“Drain any standing water from saucer after watering.” How many times have you, as a houseplant owner, read these instructions for watering a plant? Yup, we get it; plants don’t like to be left sitting in stagnant water, which is why I’ve done away with drip saucers altogether.
I’ve stumbled across a better way. A no-nonsense, kill-two-birds-with-one-stone way.
You Have to Have a Drainage Hole
You have to use a pot with a drainage hole. It’s been drilled into us nearly as much as the “drain standing water” bit. Of course, if you use pots with drainage holes, you need to put something under them so you don’t ruin your furniture and have a leaky mess all over your floor whenever you water your plants.
Which means putting a saucer beneath the pot.
But if you don’t tip out that standing water, then you’re effectively back to using a pot with no drainage hole. The pot sits with the bottom submerged in water, which, as we all know, can lead to root rot. And once you’ve got root rot, it can be quite difficult to save the plant. (Read up on root rot here and what to do if you suspect it.)
Sure, tipping water out of a saucer is easy if you’ve got a few small plants. But what if your home is effectively a jungle with pots ranging from 4” to 18” wide? Some of those aren’t so easy to lift to tip out the saucer. And where do you set your wet-bottomed pot while you’re doing all this tipping?
Maybe I’m making too much out of it, but the whole thing seems silly to me. And I don’t “do” silly.
If there’s a practical approach that saves me time and a few headaches, I’m all for it.
Enter the pebble dish.
It’s like a pebble tray and a drip saucer had a baby.
(Stop looking at me like that.)
Likely, you’ve also read this little instruction along your houseplant-keeping journey. “To provide proper humidity for your plants, place pots on top of a shallow tray of pebbles filled with enough water to come to the top of the pebbles.”
Yup, great; along with drainage holes and drip saucers, now we all need pans of wet stones hanging about the house to keep our plants happy.
At some point along the way, I thought to myself, “Why not just get a deeper saucer and turn it into a pebble tray?”
My thinking was that each time I watered my plant, the excess water would drain into the dish, adding moisture to the pebbles for humidity. But the pot would be sitting atop the pebbles, so my plant wouldn’t be sitting in standing water. Voila!
My normal watering routine seems to work out, so when the pebble dishes look a little dry, it’s time to water my plants. In the winter, when the house is quite dry, and the plants are dormant and need less water, I might have to top up the water in the dish of pebbles more often, but that’s about it.
This whole setup works much better than tiny saucers and large trays of pebbles.
And because I’m using a dish with a glazed interior for my pebbles, it also means no more water marks beneath my plants. (I’m looking at you, terracotta saucers!)
I’ve tweaked this method over time and now have a practical yet beautiful setup that keeps my plants happy.
The Pebbles
At first, I used fish tank gravel, which is a solid choice for pebble trays. However, the small size and the moisture also meant that any time I picked up or moved a pot, tiny pebbles would stick to the bottom of the pot and inevitably fall off as I moved about. Naturally, I would find them again when I stepped on them with bare feet.
Not pleasant.
I switched to pea gravel, again, another excellent choice for pebble trays – neutral gray/brown colored stones and easy to find at any home improvement store.
Honestly, I ditched these for aesthetic reasons. I’ve got a Martha Stewart streak in me where everything needs to be “perfectly, perfect.” I didn’t like the color. Yes, I know, I’m a big fat hypocrite. Apparently, I tolerate some silliness.
Eventually, I settled on these beautiful jade chips.
They’re a blend of emerald, cream and yellow-green stones, and they look lovely in all my pebble saucers. Plus, they don’t show the hard water stains from my insanely hard water as much as the previous options. Like I said, perfectly perfect.
The Dishes
For this setup to work, you need dishes that are deeper and a tad wider than the traditional saucer that comes with the pot.
When I first tried this out, I wanted all my pebble dishes to be matchy-matchy, so I ordered these lovely white fluted ramekins. They’re wonderful, and I still use them today.
But then I found a pretty little Blue Willow custard dish at a thrift store.
That was the end of matchy-matchy. Nowadays, I keep my eyes out for dishes that are suitable pebble dishes when I’m out thrifting. My little collection is quite charming and appeals to my “Stop Acting Like Martha Stewart” side.
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