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Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast.
If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well, you've come to the right spot.
♪
Well, since the name of the show is Garden Basics, let's cover something that's basic, but it's not necessarily easy or successful.
Today, America's favorite retired college, article, troll professor Debbie Flower, and I walk you step by step on the topic of how to repot a plant.
It's not as simple as you might think, and we offer tips to make sure your repotting efforts are more successful.
Some of the topics covered include, if a plant is overgrown in a pot, do you need to use a bigger pot?
Mmm, not necessarily.
What is a surefire way of knowing your plant has overgrown the pot?
Well, we're going to tell you, and it's a habit you should get into doing on a regular basis.
What's the easiest ways of removing a cramped plant from its pot?
Uh, Debbie has a serious tool for the job.
It's a garden implement that no gardener should be without.
Do you need to use new potting soil when repotting?
Not necessarily, but we'll tell you ways to rejuvenate the existing soil, as well as what to look for when shopping for fresh potting soil.
And we have a recipe for making your own potting soil.
Should you fertilize a newly repotted plant?
Well, that depends on your fertilizer.
We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilan jungle in suburban purgatory.
It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast brought to you today by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery.
Let's go.
♪♪♪
It's not quite the main planting season yet, so you might be busing yourself around the house and the yard,
looking at all those plants and containers and wondering,
Hmm, I wonder if I should repot those.
I wonder if I should move them up a size.
Yes or no?
Let's find out.
America's favorite retired college articles role professor,
Debbie Flower, is here in the Abutilan jungle in suburban purgatory.
We are going to decide whether to repot or keep the plant in the same container.
But how do you do that?
Well, let's find out.
So, Debbie, yeah, I think a good habit for a lot of people to get into.
If they have any container plants is to occasionally look at the bottom and see if there are roots coming out.
Yes, roots often go right to the bottom and even come out the bottom,
especially if you have them in a container that holds some moisture down there.
And that's a pretty tight quarters for that plant.
And when you see those roots coming out, you've got to make a decision.
Yes, you do.
Do you want to put it in a bigger pot?
Do you like the plant?
Do you want to save it?
But you definitely don't want to leave it the way it is.
You don't want to pot where the drainage holes are clogged.
Right.
And if the drainage holes are clogged, the rest of the pot is probably pretty full of roots.
And that plant's growth into the future will be limited because of the lack of other media and space in that container.
We did a recent interview with Quentin Young, a local landscaper who visited his client's house after a recent rain.
And it was a potted maple tree, Japanese maple tree with the water floating on the surface of the pot.
Oops.
That was a big nice pot.
And he turned over the pot and all the drain holes, which was actually one big drain hole, was completely clogged by a huge root.
Wow.
That plant's been in there a while.
He said it took a sawzall to get there.
But that is something to do to make sure that your plants aren't anchored into the soil by the roots.
Right.
Plants and pots will grow to limited size.
They can't get huge because they don't have the ability to produce the roots that they need to be a bigger plant.
And they can clog the drain holes, as you say.
So Gardner has a decision to make whether to buy a bigger container and put that plant if it's overgrown into a larger container.
Or if they really like the container, it's in it.
Can they keep that plant in the same container, even though it looks like it has overgrown that pot?
Yes.
And they can keep the plant in the same container.
It will not get any bigger.
And in the process of transplanting, you might see some parts of it die back, but it will recover and look good for another season.
But keeping it in the pot requires some amendments, some refreshing of the soil that the roots grow in.
One rule that you have often stressed when it comes to planting in containers is make sure the container is clean
and free of disease.
If you're repotting in the same pot, should you remove that plant and clean the pot again?
If there's no sign of disease, I wouldn't worry about that.
That's a good thing.
And then it's just a matter of trying to jam it back in if you want to save the pot.
Right.
So first you want to get the plant out.
And that's not always the easiest thing I find with terracotta pots that are not sealed on the inside.
The roots actually sort of adhere to the terracotta on the inside of the pot.
I've seen actual sort of layers of fine roots all up against the pot.
So I take a sharp tool.
A hory-hory is my favorite tool for this, which is a Japanese tool kind of sword shaped, but short six to eight inches long.
It has a very nice set of teeth on one side of that sword and jam it down the side of the pot and go around the pot sawing basically between the pot and the root ball.
That's a good use for a hory-hory knife.
It is perfectly suited for that.
Yes.
Yeah.
So you've got the plant free then and you've probably turned the pot over and somehow managed to free the roots of if they were coming through the drain holes too.
Sometimes you got to stick the tip of that hory-hory in that drain hole and go around it as well.
If roots have come out of the drain hole, I cut them off.
They're not going to survive this process.
And I never want to pull the plant out of the pot.
When you pull on a plant, you're stressing the roots coming out of the base of the plant and they can snap and break and you can do extra root damage.
I try to pour the plant out of the pot.
Turn it on its side, as you said.
If it's a plastic pot, it's easier because you can push on the pot and smash that root ball a little bit and get it away from the sides of the container.
With a more rigid pot, you really have to work it with the tool.
If the hory-hory blade is not deep enough, you may have to lay it on its side and that hopefully will cause the root ball to pull away from the upside of the pot.
And you can get in there with maybe a longer tool, a long screwdriver or some other kind of tool or your hand in the hory-hory and get it loose.
Sometimes if it's a plastic pot, you could probably just put the pot on its side and sort of push it, turn it, push it.
Step on it, turn it, you old step it.
I've done that.
I was being kind.
But yeah, you could step on it if it's a cheap plastic pot and you don't really care that much just to get that plant out of there.
Which is easier and actually what should the moisture level be of that soil in this process?
I would think, I think a lot of gardeners would think, well, if the soil is dry, it'll come right out.
But it seems to me you would want that soil moist.
There's two sides to it and I have, I in general like it moist, but somebody I worked with said, don't moist in it, that will swell the roots and the media and it will be harder to get out.
I think of the water though as a lubricant and that helps to get the roots out.
It also does less damage.
I believe I don't have any scientific evidence to back me up, but does less damage to the roots if they're lubricated with water.
And of course, if it is a really nice terracotta pot, but you're mad, I guess you could break the pot.
I've broken plastic ones.
I haven't broken terracotta ones to get a plant out.
I of course broken them other ways.
Yeah.
Oops, it dropped.
Yes.
So yeah, okay.
So if you're trying to save the pot to use it again, then yeah, the hory-hory knife sounds like an excellent way to get in there to get that plant out.
Yes.
And then you want to pour the plant out.
Now you have the two separate.
Right.
And you've got, well, it will probably be if you just by looking at that plant in the pot think, oh, that plant is too big for that pot.
When you pull that out, you're going to see a lot of roots going round and round and round.
Right.
And if it's, so if it is very root bound, the root ball will stay together and I cut down the four sides and an x across the bottom.
And I'll do it over a potting bench, a piece of tarp, a kitty litter box, something that will collect all the debris that's going to fall off.
Because I reuse media.
I don't want to reuse the parts that have big chunks of root, but a little bits of root.
I'll keep that too.
That's just some organic matter.
And by cutting that outside, most of your roots are going to be on the outside and most of your feeder roots are going to be outside.
And that root ball may start to fall apart.
And then that's helpful actually to get it back into that pot if it's going to be the same size pot.
How deep are you making the cuts on the side of the root ball?
Not well, it can vary.
There are all kinds of different ways to do it.
I don't go very deep quarter, half inch on the sides and the x across the bottom.
If it's super, super, super root bound.
All I'm seeing are roots.
I might cut the bottom off, might cut an inch or two off the bottom.
I might butterfly it, which means cut up the middle of the root ball.
But I don't go all the way to the plant.
I'll go maybe two thirds of the way or three quarters of the way from the bottom up to the base of the plant.
I do that more for putting it in the ground, but you can spread out the roots then.
Okay.
Yeah.
If you're going to a bigger pot, you might be able to do that.
Right.
But that brings up a very good question.
How big a pot should you go to when you're going to a bigger pot?
The rule of thumb is an inch greater diameter than what it's in already.
The diameter at the top or the bottom?
The diameter at the top.
Okay.
So that's the distance across from one side to the other side on the inside.
That allows you, if you're going to a bigger pot, allows you to add new media around the outside.
If it's deeper, you want to hold the old plant over the new container.
You want to leave headroom.
It's called half inch, maybe as much as an inch between the top of the media.
The plant is in and the top of the pot and hold it with one hand and fill it with the other hand with the roots dangling down.
If the roots dangle down and then lay on the bottom of the pot, the roots are too long.
You want to go in with a sharp tool.
I actually keep a scissor in my gardening tools and cut those roots off.
You don't want them to turn corners.
That's not helpful to the plant.
How quickly does a plant put on new roots when it's been cut like that?
Well, the part that's critical for the plant is the root hairs.
That's extensions of cells at the tips of the roots.
And they're the only place in the root system that water and nutrition is drawn up in the roots.
I should say that's the only place in the root system where water and nutrients enter from outside the roots into the roots.
Then they get into the roots and travel up to the plant from there.
And those take it varies but two to three days for new root hairs to form.
And so that plant needs to be protected for two to three days from sun and wind are the two baddies because they're the things that are going to cause the plant to try to give off water,
evaporate water from inside the plant to regulate its own temperature.
And if it doesn't have root hairs, it can't do that.
It sounds like water is pretty important in this whole repotting process.
So I would imagine that the media that you're adding, which you talk about a double scenic bypass,
we have to decide on, okay, what are you going to use to add to that soil, what sort of potting mix or potting soil or ingredient do you add and how moist should it be?
I want the media, if I'm going to keep this in a container, I want container media.
And hopefully the plant I just took out of the pot is rooted into container media.
So container media is soil less mix.
It's a classic recipe is peat moss, perlite and vermiculite in a one to one to one ratio with some slow release nutrients can be added.
You have recipes on your website that are very useful. Cornell University has an older publication.
It's very classic and it's taught in all the horticulture schools as the container media to use.
And then people have modified those media to be specific to the plant you're planting.
If it's a plant that loves water, you're going to have more of the peat component.
You're going to use what's local. When I worked at an ag experiment station in the Portland, Oregon area, we didn't use peat moss.
We used ground bark because the timber industry was big in the Portland, Oregon area and we could get ground bark cheaply.
If you're in the tropics, it's going to be, I don't know, chopped up. What would they have?
Coconut.
Yeah, well, there's quar. Quar is coconut fiber and that comes off the outside of the coconut.
It's a byproduct of the coconut industry. And so you can use that chopped up.
If you have a great composting facility near you, you can use compost.
So the organic component, the peat component can be replaced by whatever's local and the amount of it will depend on in the mix.
The ratio of that organic material in the mix will go up or down depending on how much water you want that container to hold.
More peat for plants that like a lot of water or more organic component for plants that like a lot of water.
More of the rock component, which is the perlite for miculite for the plants that like a lot of drainage like a succulent or a cactus.
Other things can be substituted for the perlite and vermiculite.
Also, I like to use pumice for the perlite. Vermiculite is, I like vermiculite, so I use it.
The sand can be a component in it.
There was a recent post by the University of California on the properties of common soil mix components.
And you're right, there's no soil in any of these soil mix components.
And they talk about peat moss, bark and sawdust, qua, perlite, vermiculite, sand, volcanic rock like pumice that you like a lot.
They do.
That all sounds like seed starting mix.
So it sounds like for container plants, you could use seed starting mix.
Well, you could accept that seed starting mix is very, all of those components are very small.
You can buy perlite in various sizes, vermiculite in various sizes, pumice in various sizes.
And so the smallest stuff is used for seed starting because seeds are small and they need to be able to,
the baby plant needs to be able to push the media out of its way so it can get to the light and make its own food.
For a plant that is already growing, we use a bigger size.
They're often called a horticultural size perlite or horticultural size vermiculite.
So it may be kind of easy.
And when you buy it at the nursery, typically seed starting mix will be one thing.
And then the components that are sold separately are more the horticultural size for already established plants.
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Let's get back to our conversation with America's favorite retired college horticultural professor Debbie Flower about choosing the right soil mix when you're repotting your plants.
The University of California being a university of course has a exact criteria for what the physical properties of selected media should be.
And they include total porosity and the percentage of that should be equal to or greater than 50%.
Water holding capacity equal to or greater than 40% air volume equal to or greater than 10% and weight should be less than .75
grams per cubic centimeter.
Well, I've done labs when I was in graduate school and undergraduate school where we measured those things, but it's not something somebody at home is going to measure.
So the pre created recipes are very useful.
I do buy container media.
You look at all those bags at your local garden center and read what's on the bags and some will say for containers.
I look at those and I'll buy some of those. I always amend them. I always think they don't have enough of the rock component.
And that would be for air porosity.
Air porosity and water porosity.
Okay.
They do have the UC mix that we've been alluding to, which is a one to one to one ratio of sand redwood shavings.
There's your California component.
Yes.
And Pete Moss.
But you're kind of particular about sand too.
You got to be careful what you get.
It needs to be horticultural sand.
Builders sand from a hardware store is usable as well.
Sand of all the components of a garden soil, sand, silt and clay.
Sand has the greatest range in size.
And if you put particles, a big range of size together, you block up your pores.
So your total porosity, which the UC says should be greater than or equal to 50% goes down.
You want sand that has been sized. So it's been the sizes of the sand have been separated and washed because sand typically exists near saltwater.
And you don't want that salt.
Ah, yes.
Yeah.
Fred, it talks about in this article, freedom from toxicity, salts, pests and pathogens, which is why the field soil in your garden is not recommended to be used in a container because it has many, many sizes.
And so it tends to not have enough porosity.
So the small particles nestle around the big particles and the there aren't any nice holes for air and water to travel through.
That's one reason.
Another reason is you've got insects and weed seeds and disease potential diseases in that media.
So before there was a big industry and we're talking way back in, I don't know, the 1700s maybe, but before there was a big industry in Pete prolite for miculite, that sort of stuff that we can easily use.
We can easily by now, media from the garden was used, but it was sterilized.
And you can still do that. I've been places where there are sterilizers for media.
When you put field soil in, you sterilize it, you can look up recipes. You can do it in the oven. It stinks.
So you have your outdoor kitchen pizza oven.
Right. And you have to use a lot of energy to sterilize it. You have to heat it up.
Some of these components like prolite and vermiculite are heated up before they're bagged and we buy them.
And so you could, what's your carbon footprint on either side of this? Somebody else can calculate that.
For me, I'm not going to do it, but it was used. And then there are soil sieves. If you've been in a soil lab, there are basically screens of different sizes so that you can get different sizes of media and separate them out and choose the ones you want for your container.
So that was done hundreds of years ago before the industry created the wonderful conveniences we have now.
We'll be back after a quick break.
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Many of the gardeners listening, I'm sure, have either a compost pile or a vermicomposting system where worms are making some very fine worm castings for them.
Can you add compost or worm castings to a container mix?
You can if it's been a hot compost, which means it's gotten up to 140 degrees and stayed there for a number of hours.
That kills the bad stuff in it.
Typically, it should be sized. When I worked at Sierra College, we had a table with a hole cut in it big enough just about the size of a big garbage can.
The whole diameter of the hole was the diameter of the top of the big garbage can.
We put a big garbage can under the table and put the peat moss, which we'd buy in bulk on the table, and then shove it over to the hole and the hole had a half inch screen in it.
We just sift, push the peat moss through that.
If I were using my own compost, I would do the same thing.
You can buy those online. There are some garden supply companies that sell, almost look like a minor panning for gold.
They're usually a 12 inch square plastic container is about three inches deep or so and on the bottom.
You have your choice of mesh. It can be a quarter inch or a half inch.
Half inch is recommended for not seed starting, but for other plants in containers.
And then quarter inch for seed starting.
Yes.
Okay. That's one way to do it too.
If you want to add something yet. So like finished compost is generally a fairly fine product.
It is. Especially if you buy it.
Yeah.
Everything's broken down. In finished compost, you shouldn't recognize plant parts.
You shouldn't be able to seal a leaf or a stem or a seed or anything.
It should just look like stuff.
Yeah. The most perfect soil you could find.
Yes. And smell good.
Now the one downside that you've often mentioned about using organic components like compost or worm castings
is they will break down and the volume level will shrink in the container.
Yes.
And so if you had a plant in a container all last year, let's say,
when you're getting ready for spring growth is on plants, it's going to explode as conditions for growing
get better and better as we get into spring.
And that's when, you know, hopefully the plant can put on new roots and has the ability to absorb
nutrients and water.
When you go to look at that container that was that plant that was in a container all last year,
it has probably dropped much lower than you remember it when you put it out last year.
And that's because the organic component has broken down.
And so part of what we're trying to do by refreshing the plant when we take it out of the pot,
refreshing the media is adding media that has more porosity to it.
If we're reusing the container we have, we've taken the plant out of the container,
we've cut the roots, hopefully knocked off some of the existing media, then we're going to use other
media that has more porosity in it.
And so that's going to be the organic matter that hasn't broken down as well as the rock component
that doesn't break down but provides porosity.
And we're going to put that maybe a little bit under the pot we're putting back, the plant we're
putting back in the same pot and then around the plant we're putting back in the same pot.
So the exterior of the root ball, which is really where the root growth is happening, will have better texture.
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Let's get back to our conversation with college professor retired Debbie Flower about repotting plants.
And we have the answer to the question, should you fertilize when you're repotting?
I would think a lot of people when you talked about repotting that it's going to take three days for that plant to develop new roots.
They would think being the nurturing kind of people gardeners are, oh, I'll just help it along by giving it some fertilize.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That's like you cut your arm and then you put salt on it.
It's ouch.
No, you want to let the plant do its thing and get its new roots.
It can't take up the fertilizer.
It doesn't have the root tips to do that.
You've got to give it the three days.
It'll live off of what it has stored inside of it and plants store food everywhere they can.
Plant plants make their own food and then they store it.
The plant plants are a great storage place, but even leaves can store food.
And the plant will utilize that and break it down, make it into what it needs,
send it where it needs to go and make the new roots.
And then you can add the fertilizer.
Nice.
Scared me about fertilization.
Yeah, it would make sense that why fertilize something that it can't uptake as it doesn't have the feeder roots.
But the organic gardener might say, well, I will give it organic fertilizer.
It lasts in the soil longer, so when those roots develop, that fertilizer will be there waiting for them.
And that is a good practice.
And frankly, I do some of that.
The thing is that that organic fertilizer takes a long time to break down.
It is not available in a form the plant can take up when you put it in the container.
It takes time, temperature, sometimes microorganisms to reach the form that the plant can take up.
So it's not hurting the plant as you chance planted immediately.
What sort of an organic fertilizer would you use?
Because you've often talked about how salts are so dangerous in fertilizer in both inorganic and organic fertilizers.
Right.
So you want to use a slow release fertilizer.
There are also inorganic forms of slow release fertilizer.
Those are the pelletized ones.
The container will say they last a certain number of months or a certain number of days.
Be aware that that certain number of months or certain number of days is assuming that the plant is at a nice room temperature of say 70 degrees and has some moisture in the media the whole time.
If it's warmer and moist, then that pelletized fertilizer will be used more quickly.
It will be released more quickly.
So you might want to put less in.
If it's colder or it goes dry a lot, then that pelletized fertilizer will be available over a longer period of time.
So rock phosphate can take years actually to become available.
That's some of the problem with some of the organic fertilizers.
So you want soft rock phosphate.
You want a small particle size, the smaller the particle size of the organic fertilizer, the more quickly it will be available to the plant.
But it will still take time to break down.
Green sand is a source of micronutrients.
Rock phosphate is obviously a source of phosphorus.
Green sand is a source of micronutrients. Bone meal is a source of phosphorus as well.
There have been some studies that indicate by the time the bones get to the fertilizer industry, there's not a lot of phosphate left.
I don't know about that.
You've just ticked off the vegan gardeners too.
Well, yeah.
So they're going to use rock phosphate, which is mined rather than bone meal, which just comes from an animal.
Can I ask a question?
I don't know, can you?
Yeah, I can.
I may ask a question.
Teacher, I know what rocks are.
I know what bones are, but what's green sand?
Green sand is another mined product.
It's not sand from the beach.
It's a sand-like product that is mined from the earth.
And it's called green sand.
And it's called green sand, right?
Is it green?
No, it's not sandy color, but I don't think it would just be green.
Okay.
And maybe that green tells us some of its origin.
I don't know if it's dead microorganisms or what it is.
You said the smaller the particle, the better as far as being quicker acting without being too quick.
Right.
What about a liquid product like fish emulsion?
Fish emulsion will have some, and this is where you can look at the container.
There is always an active ingredient table on the container.
It's usually on the back.
Sometimes it's on the front.
If it says water-soluble nitrogen, then it's available right away to the plant.
And if you look at a fish emulsion container, number one, the analysis is so very low that chances of harming the plant are very minimal.
And if you look at the active ingredient table, the amount of the percent of water-soluble nitrogen is even lower.
It will provide some nitrogen immediately, but not enough that it will hurt the plant.
So you want that label to say water in soluble nitrogen?
That will also be listed.
Water insoluble nitrogen is the more time-release type.
And so a fertilizer container that has both, that fertilizer will provide nitrogen over a longer period of time than one that just is water-soluble nitrogen.
The brand of water-soluble fertilizer that is used commercially in production is often called peters.
And peters is used because it has micronutrients, and that's something to consider when you're, if you're fertilizing your plants regularly, is that you need micronutrients.
But things like fish emulsion will have micronutrients as well as does green sand.
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How do professional houseplant growers manage repotting?
Like we talked a while back with Rafael Delalo, who's the author of the book, Houseplant Warrior.
And I think in his book, he talks about repotting houseplants.
I was hoping you would remember what he said.
I don't remember what he said.
You could open the book and read it.
Well, he talks about, let's see, I've marked some stuff in his book, judging soil moisture.
I don't think I marked repotting.
Oh, okay.
Well, you got it right there at the bottom.
Steps to repotting.
Remove the plant from the pot.
It's just what we said.
Squeeze the pot around the perimeter and slowly pull the plant out.
I would pour it out, tip the pot over, grasp the plant at the base.
Yeah, so he's not pulling it up.
When you pull up is when you have a problem.
Next, you'll want to loosen the root ball a bit.
Don't skip this step, it says, in italics.
So that's very important stuff.
Don't go crazy, but if they're a root circling, work to loosen the very bottom of the root
ball and the sides.
I can't emphasize enough this part about loosening your root ball.
It's absolutely essential.
I agree.
In production and commercial production, and that's what I thought you were asking about,
they typically don't.
They grow a plant and they pot it up and it goes out the door.
They don't hang around and keep them.
Sort of like tomato plants in February that show up at nurseries.
Right, right.
They're in six packs or they're in four inch and that's where they were started, how they
were started in the greenhouse.
And that's where they just came from and now they're outside.
Yes, so there's always an adjustment period for that plant.
For those of you back east, here in California, there is this trend that on the first warm
weekend of February, people rushed to nurseries to buy tomato plants thinking it's tomato
planting time.
It's not.
There's a lot of other factors involved like nights over 50 degrees.
Yes.
Soil temperatures over 50 degrees.
The lack of, oh, I don't know, hail storms, things like that.
So don't buy your tomato plants in February unless you're going to keep them indoors.
Or yes, right.
Have protected.
You could move them up to bigger containers using these transplanting.
You're going to have to.
You're going to have to.
Right.
They're typically at very root bound when they show up at the nursery unless sometimes
there's such a rush by the consumer buying the very early crop that wholesalers will
put us not quite ready crop out to the retailer.
So I've seen universities do that at spring plant sales too.
There is such demand.
People, I ran spring plant sales in typically this February and March, I would have the
tomatoes in the February sale.
I'd have the tomatoes and the peppers in the greenhouse.
They were very small, maybe two inches tall.
People wanted them.
People could see through the door to the greenhouse and they wanted me to go in and get
them and I wouldn't do it.
And they went elsewhere demand.
If you're in it to make money, it's your business.
It's your survival as well as all the people who work for you, you sell them when people
want them.
I was in it for the teaching aspect, which was you don't sell a plant before it's ready
to go out the door.
Yeah.
And the other thing with selling a two inch plant is it's a baby.
It is.
It needs coddling.
Yes.
Oh my.
Well, that was an interesting scenic bypass.
Repotting plants be they outdoor plants or indoor plants.
It's something that should be considered by every grower, every gardener.
And usually the plant will let you know, doesn't hurt the check, turn that pot over and see
if there's roots coming out.
If you see roots coming out, it's time.
Yes.
Two things I want to add.
I noticed in the book we were just reading that he suggests putting a shard of a broken
pot or a mesh screen over the drain hole.
I never do this.
The reason for doing it is to prevent the media from falling out the hole.
That rarely happens when you've initially put the new media in.
So you're repliting to the same pot or you're going to a bigger pot.
There's typically space for new media in the bottom.
A little bit will go out the hole, but when as you finish, put the plant in, tuck it in
with all the new media around the outside, pick the pot out and walk away.
That's it.
No more will fall out the hole.
And less will fall out if that soil is moist.
Correct.
Yes.
And I always moisten my soil before I put it in a container, whether I'm starting seeds
or repotting an existing plant.
The reason for that is some of these components, peat moss being one of the bigger offenders,
qua, also being an offender, don't easily wet.
And so if you don't massage it with your hands and get it wet at first, before you put it
in the pot, it'll never get wet.
And so the plant basically is growing in the old root ball.
The other thing I want to mention is you cannot improve drainage out of a container by adding
large particle things in the bottom of that container.
Those things being rocks, gravel, that-
Just styrofoam.
Styrofoam.
That just shortens the root ball.
It's used in the professional interior scaping industry when they have, let's say, you know,
it's a fancy lobby of a hotel or a bank or a lawyer's office or something.
And the pots are four or six feet tall for effect.
Then they'll fill the bottom.
Media costs a lot of money.
You don't want media where you're not going to get roots.
So they'll fill the bottom with milk jugs or styrofoam or something big, just specifically
too short in the root ball.
So the roots will only grow in the top part where the media is.
Don't put rock or anything big in the bottom of your container.
It does not improve drainage.
Yeah, exactly.
You're not a business.
You're a home.
You're a gardener.
You want as many roots as possible.
Right.
And besides that, those containers then become top heavy.
Yes, they do.
And can blow over.
I have a basket in my kitchen with a spider plant in the top of it.
And the basket is probably three feet tall and I have a bucket hanging in the basket that
has no drain holes in it.
And then I put the plant, the six inch or eight inch plant in the bucket.
And periodically somebody looks at it and bumps into it and over the whole thing goes
because the bottom is not heavy enough.
The bottom is empty.
This is an hanging plant.
No, it's on a wheelie-dilly on the kitchen floor.
Okay, in a bucket.
And this three feet tall basket which has a one foot tall bucket in the top.
And then the potted plant goes in the one foot tall bucket.
Ah, okay.
So all the weights at the top, I should put rocks in the bottom of the basket, then put
the bucket in, then put the planted.
There you go.
That's where you hide your gold.
Good thinking.
Don't come to my house now.
All right.
Repotting, it's necessary and it's not as complicated as you might think.
I think if you just have moist media and you're willing to cut some roots, go for it.
Yeah.
Have a good time.
Yeah, repotting.
You know, I think we may have taken one too many scenic bypasses in our chat with Debbie
about repotting plants.
Somehow we managed to skip over how to use your existing old potting soil that might
be hanging around in pots behind the garage or wherever the yellow jackets in your yard
like to build nests.
So even though we touched on some aspects of reusing old potting soil in our conversation
today, especially what sort of additives it may need in order to be replenished here
from episode 172 of the Garden Basics podcast entitled, Old Potting Soil is Your Friend,
is an excerpt discussing in more detail what that old potting soil needs to be as good
as new again.
Debbie, it's that time of year when people are going to go out, they're going to get
plants, they're going to get seed and they may be buying soil.
But before they buy soil, they may take a look at around their yard and they see all
these pots with no plants in them, but they're full of soil.
There might be nurseries that might say, oh, you don't want to use that.
You need to buy our new soil.
But that old soil that you have, I guess it really depends what's in it and what it is
and what it needs and can it be reused?
Yes, I reuse potting soil all the time.
I have many instances where I look around and there are pots with dead things in them.
As I said to my cousin, I still kill plants, I just know how to do the autopsy.
I typically know or have an idea of what killed them as well.
I take out the what is left of the plant.
There's often a decent root system.
I'll bang it around on my potting venture in my container and get off as much of the
container media as I can from those roots.
Notice I say container media, this is not field soil.
I dump it into, I use kitty litter boxes that I bought specifically for the purpose of mixing
media.
I dump it in there and mix it up with whatever else I have and reuse it.
I very often add a rock component to that reasonable media and some new bagged container
media.
Container media is not soil.
It is organic matter plus some typically rock components.
Peat moss, quarre or compost are usually the organic matter and then the rock components
are perlite, vermiculite, pumice, sand, something like that.
It's often one part of the organic matter to two parts of the sand component.
The reason for that is that over time the organic component breaks down and as it breaks
down the particles get smaller and the space between the particles where the air and water
hang out in a container gets smaller and the plant starts to suffer.
A plant has died and the container media has been in there some period of time and that
container, the organic component of that container media has broken down so that poor spaces,
the open spaces between the components of container media have gotten too small, maybe
or they've definitely gotten smaller, they may have gotten too small for roots to actively
live in there.
I want to fix that.
That's one thing I want to fix is particle size.
I do that by adding some new media from a bag and some usually more rock component.
Mix them together, get the texture and I do it very much by feel and I don't have recipes
and then I'll reuse them.
I will never reuse media to start seeds in.
To starting seeds you want things sterile, you want the pots to be absolutely clean and
you want the media to be unused.
So I'm not using it for that but I will move my house plants up to a bigger size or my seed
links that I started in six packs, I'll move them up to four inch something like that using
this reused media.
The other thing that I need to worry about with the media is salt component.
Salt is fertilizer.
Fertilizer has to be in the salt form for the plant to be able to take it up.
It has to be able to dissolve in water and move to the plants roots and enter the plants
roots.
So that's the salt form and if there's too much of that in there, the pH of the soil
will go up.
So the soil will be too alkaline.
And that happens then nutrients that are in the soil become unavailable to the plant.
The easiest way to do that is just flush the media with fresh water for several minutes
and allow it to come out through the drain holes of the pot.
But yes, I absolutely reuse media frequently.
Are you open for questions?
Yes sir.
Oh good, good.
To your last point there, one thing I do, I get myself a five gallon bucket and I will
take that old container mix and put it in the bucket because usually peat moss is part
of that mix.
Yes, it's hard to re-wet.
It's hard to re-wet.
So in a bucket with no drain holes, I will put that soil mix and then fill the bucket
with water and then go do something else.
When I come back several hours later, that moisture has basically permeated throughout
that entire body of potting soil.
And I then transfer the potting soil to large plastic containers with drain holes and let
the whole thing drain.
Aha, okay.
And then I can get in there with my hands and grab the soil and refill whatever pot I was
going to do, knowing that it's thoroughly moist.
Yes, potting soil can dry out to beyond re-wetting easily.
And so you're right, you have to soak it or you can use, if you're anxious, you can use
warmer water and work it with your hands and maybe just a drop, just a drop, literally
just a drop of dish soap and you want it to be soap.
It really would be better for recastial soap or ivory soap, not detergent.
But that helps breaks down the surface tension of water and allows it to permeate the particles
of the container media more easily.
But I always have my soil moist from top to bottom before I put it in a container.
Good idea.
We take a scenic bypass in this week's Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter to answer an
email question from Don who writes in, my wife and I love sweet tea.
We brew at least one pot a day, maybe two in the summer.
What can we do with all those used tea bags?
Well, at the time I receive this email, I still had worm poop under my fingernails.
Yeah, I had just cleaned out both worm bins, harvesting the worm castings while putting
the worms back into the bins along with fresh bedding and food.
So the answer to Don's question was right under my nose.
Worms love tea bags.
So the current newsletter is all about worms, worm castings and worm bins, lots of science,
lots of how-to, lots of links.
And it features an old interview that I did with garden writer Amy Stewart about her new
book at the time named The Earth Moved, which happens to be about worms, of course.
We have all that wormy stuff in today's Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter.
For current newsletter subscribers, look for the scoop on worm poop in the Beyond the Garden
Basics newsletter.
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Or you can start a subscription.
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