Thursday, November 25, 2010

Pot sizes - size does matter for some things

One aspect of Sarracenia growing that is very often overlooked is what size pot to use. A lot of people I know use 12 cm or 14 cm pots almost exclusively - as did I - mainly because this was the advice given by Adrian Slack's first book, Carnivorous Plants. Here's one reason why I changed to bigger pots:




This plant is a Sarracenia flava that fits somewere between var. flava and var. ornata - its veined at any rate. I brought it about 6 months before the photo was taken from a carnivorous plant grower in Sydney that shall remain nameless. Just look at how cramped the poor plant is - the pot it was removed from (shown for scale) was 10 cm (4 inches) in diameter.



The second reason I changed is because of the speed at which the plants grow. Repotting plants every two years or less doesn't seem to let the plant settle and grow to its full potential - they just get over the last repotting and you are repotting them again. I am trying out 20 cm (8 inch) pots - they look just big enough to get in a few years of growth before repotting will be needed. Some other growers I know use even bigger pots, and grow some really stunning plants. Some more experimentation is in order...