pot in pot system is the term i would use .. see if this gets you anywhere .. i gotta run right now ...

ken

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=pot+in+pot+system&ia=web

It doesn't really matter what kind of pot the plant is actually planted in. You can use whatever you have on hand or prefer. I have cache pots for all my indoor plants and I use terra cotta, plastic and a few orchid pots with extra holes. There is no difference in growth wrt to the type of pot. Some fit snugly into the cache pot while others have more room. That doesn't make any difference either :-)) However, I never water them in the cache pot but remove them in the pot they are planted in to the kitchen sink for a thorough watering and then allow them to drain well before replacing in the cache pot.

btw, all my houseplants vacation outdoors during the summer sans the cache pots. They will be ready to go back outside later this month.

I like enough of a gap to be able to get the inner pot in and out easily. Without being able to do that, the double-potting serves no purpose except visual appeal.

I use some cache pots outside, for plants that are under a porch roof so they can't fill with water when it rains.

It sounds like you already know, Candace, but just in case - the reason people take the inner pot out when watering the plant is so they can add lots of water, to make sure that all of the soil was moistened, and excess water can drip away. If left in the decorative pot, excess water can cause root rot (overwatering.)

AHH - I'd planned to water inside. THANK YOU!!!!!

Is this true even if it is lifted slightly above the water? I don't plan to drown it, but I wanted to lift it slightly in case there is run off.

Hmmm, I have a lot of plants, lol. If I have to walk them all over to the sink, I am going to have to schedule around watering days, ha ha.

OOOOOH I also like the idea of a "cache pot vacation" THANK YOU!!!!!

Another thing that made this confusing is that when I was looking for regular pots originally, I read a lot of stuff that seemed to be against plastic pots. The non-plastic are definitey prettier, but a lot of stuff seemed to lean towards terra cotta and "breathable" pots as healthier for the plant.

(which caused another issue - I don't like terra cotta as a color, but by the time you paint and seal it, I would think it looses the breathebility and is probably the same as plastic.)

But then for cache-potting plastic seems to be OK. Weird, but GOOD. I can find plastic pots easily.

And I am a new-ish plant mom. I have about 25-30 plants and they are doing well. This is after YEARS of buying plants and having them die after about 6 months. But "I've matured now and I am better able to handle the responsbility of being a plant parent." ha ha ha

I have had some for 4 years now so I'm nervous about choosing the wrong pot and messing everything up! :)

As gardengal said, the type of pot doesn’t matter. Personally, I like real terracotta pots as visual objects so I don’t hide them in cache pots. I use them outdoors. For indoors with cache pots I use any old plastic pot I have left over from buying plants or can scrounge/find. Garden centres sometimes have a pile for you to help yourself. Or you can use any plastic tubs from ice cream, yoghurt etc. Just make drainage holes.

If you have "25-30 plants and they are doing well", don't change a thing! :-)

"For indoors with cache pots I use any old plastic pot I have left over from buying plants or can scrounge/find."

Yes, that's what I do. I water in the cache pot, just lift up a few hours later to be sure all the water is absorbed.

The type of pot you use inside the cache pot matters, not so much from the grower's perspective, but from the plant's perspective. Clay pots offer better gas exchange, so they offer the plant better opportunity for a healthy root system, compared to plastic, or highly vitrified clay/ ceramic. Pond baskets would be a very good choice, too, or colanders from a dollar store.

Hackberry in pond basket - first stage on way to becoming a bonsai ^^^

When you are using a cache pot, it's best not to pour water into the cache pot and let the plant absorb it. There are 2 reasons for this. The first is, it will often not allow the upper part of the soil column to draw moisture high enough to moisten the entire soil mass. Second is, it ensures that all dissolved solids (salts) from fertilizer solutions and tapwater to remain in the pot where they can accumulate to levels high enough to reverse the flow of water into cells, which kills affected cells, tissue, possibly the plant. A third reason that comes at no extra charge, is the fact that watering that way means you relinquish control over whatever nutritional supplementation program you have in place. Individual nutrient levels can very quickly become so skewed that an excess (toxicity) of nutrient X can cause the plant to be unable to take up enough of nutrient Y to sustain normal growth. This type of culturally caused deficiency is called an antagonistic deficiency.

A pot-in-pot set-up (mentioned somewhere above) is different that utilizing a cache pot in that pot-in-pot growing mentioned above utilizes secondary pot (like a cache pot) which is partially filled with soil.

The best type of set-up for using a cache pot is to suspend the pot the plant is in above the bottom of the cache pot, and water from the top. The water that exits the drain hole is supposed to be flushing accumulating dissolved solids (salts) from the soil. Watering from the bottom or allowing the pot the plant is in to sit in the effluent which exits the drain hole entirely ondoes any advantage of flushing the soil.

If you imagine the collection saucer in the image provided as the cache pot, you have a visual of one way of suspending the main pot above the bottom of the cache pot.

Al

My cache pots function as a saucer. I do not like them suspended.

Sherry - I was addressing the forum, not you directly, and it goes w/o saying it's perfectly fine that you choose the methods you prefer; still, it changes neither the reasons to avoid the practice nor the potentially significant drawbacks I outlined. The reason it's good to avoid allowing our plants to sit in the effluent that exits the drain hole is not unlike the fact it's best we avoid recirculating the water that splashes off our mouth back through the drinking fountain.

Al