Drainage
4 guides tagged Drainage, from first steps to advanced care.
- BeginnerGarden Care
Cocopeat vs Garden Soil for Balcony Pots in India: The Mix Ratio I Actually Use
My first two years of container gardening I filled every pot with straight garden soil from a roadside nursery, because it was free and it was what my grandmother used in the ground. On a balcony it compacted hard within a season and drowned roots every monsoon. Here's the cocopeat-based mix I switched to, the exact ratio I use for different plants, and where garden soil still earns a place in the bucket.
7 min readRead guide - BeginnerGarden Care
Grow Bags vs Pots for Balcony Vegetables in India: What I Actually Use Them For
I switched half my chilli and tomato pots to fabric grow bags two summers ago, expecting a straight upgrade. It wasn't one. Here's what grow bags actually do better than a plastic or terracotta pot on an Indian balcony, what they do worse, and where I've gone back to pots on purpose.
7 min readRead guide - BeginnerGarden Care
The Pre-Monsoon Balcony Checklist That Actually Saved My Pots
Monsoon damage starts before the first heavy rain, not after it. Here's the one afternoon of prep I now do on all 40-odd pots in late May or early June, before the rain arrives, that has meant far fewer losses since I started doing it every year rather than reacting once the rain is already falling.
7 min readRead guide - BeginnerGarden Care
Monsoon Container Drainage: Stopping Root Rot Before It Starts
I lost a snake plant to root rot in my second Pune monsoon, not because I overwatered it, but because its pot had one small drainage hole that silted shut and I never checked. Here's exactly what I changed after that: the drainage setup that has kept every pot on my balcony alive through three monsoons since, and the warning signs I now catch before the roots go soft.
7 min readRead guide