I'm having a miserable time, again, trying to get things to grow in
pots. I'm ready to give up the practice altogether! I have two very
sunny spots that look very nice if I keep some potted flowers around, on
the back deck, and on the shelf of an arbor. I've tried a great variety
of different configurations of plants. But they all die. My latest
victim is a buddlia bush in a very large pot. My basil does very
poorly, stays quite stunted and tries to flower instantly. Pineapple
sage from last year is struggling to put out a few leaves while plants
in the ground of the same are larger than my seven year old son.
Scented geraniums struggle until I feel sorry for them and plant them
into the ground. Even the catmint doesn't look well! I've potted these
in a variety of finished compost and potting soil. They get occasional
coffee grounds sprinkled on top, and they are mulched as well. I
haven't fertilized much, so maybe this is a cause. When I tried a
seaweed liquid I had on hand, everything I applied it to looked
decidedly worse for a week, so I stopped using it. Never did figure out
what that was about, I think I diluted it properly.
Meanwhile, my plants in soil do wonderfully. Every scented geranium
that I've given up on in a pot and literally tossed into the garden has
gone on to grow into a lovely plant.
I really love the idea of my pots, but I'm needing some ideas on how to
make this work out. I'm literally amazed by those of you who take
plants INDOORS in pots and keep them alive through entire winters. I
long ago had to give up on plants indoors. Although maybe that was the
cats eating the leaves and then vomiting them everywhere. Okay, that's
a different problem altogether:)
Thanks so much for any ideas.
Regards, Laurie
Mill Valley, CA (a sunset zone 17 I believe, hot dry days, often windy,
no rain May to Nov., foggy cool evenings).
In a message dated 5/24/02 7:18:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, stoba3@ATTBI.COM
writes:
<< I'm having a miserable time, again, trying to get things to grow in
pots. I'm ready to give up the practice altogether! >>
Maybe the pots aren't big enough for the roots? Last year I planted, I think
4, morning glories in a 12" pot by my arbor. They grew terribly, never
bloomed, and always needed watering and fertilizer. When I finally gave up
on them at the first frost, I emptied the pot, only to find it packed with
roots. I never realized morning glories had such big root systems. My poor
plants were starving all summer. This year they are in the ground, and can
grow their roots as far and wide as they want.
Mary Ann
Laurie, there's a new book available, "TheBountiful Container," by Maggie
Stuckey and Rose Marie Nichols McGee. It's outstanding, and much of the
gardening wisdom is transferable to in-ground planting too. McGee owns
Nichols Garden Nursery in Oregon, one of the outstanding herb seed and
plant sources in the West. I've always known, for instance, that basil was=
very tender to frost. She says don't plant it out until nights are above
50=B0 . The book is a large paperback from Workman Publishing, less than
$20. Margaret L, who has no financial interest, etc...
This sounds great, so I've just ordered it. Thanks for the
recommendation.
Regards, Laurie
to
> make this work out. I'm literally amazed by those of you who take
> plants INDOORS in pots and keep them alive through entire winters. I
> long ago had to give up on plants indoors. Although maybe that was =
the
> cats eating the leaves and then vomiting them everywhere. Okay, =
that's
> a different problem altogether:)
> Thanks so much for any ideas.
> Regards, Laurie
> Mill Valley, CA (a sunset zone 17 I believe, hot dry days, often =
windy,
I guess my morning glory experience wasn't too bad then. I had also a
12" pot with some mixture of small blooming plants that I added morning
glory to. They did grow up and around the railing, and managed a couple
of blooms at a time each for a few months. But compared to the same
plants in the ground which literally took over, they weren't much of a
success. I'll have to check the roots at the bottom of the pots, I've
not done that yet, since I still have a few survivors in them.
Regards, Laurie
Mill Valley, CA
Do you put lots of stones or broken crocks at the bottom for
drainage, and make the mixture a bit sandy? Things went better for me
once I started doing that.
All I can think of is that perhaps your potted plants should be in shade at least part of the day. You may be northern California, but I assume the sun is hard on them.
My daughter as I've mentioned often plants seeds in small pots and the plants live years and years with no fertilizer, summer and winter. Grass grows in them, but they survive. I have been surveying them all, and was surprised at how well they are doing. Tall grass has shaded a great number of them!
Carol
Carol Jensen wrote:
Carol,
I do. I use at least an inch of pot shards or gravel in the bottom of almost any-sized pot, more in really big ones. In
fact, I make sure that at least one good-sized shard protects the hole, with enough smaller pieces around it to brace it
against the weight of the soil possibly shifting it. I've had those holes get plugged with heavy soil too many times,
and root rot is about the quickest and surest way I know of to kill a houseplant.
On the up side, my houseplants always seemed to thrive for years with practically no ministrations at all. I wouldn't
feed them or re-pot them, just water them well when they looked dry and make sure they didn't drain on anything I
valued. I had a philodendron that got so big for a few years, we were actually starting to be a little afraid of it--I
kept thinking we would wake up one morning and it would have barred the living room doors against us.
Victoria
> Do you put lots of stones or broken crocks at the bottom for
> drainage, and make the mixture a bit sandy? Things went better for me
> once I started doing that.
The ones we buy here in Denmark have holes in the bottom - would one need to add something for drainage in that case?
Carol
I do put some stones in for drainage, and pots work better since I've
been doing so. After various experiments I've settled on that gravel
you buy in garden centres, and I also put a layer of it on the top of
the pot as a stone mulch.
Also, I noticed a couple of weeks ago that a friend had two really
beautiful, healthy basil plants in her kitchen. She told me that her
nephew (who knows everything - I'm not being sarcastic, he really
does, he's extraordinary) had told her that basil is very thirsty,
but also very prone to rot, so the trick is to put it into a clay
pot, so its roots can't rot, and then water it a lot.
Actually I do remember that I used to - I had forgotten all about it. This was in the "olden days" when I used ordinary clay soil for the indoor plants and they really needed the drainage. Now I use the city's free compost which is crumbly and never packs.
Carol
JT Thompson wrote:
Hi JTT
While I wouldn't myself go for stones in the bottom of my pots I do, for
plants needing very good drainage, use quite coarse pumice actually in
the mix and this being full of tiny pores not only holds the mix open
but also acts as an extra water store. However I like your mention of
using gravel as a top mulch and may give it a try. Stones in general are
good at preventing evaporation and would certainly be a particularly
good protection for pots which stand in the sun..
I was also interested in the information about Basil. I can grow it
well in the open garden over summer until nights get too cold, but have
had little success at extending the season with potted plants in the
glasshouse, and this fires me to have another try.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan
Wainuiomata - at the Southern tip of North Island, NZ,
Lat 41??15'S, Long 174??58'E (Antipodes of Spain/Southern France)
Laurie Mandigo-Stoba wrote:
Laurie
For many plants, especially for shrubby ones, growing in a pot nearly
always gives a plant which can be quite healthy but is smaller or at
least more compact than it would be in open ground. Ths reason for this
is that most plants in the open have much vaster root spread than their
tops would lead one to expect and even if generously potted they are
almost always more cramped then their free relations. In quite a lot of
cases however root restriction can actually produce more generous
flowering (The plant is in fact reacting to the somewhat adverse
conditions by trying to reproduce). This by the way is why you may buy a
quite small plant of shrub such as a Camellia in a container, which is
in full glorous flower, but if planted out in the ground it may be
several seasons before it again flowers while the plant luxuriates in
growing lots of roots and shoots.
Miniaturization by root restriction is deliberately carried a whole lot
further in the production of Bonsai, where the roots are not only
confined to small pots but regularly pruned back so the top growth is
correspondingly restricted.
And by the way, root pruning, though in a less severe form than for
Bonsai, is often used to keep larger potted shrubs happy when they get
to the stage of running out of root space even in a big pot. The idea is
to turn them out of the pot in spring and cut back the roots round the
entire ball by about 1/3. The plant is then put back in the pot with a
whole lot of new mix. To balance this loss of roots the top growth is
correspondingly reduced and the result is usually a whole new lease of
life, with lot of hearty new shoots, as the pruned roots expand into the
new soil. This method can be used succesfully for quite a long time,
generally every second or third spring.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan
Wainuiomata - at the Southern tip of North Island, NZ,
Lat 41??15'S, Long 174??58'E (Antipodes of Spain/Southern France)
I am a compulsive mulcher of pots with gravel - vine weevil won't lay
into it and as an avid auricula collector I'm very keen on anything
that keeps them at bay. Nowadays its rare to see a pot around this
place that doesn't have a gravel mulch - about three quarters of an
inch and the **** things give up and go away (mostly). It protects
strawberries from them too.
Basil really doesn't like it outdoors in most places in Ireland - too
damp I think. I have it in the soil in the tunnel from April to
October and usually manage to have a little in window sill pots
during the winter but I've found that I really need the plants to
have lots of air around them for them to succeed - the ones bought
from supermarkets with zillions of seedlings crowded together
invariably go down with one rot or another however hard one tries. I
suspect they are force fed and grown very fast so that the customer
can get the problems rather than the grower since my suspicious
nature has led me to get them tested for fungicides and they seem to
be clean according to our food safety authority
kathryn
Well, I did the repotting yesterday and found out a few things.
Probably the most important was that many of these pots were absolutely
saturated in the bottom half, and one even had some nasty anaerobic odor
to it. The top quarter in some were bone dry. I didn't have the
resources at hand to make up my own potting mix, but I bought what
seemed to be a high quality potting soil made by the local nursery which
contains lots of OM and still seems fluffy enough to not get too dense.
I added in some forest mulch (out of a bag, not the local forest) which
has the consistency of nice finished compost, and a small handful of a
dry boost made from cottonseed meal, kelp meal and alfalfa meal with
calcium. I took all the stragglers from the old pots and combined them,
and started out the others with new plants from the nursery to try and
cheer things up a bit. I finished up with some cocoa hull shells to
mulch the tops.
So, I'm going to try to be more frugal with the watering, knowing that
they're staying wet in the bottom. Maybe a rock mulch would be useful
in keeping the tops from drying so quickly? I worry that in hot sun the
rocks would transfer too much heat to the plastic pots. I am a little
happier with the way my glazed ceramic pots handle the heat and moisture.
On basil, I've just checked my direct seeded beds, and not a single
plant. I've seen several dozen sprouts over the past weeks (I seeded
twice) but not a one has survived. I would blame the slugs, but I'm not
seeing the typical slime trails. The tomatoes are doing well in the
same spot, so I had thought that direct seeding in front of them might
work.
Now I'm contemplating that old bathtub in the back yard which we
converted into a sand box for the kids, but it's not getting any use
this year. Weeds are beginning to grow in there now, and I'm wondering
if a top off of soil would make it a good basil bed. It's got about six
inches of sand in the bottom, and room for a foot of soil. Hmmmm.
Regards, Laurie
Mill Valley, CA
The one pot with the very damp lower half is rather large and now that
you mention it, it's sitting on a saucer that is a size too small, so
fits almost tight. I've seen water overflow out of it at times, but I
suspect now that normal watering may not be passing out as well as it
should. All of the saucers do tend to keep an inch of extra water in
them from overflow. I'd not thought of that as a bad thing, but now I'm
guessing it probably is.
Regards, Laurie
Try bigger holes in the bottom of the pots and bigger saucers .... maybe
rock mulch inbetweeen the saucers and pots will allow more drainage.. I
think a skinny 12-16 ounce container made of plastic and perforated full of
holes would make a great submerged waterer... picture the container -upside
down w/, the bottom cut off- sunk into a container- w/only the bottom
showing.. Into this you water.... Theres a commercial version but i like the
homemade one...........
Well, I did the repotting yesterday and found out a few things.
Probably the most important was that many of these pots were absolutely
saturated in the bottom half, and one even had some nasty anaerobic odor
to it.
I am really disturbed by this wet soil in the bottom half of your pots, and you say they have a hole in the bottom? Were the pots standing on something that would keep the water in the pots, like tile? I ask because this is unheard of, in my opinion. I am pretty sure there is a simple explanation.
Carol
Now you know, I guess, that it IS a bad thing. I don't know if you have the glazed pot saucers that I buy in Denmark, but in any case I buy them extra large, a size larger than fits the pot. Then, if there should be excess water, it will evaporate. However, I've never seen water in the saucer.
Carol
At a recent gardening talk the master gardener suggested using foam
packing peanuts on the bottom of large outdoor pots, cover this with
several layers of newspaper and then put your potting soil on top of
this. Then the pot is lighter and easier to move, the peanuts won't
crack your pot and the newspaper keeps the dirt from mixing in with the
peanuts so they're easy to separate after the season. I don't know about
the last part because I haven't tried it for myself. Worth a try.
Deborah
Laurie
Its one of the great classic truths of indoor gardening that far more
plants die of overwatering than die of underwatering. Very, very few
plants will curl up their toes if you leave them until they actually
begin to wilt very slightly before watering. Personally, despite
Maura's strictures, I always put some kind of crock into the bottom
of larger pots, though not necessarily smaller ones. And in the
conservatory I fill saucers etc with pebbles and stand the pots on
those to make sure that the roots aren't sitting in half an inch of
water all the time
kathryn
Laurie Mandigo-Stoba wrote:
Laurie
Carol has undoubtedly hit the nail on the head. Saucers can be very
usful under plants (and not just for dealing with drips) but they need
to be properly managed and definitely large enough to see into.
If the soil in pots is merely dry at the top, just pouring some water on
to the mix will usually ensure it ends up all nicely moist, but should
it have becone dry most of the way through, pouring on water, even if it
first sits as pool on the top and then slowly sinks in, may still result
in a lot of water runing out the bottom while leaving dry patches in
the mix. This is where the saucer is so useful, as the water which pours
out the bottom, if it stays in contact, is slowly taken back into the
soil until everything has been moistened. Depending on the dryness of
the mix and the amount of water supplied all the water in the saucer may
disappear, but often you can be left with an unused remainder. It is
this remainder which if left in the saucer will gradually oversaturate
the bottom of the pot. So the correct thing to do is to pour out the
excess after no more than three hours.
A variant of this method is watering from below, which is sometimes done
to prevent water damaging the topgrowth. It is for instance recommended
for African Violets, where the wonderful velvety foliage can become
water spotted, and also for florists Cyclamen, which can rot if water
lodges on top of the corm. In this method just the saucer is filled
with water and nothing given from above, but once again one must not
leave any surplus after the three hours have passed.
Yet another variant on the theme of watering from below is the wick.
Here the plant does not sit directly in the water reservoir, but is
separated from it by the wick (a strip of nylon stocking is often used
for this). Unlike the pot resting directly in the saucer, this does not
allow the soil to become saturated, but as it dries out it can replenish
its supplies itself by sucking water up the wick. Its most important use
is to water pots while the owner is away, but if you grow plants with
delicate roots which resent dryness, it can be used more regularly.
Without a water resevoir to draw on the soil in a ordinary pot will
gradually dry out, but provided this does not go all the way, it is
actually good for the roots, as the diminishing of the water draws air
into the soil and supplies both the roots and microherd with valuable
oxygen.
You can doubtless appreciate that most natural soils run on this
principal and where drainage is impeded the selection of plants which
grows is very distinctive, being confined to specialzed bog species
which are geared to living in a waterlogged soil. In fact a very few of
these are occasinally grown as pot plants. The one which particularly
occurs to me is a small relative of the Papyrus reed and its pot
benefits from standing in a saucer permanently filled with water.
And one final category of pot plants with special watering requirements
-cacti and other succulents. The roots of these are particularly
sensitive to lack of oxygen, but many are able to go a long time with
very little water at the roots. The trick with these is to provide a
very open mix with extra coarse material to open it up (even packing
peanuts might be useful for this, not just at the bottom, but mixed
through the pot). Although they don't mind dry roots, these plants will
not flourish if kept permanently dry. In nature their growing habits
will be geared to taking advantage of any rain that falls and they will
grow vigorously until they dry out again, after which they sit it out
until the next shower. In pots therfore, they do need a good watering
occasionally, (with a soucer so they can take up all they want) but then
they will not need a further supply for a while -even several months
should they be faced with cold weather. With a distinct winter here I
lay off watering most succulents from the end of Autumn intil the
begining of spring. The reason is that most of not all succulents are
dormant at low temoperatures and any moisture applied simply saturates
the soil without being used up by the plants, with inevitable root
suffocation.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan
Wainuiomata - at the Southern tip of North Island, NZ,
Lat 41??15'S, Long 174??58'E (Antipodes of Spain/Southern France)
I water mine once a week just as I do other house plants, and they don't =
die. They are very cold and perhaps dormant, but how can one tell? Just s=
ucculents - I have quite a few as I sort of collect them - no cacti.
They are even nice and healthy!
Carol
The last point is very good, Kathryn. I have done this with house plants and somehow had forgotten it. Good idea!
Carol
