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African Violets

Self-Watering Pots Too Wet !

18 years ago

I just transplanted some violets into new self water clay pots (glazed outer pot, unglazed inner pot). They went through all the liquid in about 2 days and the soil is sopping wet. I guess these araen't going to work, and I need to switch to a wick system. Any ideas? Has this happened to anyone out there?

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Comments (4)

Goosegardens
18 years ago
Hi
It is hard to know for sure what the problem is...
we have one of those type pots and it works fine for us.

I suppose it is possible the pot is somehow defective...
perhaps a small crack in the inner pot? You could test this by removing the plant, washing the pot... and then filling the otter pot with water
and set the empty inner pot inside... (perhaps with some stones to weight it down so it does not float. See if it fills with water, if so that is a defective pot.

Also, you should make sure that you use a very light soil mix (lots of perlite). Most of the commercial mixes have too much peat moss... and in this situation, commercial mixes likely would get waterlogged using this sort of self watering pot.

Ardy
nac_mac_feegle
18 years ago
Luv,

I've been using that kind of pot for several years and it works just fine for me.

Like Ardy says, *definitely* check to see if there is a crack of any kind in the inner pot!

If that isn't the problem, it is almost surely that the soil is too heavy.

I had the same problem the first time I used one. The directions that came with it said to lighten the soil with perlite. However, lightening the commercial AV soil with *a little* perlite was not enough; I ended up mixing the commercial AV soil with about 1/2 perlite to get it light enough.

Now that I know about the 1/3perlite-1/3vermiculite-1/3coir (or peat or AV soil)-see the FAQ 'Basic Care of African Violets'-, I take the 1/3-1/3-1/3 mix and add *extra* perlite to it for my self-watering containers. African Violets seem to need as much air around their roots as water.

As an aside, the other thing I learned was that the pots I had were *way* too big for the violets I had in them. I lucked out and the plants I had bloomed anyway, but the top dimension of the inner pot should not be more than 1/3 (again with that pesky 1/3) the diameter of the plant's crown. If this is new information for you, check out the same FAQ as above for more explanation. If it is not new, sorry about the regurgitation!~smile~

Happy Growing,

Feegle
~who had to put other kinds of plants in the 4.5inch self-watering pots.
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vickster257
18 years ago
At times, I often remove the soil which initially was supplied with the plant as I also experienced the same thing as the mixture remained overly wet. Again, the previous members gave you excellent advice as I also lighten the AV mix with perlite. Some of my plants are wick-watered and others are in self-watering containers. Your choice. Hope that helps.

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luv2grow_tx
Original Author
18 years ago
This weekend I checked for leaks (none) so I lightened up the soil like you guys said, and no more sopping wet violets! Looks like this is going to work after all :)

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