and a light source, there are large windows on both sides of the ledge (a large one in the dining room and two on the opposite wall in the living room), so at least they will have light coming in from both directions. There is also a very large wall-sized mirror on my dining room wall adjacent to that window, and my walls and ceiling are a pale cream color so that all helps reflect natural light and make the room a little brighter. To give you a better idea of how much light I'm working with, throughout the day it stays light enough near the ledge that one could read comfortably without switching a light on, but there are never any spots of concentrated light on the walls at any time during the day... It is all very filtered (and dim enough to feel slightly gloomy, so I always have lamps on when I'm in there even though I can see fine without them.) After doing some more research I'm now leaning toward buying Philodendron hederaceum (which I had thought was called Philodendron scandens until I read more of that very informative blog you linked to!) instead of the Syngonium I originally asked about. The sunlight issue is my biggest concern at this point, but I've been encouraged by several anecdotes about P hederaceum thriving in conditions even dimmer than mine, so I'll give it a shot (and probably have my husband remove the solar screen from the dining room window for an extra light boost). Cautiously optimistic!

I use Oyama on some semis and minis. I think they are very good. Though I do not see huge difference between them and wick pots. I would love if bottom container would be transparent to see level of water from outside without lifting it to make sure it is not empty. And I think it is helpful to put little more perlite into the soil. What I do with all my plants, regardless how they are going to be watered(I use Oyama, wicking, matting, top watering and Texas style) that I have always layer of perlite on the bottom and some small amount of only perlite around roots. It helps to give for roots of my newly planted(or repotted) plants more air and they seems to like it. What is interesting about Oyama pots is that some plants look like loving it and some are just "accepting" it. My suggestions would be: Try just a few and you will see how you like it and then go ahead and get more. Happy growing! Alena