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Whether you begin with a seedling, a rooted cutting, a plant lifted from the garden, or a bulb, the way you first pot a plant is vital to its future health. Pot it incorrectly, and chances of it growing well are slim.
Most important is the quality of the potting soil in which your plant will grow. With few exceptions, house plants thrive in a potting soil mixture composed of gravel, peat, and soil in equal proportions.
Exceptions to this are: cactus and succulents of most kinds, which grow best in a mixture of half soil and half coarse sand; ferns, which prefer a mixture of half soil and half leaf mold or sphagnum moss; and a few house plants, such as camellias, which need an acid soil and acid fertilizer. These are available at garden shops everywhere.
You can make up your own potting soil mixture, or you can buy it commercially prepared. But whatever kind of mixture that you use, be sure it is moist, not dry or wet, when you’re ready to use it. Tender roots ‘settle in’ best and suffer the least damage in moist soil. It’s handy to keep some soil that’s properly damp in a plastic bag.
Don’t forget to put a layer of coarse material for drainage in the bottom of the pot before you begin to fill with potting soil. Broken chunks of clay pots or small rocks are good for this purpose. Omit this step if you use a self-watering pot.
Consider looks, too, when you pot a plant. Your eye will tell you when a pot is of the correct size, in proportion to the plant. Clay pots come in sizes up to 14 inches. The standard size has a depth equal to top diameter; the sizes called ‘bulb’ and ‘azalea’ pans are not as deep as they are wide.
If the plant is young and of a type that can be expected to grow rapidly, allow for this future growth in selecting the size of the pot. If you choose one too small, repotting will soon be necessary.
If you use a pot in which plants have previously grown, make certain that it is thoroughly clean before reusing it.
A plant needs repotting when its roots get matted around the outside of the soil ball in which it is growing. Fast-growing plants should be checked every three or four months. Slow-growing plants probably will not need repotting more than once a year.
Ordinarily, it is best to shift a plant to a pot no more than an inch or two larger than its former pot. If the pot is too large in relation to the plant, the soil will dry out very slowly and it will be difficult for you to control the moisture. Topsoil may be dry while central soil is still wet.
As a further aid to good watering practices, most beginners should use clay pots rather than plastic ones, since plastic pots permit no respiration through sides, and it is easy to misjudge and overwater when relying on topsoil as the indicator. Plant growers and shippers often use plastic pots because of their light weight and low breakage rate. But these factors are no longer relevant when you grow plants in your home.
Normally, the roots of a plant need not be disturbed at all when you set it into a larger pot. Simply add fresh potting soil at the bottom, the sides, and the top. But if the original soil ball has become packed down, has had poor drainage, or has had too many soluble salts (from hard water), then all of the soil should be removed and replaced. Do this gently, after having watered thoroughly on the clay preceding repotting so as to damage roots as little as possible. Spread the roots as you sift the fresh potting soil around them.
Beginners are tense about damaging plants in the course of repotting, but it is really a simple operation to perform without injuring a plant. Always water on the day before you repot so that all of the soil ball will be uniformly moistened.
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