When to repot

I have several houseplants: phoenix palm, coffee plant, maidenhair fern, heart fern, hoyas. When should I repot them and how big pot should I use? Thanks in advance.Fang

Good morning Fang. My rule of thumb for repotting my houseplants, is when the roots start coming out of the drainage hole in the bottom of the pot, that's when its time to repot. I always go up 1" in size for the new pot. I also don't have a "time of year" rule; January's as good as July. Thanks for the reminder by the way, my bird's nest fern and sago palm need to be transplanted up. Oh, and if your pot doesn't have a drainage hole, you're going to have problems as the minerals in the water will collect in the bottom of the pot and will burn the roots. I frequently try to circumvent this when I have a lovely hanging "hole-less" planter, and always end up just inserting an already potted plant into the planter. My rabbit's foot fern has been making "get-me-out-of-here" noises lately, and its in a large terra cotta pot, filled with lots of stones in the bottom. I felt that because it was terra cotta it would be okay. Wrong again...sigh. It gets a new pot today too, which I will put right back into that lovely terra cotta planter.

Hope this helps! Happy Saturday!!

Chrsitine.

I'm with ceedub on when to transplant. As a matter of fact-just got done yesterday with a couple pots of Sans (promised my girl child some for her new place), a philo, and some spiders. My 2 rabbit foot ferns need to be done today too. They're complaining just like ceedub's, lol!

I only typically go up one pot size each time as well. Sometimes tho I don't even do that. Depends on the plant. I just took some small bulb babies from my amaryliss bulbs and all 4 bulbs went right back into the same pot but with fresh soil. Ditto with a monster asparagus fern and large ficus. They're just *not* getting bigger pots but they do appreciate fresh soil every couple of years.

Ceedub, I've recently drilled holes in the terra cotta pots for the rabbits foot ferns and a couple others. They are 1/2 round pots that between the windows so I really hated to get rid of them just because they have no drainage. The ferns do well in them but you do need some small stones and charcoal at the bottom to keep the roots above the water and the soil from becoming sour. Just laid the pot on it's back. Hubby took the drill with a masory bit and that did the trick. Not even a hint of the pot wanting to break. I just didn't have the coordination and strength to drill and hold the pot still. Worked like a charm.

This message was edited Jan 30, 2005 7:00 AM

I'd thought of doing that, but assumed the pot would crack. A masonry bit, duh, why didn't I think of that? Thanks Caron!

When a plant is put back into the container with fresh soil, what is done with the roots?

Seems to me that unless the roots are "untangled" there wouldn't be room for fresh soil.

The plant is soaked in tepid water after taking out of the pot. If they are still tangled with lots of dirt left, I rinse them with more tepid water to get the majority of the dirt off. I only seperate where necessary and gently for really potbound plants. Dead or dying roots if there are any are trimmed off and back in the pot it goes. Most of the time there is plenty of room and no harm done. Gives me a chance to do a really good inspection as well.

For the ficus and the asparagus that are not getting a bigger pots no matter what they say, I root trim the plant by 1-2" all around and 1/4-1/3 off the bottom with a sharp knife so they will fit back in the pot comfortably with new soil. These are established plants. The ficus is almost 5' tall now and at least 4' wide and the asparagus hangs about 6' and is probably almost 4' wide.
Never a problem with this method.

I only have easy to grow plants like begonias, Philodendron big leaf and vines, spider plants, wandering jew, Boston ferns, Kimberly ferns, etc. Out of self-defense, every spring I bump all my plants up a pot size, I don't mess with the roots at all except if is an spider plant or something of the nature that has gotten gosh awful root bound and then I just take a big knife and cut into them so I can pull them apart a little. I put a layer of new soil in the bottom of the pot, plop in the plant root ball and all, pour new soil all around the sides, tuck it it a little, soak it good so the soil will settle, then add more on the sides and top. The only exceptions I make are for plants that like to be root bound, like Brugs. These I repot when I have to start watering too often, like every other day and the temperature is less than about 80 degrees. When it gets hot here in the summer, 90 up, most all my outside hanging pots which are in partial shade will have to be watered at least every other day.

The other factor is multiple plants in a pot, like spider, wandering jew, etc which have outgrown the pot. These I divide when repotting, keeping half the plant in the original pot. I once dove into a spider plant cutting off all babies dividing the original plant etc. I ended up with 12 additional hanging pots of spider plants!!

BUT I like these hardy plants that can stand my wholesale way of doing things. All others I just give to someone who like to shower then with tender loving care. Hope this helps.

www.puppygal.com/house.html
click here for pictures of some of my plants.