I've pretty much been relegated to buying those clear plastic saucers for my smaller (and some larger) containers. I've found them at places ranging from my local supermarket (in their tiny plant sections) to Home Depot. The ones I've found come in sizes ranging up to where I can put it under a 16" or wider pot. I bottom water several things (like a cyclamen, etc). Sometimes I can find containers that have the saucer built-in and it can actually twist off if need be. I've also used some containers that were labeled as self-watering (assuming you use the wick) and they actually have an open "resevoir" area at the bottom (with a hole on the side) that acts as a saucer for excess water, although the actual soil sits on some sort of gridded insert placed above the resevoir.

Hi Arthur, you make me smile. :) "Scraggy" I know: weak, thin, scrawny, lean, long But "LHS", I cannot figure out nor Google out: Loyalty Honor and Success? Left-Hand Side? Let's Have Sex? (this is, by far, the definition that the internet would have me accept) Load Handling System? Lung Health Study? Liquid Handling System? Latin Hypercube Sampling? Left Hemisphere Stroke? Latent Heat Storage? Local Hobby Store? Life Happiness Scale? And those are just the ones that seemed more likely. There are also about a thousand L______ high schools. Go LHS! So you can see, I'm going to need your help. TYVM. Carol in Jacksonville

Thanks to all that gave us plants. We had a great time. Jenn, thanks for the green glass and the antlers. They look really great! Can anyone identify this one for us? I don't remember who gave it to us or the name of it.

Morph: The results: With all three controls, the drainage was always within 10% of the same amount of water...and it was pretty much random as to whether it favored the wick or the control in terms of drainage, implying the difference is how much I packed the soil. That basically summarizes it. The more soil is packed higher it is capacity to hold water. And so higher amount will wick out. Of course if it is packed too much then it will also reduce its overall water holding capacity. I am not sure what is 10% referenced against. Is 10% wicked water? Is it referenced to volume of pot. If it is the volume of the pot then it is on the higher side of retained excess water. But with MG peat based soil that is probably expected. As rule of thumb the wick needs to extend about the same as PWT of the wick. To be effective the PWT property of the wick should be better than the soil and for most cases that is easy to achieve. A standard strand from a mop will do. Peat based mix will need a longer wick (guessing 4-5 inches or so) and for 511 mix 2 inches should be good enough. Second the wick inside the pot should be near the bottom of the pot. To ensure effectiveness it is usually laid in a loop at the the bottom of the pot as Al illustrated in his pictures. It does not take a lot of water to keep the PWT region saturated. ETA: To keep the experiment of soil properties it is best to have the wick hanging outside of the pot quite long. 6" should probably do it.