question about re-potting plants

[hiighviolet]

hello!

today i spent a few hours re-potting some of my indoor beauties, i read recently in a book that when you're upgrading a plants pot, it's best not to exceed 2'' in size of the current pot.

does anyone have any feedback on this? i have a smaller ZZ plant that was in a 6'' pot and i have recently moved it to a large 10" terracotta pot, this exceeds the 2" tip i read in my home garden book, what's your experience?

a few of my other plants have also been switched to much larger pots, what can go wrong?

 

[Belmont]

Hello, welcome to the forums.

In general, plants will do better when repotted to a pot only slightly bigger, but it should be fine. 2" is a good rule of thumb, but you can exceed that without worrying too much, the plants will just take a bigger hit and take longer to recover. I don't know how or why this happens, only that it does. Things to look out for are wilting, general sadness, etc. That's to be expected from transplanting, and gets worse the bigger the difference between the pot sizes are. It's pretty rare, in my experience, that it kills the plant, but it can take a month or more for the plant to completely recover.
If anyone can drop a scientific explanation on how a plant knows how big its pot is, and why they don't like big pots, I'd love to read it.

 

[hiighviolet]

Hello, welcome to the forums.

In general, plants will do better when repotted to a pot only slightly bigger, but it should be fine. 2" is a good rule of thumb, but you can exceed that without worrying too much, the plants will just take a bigger hit and take longer to recover. I don't know how or why this happens, only that it does. Things to look out for are wilting, general sadness, etc. That's to be expected from transplanting, and gets worse the bigger the difference between the pot sizes are. It's pretty rare, in my experience, that it kills the plant, but it can take a month or more for the plant to completely recover.
If anyone can drop a scientific explanation on how a plant knows how big its pot is, and why they don't like big pots, I'd love to read it.

hey! thanks for the speedy reply!

so far, all the transplanted beauties are doing really well, they're perky and no signs of any shock (yet..)

many of them were very overdue for a new pot & soil.

 

[Belmont]

It's possible they won't wind up going into any sort of shock, I've had plants do that too. Just don't be surprised if they start to look down after a couple days.

 

[Larisa]

If the pot is too large, the roots of the plant may not have time to occupy the entire space. You water the plant, but the earth dries slowly. Roots can rot in wet ground.
If the pot is the right size, it does not happen. In addition, a tight pot stimulates the flowering of many indoor plants.
But it also matters what kind of plant it is. For example, Gesneriaceae plants do not like too large a pot for transplantation. And Coleus will easily transfer this.

 

[Tech]

Much like Larisa said. When an indoor plant gets too big of a pot, watering issues will arise. Indoor plants don't photosynthesize as much as outdoor ones. Thus root growth is often slower too. Watering can become tricky. I think as long as you're not growing mold in the voids before the plant can establish roots in it, you're fine.