I've been scratching my head on this one Plains
I reckon the rock/gravel thing is bang on (now you've pointed it out
) The "origination" of this idea must have come from the age old gardening practice of putting some broken terracotta pot in the bottom of your new terracotta pots to prevent the (single) drain hole becomming blocked, also preventing all the soil falling out, I always did this, as taught by my grandad
Thinking about a layer of rock/gravel instead, logically the smaller soil particles would block any gaps between the rock/gravel particles much easier than they would block the single large hole in the bottom of terracotta pots
It's blindingly obvious when you hit me over the head a few times with it
We recently re-potted this years toms in new pots, I told the Mrs to put some drain holes in them, she had already done two pots when I saw she had been banging holes all up the sides of the 2 gal pots
so 2 pots had holes up to about 8", the rest just had holes in the base. 3 weeks on, the plants with extra holes actually look better than the rest
only by around 6" on a 3ft plant, but still, food for thought eh, she'll be ever so pleased when I tell her it wasn't "wrong" afterall
San
