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Potting on question
Gorse
Posts: 2
I've read in some articles and seen on tv it be said that when potting on plants you should only pot on to a slightly bigger pot and not jump up to a much bigger pot size. For example in this article (in the first paragraph).. http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/grow-plants/how-to-pot-up-plants/
I've never heard an explanation for this though. Why not just pot up a plant into a much bigger pot and then not have to do it again for quite some time? I appreciate that repotting a pot plant can give it a fresh lease of life but I don't see any point in not just going to a much bigger pot as well.
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Because the root system can't always cope with too much wet soil round it.
Some plants are more forgiving than others, but as a general rule, it's best not to over pot plants, especially when they're very small. Wait till the roots are filling the pot the plant's in ( usually when they start poking out the holes in the bottom it's ready to move) then shift it into a slightly bigger size. Repeat as necessary
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I do a lot of potting on in the spring with young seedlings and small plants prior to planting out in their final planting position. Using a pot only a little bigger saves on space and compost in this instance.
As Fairy states above, some plants dislike too much space in a big pot and will just sit there with minimum root growth. Waiting until they've exhausted the nutrients in the pot a little makes them hungry to branch out when they're potted on.
I don't understand this one, either. If you plant them out into the garden they obviously have loads of space and they grow on quite happily!
Yes - some plants might Posy - but a small, young plant shoved into a border at the wrong time of year, will sit and sulk - or even just rot - and will be vulnerable to attacks from pests, particularly slugs and snails. A plant that's allowed to mature gradually tends to shrug that off more easily.
In nature, a seedling/plant which grows from something seeding around, will mature slowly according to it's conditions and the time of year, which isn't the same as one we would raise in a more cossetted environment .
You have to choose carefully which plants you can put out early on, and the soil conditions and temperatures are a major factor.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
This is all true, but you will often hear the same advice given for much more mature plants and also for tender plants that we keep in the home. I always follow it but I don't understand it fully!
Thanks for the responses, it's interesting. I guess I have been of the same mindset that if you plant the majority of plants out into the ground they have plenty of space to grow and thrive so why would putting them in a much bigger pot, with plenty of space, be a problem for them.
One thing I did wonder, as to why this might be a problem, is if a pot plant potted up in a much bigger pot, then spreads its roots, as if it were in the ground, only to then find it self restricted by the pot, would this then stunt and stress the above part of the plant?
Think for example of how many hundreds of thousand seeds there are in one poppy head or a foxglove stalk which has millions and the number of them that grow from that in the open ground - a miniscule fraction - and then you will start to realise how fraught Mother Nature makes life for a seed.
Another interesting one is that when you take cuttings, they usually root better if you put them round the edge of the pot rather than in the middle. now why is that?
The theory I've heard is that the practice of inserting cuttings around the edge of a pot stems from the time when all pots were made of unglazed terracotta, a porous and permeable material which allows water and air to pass through.
This means that at the edge of the pot the danger of water logging is less while the aeration of the soil is greater, thus providing optimum conditions for root growth.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Mike & Dove are both correct regarding cuttings, & drainage / air round roots. When I did the RHS course the cuttings mix really was 50:50 compost, Perlite now we all use plastic pots. ( I only have a few old terracotta pots left sadly) Perliite is expensive so a small pot with several cuttings round the edge makes sense economically as well but with that much Perlite if you were only doing one cutting then in theory you could put it in the middle. As regards potting on the theory (so I understand it) is that its a balance between root & top growth. If you put a small plant in a large pot it may sit for some time making lots of root & not much top growth. The idea is that you want to keep the plant moving on in a balanced way so it establishes quickly, as others have indicated above.