Perlite an inch deep at the bottom of pots?

Two quick question for you guys.

I plan to germ with the towel method then plant directing into 8 inch pots (1 gal) using Fox Farms soil.

Do you recommend using an inch of perlite at the bottom if this is going to be the start and finish pot for my plant. I know Fox Farms has perlite already so I shouldn't need to mix any throughout the soil...

I've considered doing this as well, but then ultimately decided that what's really needed (based on everything I had read) that what the plants really needed was soil that would drain all the way through.. I hope that's making sense, but the point is that I think it would be better to mix the perlite in.

A note, if it's Miracle Gro, all the stuff I've seen has fertilizer added to it, so check that out, especially since you've gone to the trouble and expense of acquiring the Fox Farm.

Thanks for the reply! I have black gold perlite which has no fertilizers in it. I was leaning the same way..

I use perlite instead of rocks in the bottom of my pots. It's cheap & lite.

i prefer to use smaller pots for the babies. generally just the plastic keg cups. i do this because it is easier to saturate the soil and let it dry out more. big pots of soil take too long to dry. i kept having sick plants when i put em into full pots right away. this also allows me to use 2 different soil mixes.

by letting the soil dry out between waterings you are forcing the roots to spread out more to get to the moisture left in the rest of the soil. i decided that this root growth outweighed the minor amount of shock from transplanting later. after a day or two, they would take right back off again. if you overwater one of those big pots too heavily, it could set you back waaaay more than the couple days that the transplant might. that happened to me a few times before i changed my ways.

There's another way to do that, too. I also prefer to use plastic cups, with holes poked in the bottom, for my seedlings. But, I put them in a tray and fill that with water. By doing this I accomplish two things, and it works perfectly.

First, the roots head down towards the bottom of the cup. Second, I never have to worry about losing a young one to drying out, which is so easy to do with the babies.

Once they've got a few nodes' worth of growth they're then transplanted into 3-4 gallon pots (eventually all my pots will be replaced to be 4 gallons) and watered normally. I think that if a bit more perlite or vermiculite is added to the mix it would probably dry out more quickly. I wish that stuff came it big bags so it would be easier to "cut" the soil with it.

Click on my sig line and you'll find some photos of how I do the seedlings.