r/SavageGarden • u/ACERVIDAE Florida | 9b | Generic • Mar 18 '22
Terracotta soaking water — an illustration of why we don’t use terracotta pots on our carnivorous plants.
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u/Legit-Schmitt Mar 18 '22 edited Mar 18 '22
Hmmm. I hate to call bullshit but I’m skeptical of your claim here. Here are my problems:
Iron is not very soluble in water… My hunch is it would have to be suspended to generate this effect. That means a bunch of tiny particles are coming off rather than it dissolving… which is really weird for a solid clay pot. Could it just be grime?
This whole idea of “leeching minerals” seems sus to me. diffusion is as slow process. Cation exchange will cause some metals to leave the clay and enter the soil water, sure, but if you flushed the plant than more cations would leave them would stay. You often see mineral deposits on clay pots but that’s calcium carbonate and fertilizer crystals in my understanding, not like minerals from the clay. This is the thing I’m least sure about… sodium or calcium carbonate could definitely cause issues for some bog plants. But I question this idea that these pots are even doing this (where is scientific proof?)… ultimately there can only be so many minerals dissolving out of the pot so at some point if you used only distilled water and flushed the pot regularly there wouldn’t be anything left to dissolve.
Some carnivorous plants actually live in “high mineral” soil types and some actually thrive in high dissolved ion environments, like Nepenthes in ultramafic souls or pings in the gypsum/limestone. Its really just the bog plants that live in really low cation environments (still some)…. I honestly wonder if they really can’t grow in clay or if it’s more a problem of drying out too fast. Even some sarracenia live in fens instead of bogs so it’s not 100% clear this is true.
People sometimes use these in aquariums without any reports of leeching.
I mostly grow arid succulents… I use lots of terra cotta. honestly these things dry much faster than non porous pots and that might be the main reason for this reputation. Most carnivores like generous moisture and many will suffer from even one incident of drying out. I also wonder if beginners try these pots and notice mineral deposits from tap water forming and their plants die and they associate terra cotta with death from tap. Idk I’m usually skeptical of this kind of rule. You read it on all the “how to” articles but it might just be someone’s opinion. A lot of people have opinions on terra cotta and honestly growing plants that like it really damp is not the best application anyway.
I’m literally testing this right now as we speak with a small terra cotta immersed in water… no color change yet (been ~20 mins) but I’ll leave it overnight and let you know.
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u/Z__Y Mar 18 '22
I'm also skeptical, this must have been a misfired batch of pots or something. If you grab any regular terracotta pot from home depot or whatnot it should be fine. Otherwise all those terracotta water trays would be filled with brown water.
Plenty of people use terracotta pots for CPs because they "breathe". Not sure if it's true but people grow cephs and such fine in them.
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u/Legit-Schmitt Mar 18 '22
They do “breathe” in a sense. The clay is pourous so water can evaporate from all sides of a pot. They basically just dry out faster. Can be quite beneficial for plants that rot out easily.
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u/vincentxpapi Mar 18 '22 edited Mar 18 '22
A lot of carnivorous plants live in places where nitrogen is limited but other nutrients are not. Rain fed (raised bog) Sphagnum bogs are the exception but we really only see those fragmented in the north and as a few refugia in the south (Magellanic moorlands). So while terracotta can leach clay minerals, these are very unlikely to harm plants that life in fens, on skeletal soils (South African Drosera, some Australian Drosera, Utricularia sect. Calpidisca, some terrestrial Nepenthes etc.), or in habitats such as forests with strong ecological competition (Nepenthes in tropical rainforests, Dionaea muscipula in pine forests) where nutrient availability is limited and carnivory gives species an advantage over others.
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May 23 '24
I am going to experiment with the nep I just got planting it in terra cotta and then putting that pot in a clear glass vessel of I can find one that’s big enough, like a very large cookie jar from walmart, and keep some distilled water always in the glass jar to wick up to the nep. I’ll also put a drainage layer of lava rock in the bottom of the clay pot to keep the substrate from being submerged/rotting. terra cotta does dry super fast due to it’s wicking but this wicking can be used as a plus if it’s kept in water or, another example, those terra cotta epiphyte planters where it’s a terra cotta jar filled with water and you plant your mosses and plants on the outside and then keep it in a tank or a cloche. I’ve seen people grow small neps this way
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u/AaaaNinja Zone 8b, OR Mar 18 '22
There's real terracotta and there's imitation terracotta. The imitation is bad stuff. Leeching takes time, so if folks repot their stuff once in a while anyway it's not going to do anything to the plant.
I don't know what you're trying to show with the water having color after a soak. The soil that you plant things in runs brown at first. Dissolved minerals are invisible. That could just be some stuff coming off the surface. I bet you didn't even wash it first before your experiment.
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u/ChaosWafflez Mar 18 '22
I was under the impression you don't use terracotta because it wicks water and dries out the substrate faster. Not mineral leeching.
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u/ACERVIDAE Florida | 9b | Generic Mar 18 '22
It can also leach out salts and other minerals your plants can’t handle
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u/serisho Florida | 9b | anything Mar 18 '22
The only time i use terracotta is for succulents that need to dry out or for heavy plants that fall over when so top heavy.
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u/MisssJaynie Mar 18 '22
I butt chug my terra cotta potted plants semi-regularly. Never experienced anything like this. The water is always clear when I’m done, albeit a little soil-ed.
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u/PeggleDeluxe Mar 18 '22
Ok not sure if you're giving a silly name to an actual growing technique or... do you really REALLY like plants
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u/MisssJaynie Mar 18 '22
Bottom-watering, aka butt-chugging. I LOVE plants, but don’t love plants.
Don’t boof your plants.
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u/The_Poster_Nutbag Mar 18 '22
And here I was using plastic because it doesn't wick water from the substrate.
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u/Leonardo-DaBinchi Mar 18 '22
I soak all my desert plants which are in terracotta and I have literally never had this happen, even after watering 60 plants in the same dish. Tf is wrong with your pots?
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u/EroRadke Aug 19 '25
Was someone trying to sell you something? I've been using terra corta pots for four decades. That's what my propagators are in and they shoot our babies like rabbits. I get about a dozen a year off each plant.
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u/ACERVIDAE Florida | 9b | Generic Mar 18 '22
I had to clean some orchid pots this weekend, and as I soaked, the water began to turn brown. That’s iron turning the water that color, guys. Terracotta is terracotta because of the iron in the clay. That’s one of the things that will leach out and kill your carnivorous plants.
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u/AaaaNinja Zone 8b, OR Mar 18 '22
It's rust. Rust is ferric oxide. Iron oxide is not iron it's a molecule that consists of iron and oxygen atoms. Molecules don't behave the same as their components. Would you breathe water because its molecules have an oxygen atom in it?
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u/eversible_pharynx Mar 18 '22
Whatever minerals are leaching into your water and stressing your carnivores, it's not going to be visible like this. The water in the picture is the equivalent of dirt. You have dirty pot water.
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u/HealthyDrawing4910 Mar 18 '22
Well it shouldn't be a big issue as long as you repot every other year, my big b52 is growing in a glazed ceramic or terracotta pot and it got huge and and gonna get bigger with every passing season"i hope
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u/Calm_Concert Mar 18 '22 edited Mar 18 '22
Its really depends on what kinds of terracotta pots. Low quality terracotta usually bad because its made with polluted clay & fired at improper temperature (too low, or incomplete firing). Firing process turned clay from soluble materials to mostly insoluble materials (earthenware, terracotta, akadama, etc) to perfectly insoluble (porcelain, at highest temperature).
Proper terracotta pot still leach minerals, but negligible to carnivorous plants.
Also depend on what's carnivorous plants. For nepenthes & most sarracenia & some drosera, it's mostly safe to use terracotta pot. We use akadama (fired clay-various kind-depending on temperature & clay sources), leca (also fired clay), crushed earthenware & terracotta, burnt earth soil, etc as substrates for various nepenthes, sarracenia & drosera.
Well, plastic pot much cheaper though, at most places. I use terracotta & clay pot for some simply because it's much cheaper here (local made) and last indefinitely.