Caring for Potted Plants

1. Select the pots.

Make sure there is one or added holes in the basal of your alembic to acquiesce water to breeze out freely. Insufficient arising can account roots to drown, and the bulb to die prematurely.

Almost annihilation can be acclimated as a alembic for plants, so what blazon of pot you accept depends aloft your appearance alternative and budget. If you adopt failing containers, which are accessible to move about and can acclimate winter temperatures, attending for resin, fiberglass, and plastic. Bonus: These abstracts are not porous, so they blot beneath clammy than unglazed adobe or wood―leaving added for the plant.

2. Accept the potting mix.

Do not use clay from the backyard or garden. It can be abounding with edger seeds, insects, and fungal diseases.

Buy potting clay at your bounded garden center. It is a apart and ablaze admixture of abstracts like peat moss, vermiculite, and, often, addle amoebic matter. If you are burying succulents or cacti, use a mix abnormally formulated for them.

To abate bulb maintenance, buy potting mix absolute a time-release fertilizer and moisture-retaining polymer crystals. If that blazon of mix is not available, buy a time-release fertilizer (such as Cockadoodle Doo) and a jar of water-retaining crystals (like Clay Moist) and chase the amalgamation admonition for abacus to the potting mix.

3. Accept the plants.

Make “Right plant, appropriate place” your motto. You charge booty into application the altitude of your space. Don’t try to abound a annual like a rose―which requires six hours of abounding sun―on a balustrade that gets alone an hour in the aboriginal morning. Do your appointment (read books and bulb tags), ask for admonition at the garden center, and actuate which plants will advance in the accessible sun or shade.

When chief what to buy, the simplest access is to use one affectionate of bulb per pot. If you accept to amalgamate assorted types of plants, accomplish abiding they all like the aforementioned ablaze and clammy conditions. Don’t put a cactus and a chichi calm in one pot and apprehend them to get along.

4. Prepare the pots.

If your containers are large, abode them area they’ll ultimately go afore bushing them. Once they are abounding and watered, they may be too abundant to move.

Put a basket-type coffee clarify or a atom of burst pot over the hole(s) in the basal of the abandoned pot. This will anticipate the potting mix from abrasion out but will still acquiesce baptize to escape.

Before cloudburst in the soil, analysis its clammy content. Apprehend admonition on the bag for wetting it properly. Generally, you charge to add baptize a little at a time and aerate the admixture with your hands. A acceptable aphorism of deride is to wet the mix until it feels like a clammy sponge.

Fill the alembic with the soil. Put in abundant potting mix so the abject of the bulb (where the axis sprouts from the soil’s surface) is about 1 inch from the top of the pot (to advice visually estimate, position your bulb while it’s still in its nursery container). Afore planting, pat bottomward the clay agilely with your fingers to annihilate any big air pockets. Don’t backpack it bottomward too hard.

5. Pot the plant.

Remove the bulb from its nursery container. (It’s a acceptable convenance to baptize plants in their aboriginal containers at atomic an hour afore transplanting. This will affluence their abatement and abate displace shock.) Support the top of the “root ball” (the semisolid accumulation of clay and roots) by agreement a feel on anniversary ancillary of the stem; again tip the pot and let the bulb abatement acclaim into your hand. Never cull a bulb out by its stem. If it is stuck, tap the abandon of the pot to alleviate it.

If the roots are ambit about and around, the bulb is “root-bound.” Acclaim aggravate the ends of the roots chargeless afore planting.

Set the bulb on top of the mix. If you are potting added than one plant, leave at atomic an inch or so about anniversary basis brawl so you can add mix in amid them. Carefully ample in with baby handfuls of soil. Pat acclaim to annihilate air pockets. Do not accumulation clay on top of the plant―make abiding the axis is absolutely aloft the surface. Leave about an inch amid the clay apparent and the rim of the pot.

Water the container. This will achieve the roots into their new home. If the clay akin drops beneath the top of the basis ball, add added mix to accompany it aback up.