When Size Matters: Choosing the Right Pot for Indoor Plants
Indoor flowers that are not particularly picky can probably come to terms with the fact that the wrong pot was chosen for their cultivation.
However, demanding plants will not tolerate such a mistake, says Anastasia Kovrizhnykh, an expert of the online publication BelNovosti, an agronomist and landscape designer.
If the growing container is too tight, the roots will literally be squeezed, which in turn will prevent them from growing in proportion to the growth of the above-ground part.
At the same time, the roots, trying to find a place for themselves and "get hold of" nutrients, will almost tie themselves into knots and displace each other. Those shoots that lose in this struggle may even rot and pull the healthy ones along with them.
As a result, the flower will first begin to receive insufficient nutrition, its growth will stop, and development will cease. The worst case scenario will be the death of the "green pet".
But a too spacious flowerpot is no better. The roots simply cannot master a large volume of soil, which means that the “extra” soil will remain wet after watering, and over-moistening can cause the same rotting process. You are already familiar with the result.
Therefore, when choosing a pot for replanting an adult plant, make sure that it is 3-4 cm larger than the previous one.
For a young flower or one with weak roots, it is better to use a small, shallow pot. The same requirement applies to rooting cuttings.
Now about the frequency of replanting. If we are talking about plants in their first years of life, then you will have to change the pot to a more spacious one once a year. For adult plants, this value is once every 2-3 years, since their root system has already finished active growth.
If you are growing large tree-like plants, you should know that when the plant reaches adulthood, there is no need to change the pots – it is enough to renew the soil by a third of its total volume.
Earlier we wrote about which indoor plants bring wealth and luck.
