Ruthless gardening: How to repot a houseplant

[untonuggan]

There has been a reader request for "how to repot houseplants" from syntaxofthings and a couple other people have also expressed interest, so I shall dive into gardening posts here.

In my experience, when you get a houseplant from a nursery you are probably going to need to repot it because they are usually "potbound." this means the pot is too small for the plant's roots. you can tell if a plant is potbound by looking at the bottom of the container. if you see roots sticking out, then you need to repot the plant. (if you want a healthier plant from a nursery, check for one with less roots gasping for space.)


this is what a super potbound plant looks like when you get it out of its pot. more on how to deal with this below, but ruthlessness/knives are involved. I swear this is a good thing.

That plant is actually "past when someone should have repotted this poor plant", so if it's your own houseplant, definitely try to repot the plant before this happens. there are specific cases where you shouldn't repot houseplants. for example, basil hates being moved when it's "established" (a big plant), so I usually just take a cutting to make a new baby basil plant and eat the one that's there. because I'm kind of a ruthless gardener, you should know this up front. thus name chosen above.

If you know the species or type of plant you have, you can look up its preferences for how much room it likes, soil preferences, etc. I know this can maybe seem (a) overwhelming; (b) so much work!; (c) omg I'm such a novice. but when my mom -- who is a fancy pants gardener who gardens for other people -- Does Gardening, she spends a lot of time looking shit up in books before she does things to actual plants.

Most houseplants like potting soil when you repot them, for example. cacti like a special mix that has a lot of sand. african violets and orchids are special snowflakes so they have different preferences. and you need to be careful not to spike yourself when moving cacti, without damaging the cacti, which I still haven't quite mastered.

despite making it sound super complicated, here are the actual steps to repotting a houseplant. I am sorry for my many words, that is just how I roll. For this I'm going to assume your houseplant is some kind of tropical, rather than say a cactus or something slightly more complicated:

1. Determine & acquire extra soil for your houseplant. (Don't just dig up soil from your backyard, it will be too thick and hold too much water.) Tropicals are fine with plain old Miracle Grow Potting soil, though you can shell out for something organic if you want.


2. Select a new pot, one that's slightly bigger but not huge. The pot should have a good drainage hole at the bottom.


• Note: There are a lot of opinions about how to maintain good drainage without having all the soil come out the bottom. Special doohickeys. Packing peanuts. Gravel. If you have a method that works for you, go for it.


• The method I find works for me is just to have soil, a pot with a hole, and a saucer or plate underneath to catch the water. Then I am very very careful about how much water I use, which. Is kind of like baking in that there's a certain "do it by feel" method and experimentation and some plants are just super tricky, or want to be moved six inches to the left to be happy. If another method works better for you, do that.


3. Back to repotting: have some newspaper or something on the floor, tip your houseplant out of its old container into your hands. You might have to tap it a few times. If it's come super potbound from a nursery, it's also okay to use scissors to cut the plastic pot away from the plant.


• If when you get the plant out, the roots are just a huge mass (like the photo above), you need to loosen them up and give them space. It is okay to get a little rough with the roots now, this is in fact encouraged. You can use scissors, a knife, trowel, or your fingers to cut or loosen the roots. This is really doing the plant a favor, I swear. Even if the plants roots don't look like the ones above, it's a good idea to tease or shake out some of the existing soil so the roots can expand in their new environment.


• If you don't loosen the roots of your plant, it can stay in its comfort zone, not expand into the new soil. Do that thing where it just tips over when you water it a lot. Seriously, be gentle but firm with your plant. "Change is a good thing," you whisper as you move it to its new home. Or maybe that is just me.


4. Juggling soil and plant is a bit tricky, but basically you want to put some new soil, then the plant, then soil around it, and end up with the plant's "Look at me, I'm above the soil!" to be level with where you have the top of the soil in your new planter. Also don't mash the soil, but don't leave it so loose that the plant just kind of flops around? Like I said, it takes practice -- like baking or knitting or anything. You will mess up sometimes, and that's okay. Messing up is how you learn.


5. Always water plants after you move them. (More on watering houseplants soon, I swear.)

ETA: also I have trouble doing describing visual sometimes, and this guy has a good video on "how much exactly do you cut up rootbound plant roots? and "how to put plant in a planter?" his narration is not bad either if you have visual impairments, so. yes. that is also helpful.

Yay! You did the thing and now there's just clean-up.

Comments

YAY. 2 questions

[syntaxofthings]

1. Do that thing where it just tips over when you water it a lot. What does this mean?

2. So my problem is I always lose a bunch of dirt out of the drainage hole when I re-pot, and one of your points made me think of a question: what if I used a bit of newspaper at the bottom to keep all the dirt in while I'm repotting? It's NOT plastic and will likely disintegrate happily after a couple of waterings when the pot is established. Good idea? Bad idea?

Re: YAY. 2 questions

[untonuggan]

1. oh god words i hit word death. but this is more of an issue with outside planting and frost heaving if you don't, say, remove the burlap around a tree's root ball when you plant it. the visual is kind of the same though, where the root ball isn't established in the rest of the soil and the whole plant just kind of tips over when the soil is exposed to a lot of water?

like this:

outdoor shrub experiencing frost heave, I don't have great descriptive words but basically the plant and some of the surrounding mulch have tipped over

2. the newspaper might keep *too much* water in, and make your plant more susceptible to the dreaded root rot. and will probably not disintegrate fast enough? wait for the watering post in a couple days and i will share Magic Watering Method I swear.

Re: YAY. 2 questions

[cadenzamuse]

Interesting. I have heard that a coffee filter spread over the bottom of the new pot is a good way of keeping the soil in without keeping in too much water? But again this comes down to Everyone Has Their Own Way of Doing Drainage in Pots and Everyone Thinks It Is The One True Way.

[chalcopyrite]

Use of sharp implements is encouraged, yes! I usually just take secateurs -- handily hook-y! -- to the rootball and rip at it vertically several places around.

Plants falling over with frost is not a problem here, but wind rock is a big one. I've seen shrubs that had gotten quite big, but were tipped over, and it turned out their roots were still in a 2L-pot-sized ball, swivelling in the earth like a socket joint with maybe one poor root actually attached and feeding the top!

Also when picking a plant at the garden centre it is -- so long as you don't drop it, and obviously also don't injure yourself -- allowed to tip a plant a little ways out of its pot to have a look at the roots.