Feb
23
Soil Tips for Indoor Plants
February 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Many nurserymen, being fierce individualists, make up their own soil mixture recipes which sometimes vary from plant to plant according to their findings.
So some plants come to us with a slightly acid or slightly alkaline soil, some with a light, sandy, open mixture and others in a heavier loam. But in every case any new plant is in good soil and will need no re-potting for up to the first year or so, after which it depends on the size of the plant, your own skill and several other factors. Some plants, cocos palms for instance, can remain in their original pots for years and as a general rule most plants for the home prefer to stay in a snug, small pot rather than rattle about in a pot too large for them.
So re-potting is not really a vital matter unless you are a real plant enthusiast, in which case it may be helpful to go a little more deeply into the details of soils than is normally done in a non-technical book of this nature.
When we talk about soils for pot plants we should more properly use the term composts, compositions composed of various constituents, of which soil is probably the most important. For all soil was once rock. Rain, frost, sun, subterranean disturbance, bacteria, animal products and even animals and plants themselves have over the centuries gradually broken clown the surface rock to form soil. These rock particles can vary in size from stones and pebbles to a very fine substance almost like powder which is so fine that under the influence of water it binds together like glue and forms clay.
Pots that have been plunged inside other and larger containers with the space between the two packed with water retentive material such as peat will be able to live for a comparatively long period if they have been watered thoroughly and the peat or other material has been well moistened.
Other means of keeping plants watered include standing them in a bath or sink containing an inch or two of water and perhaps leaving a tap gently dripping. A wick watering method is to group a number of plants together on the floor, preferably standing them on a polythene sheet for safety. By them stand a chair or stool on which stands a bucket of water. From the water bucket lead to each plant a fabric or fibreglass wick (a school-boy’s football bootlace does excellently!) and anchor this in position. The water from the bucket will gradually drip down the wick and into the soil of each plant.
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.