Water Pooling
 

This might not be new to you guys but it is to me. I have done container gardening for many years. I am OCD about water retention and drainage. I have never had a problem with it. This year i purchase some 17 gallon Black container from Walmart. I am using peat moss, mushroom compost, cow manure, and of course perlite. My first thought was that maybe i used too much peat moss, because i dug deep in the container and found dry peat moss. I pulled everything out and made sure i had enough perlite in the containers and mixed everything very well. Same problem. Holes are 1/2 inch in the bottom of tubs. Why isn't the water draining properly and just pooling on top. My other 20 gallon containers drain perfectly. Please help.

One problem I've had with Peat is getting it wet enough to accept water, and if it's not, water will pool up on it as you describe. Perhaps you have a bag of REALLY dry peat?
What I do now is fluff it up in a large black trash bag, dump in a gallon or two of water, and let it sit in the sun for a few days. That always seems to work for me, and the peat acts like a sponge after that.
I can't see why you couldn't do that with your prepared mix.

dangit

Yeah, it's probably not wet yet, I have always this problem with seedlings in cups, I pour water and the water just runs on the surface and out of the gosh darnoodley cup. Either mix it well with water manually, or wait more, it will get wet in the end.

I'm have the same problem here with no drain holes.
It is so hot and dry it takes forever to fill the tubs back up again.
Several passes every day.
This is where the sight tubes come in handy, you know you have water in the bottom.

Worth

Add a little dish soap if it won't absorb water. that will break the tension so that it will.

in my rggs, buckets when it came time to plant, i just kept adding a little soil mix and then water, mixed it around with my hands, added more mix , more water, etc. everything is going good, wicks good .