Transcript:
Hey, everyone, it’s Claire from succulent fan club. And today I’m going to talk to you about choosing the right size pot for your succulents. So what you’re going to need today for this tutorial is you’re going to need a selection of pots, and that will also depend on the type and the number of cuttings or new plants that you have, so I’ve already removed the soil from all of my almost all of my different plants that I want to repot today. So you need to have those already selection of pots. Um, I’ve got a little selection of different size terracottas here, which you might choose to use and then I’ve got some plasterboard tape, which I’m going to use to put in the bottom of the pots to stop the soil. Just going straight out the bottom of the pot. When you pick it up or when you water it, and then you also need your well draining, succulent soil mix again, which sort of depends on the plants and depends on your climate, but you can either check out my separate video on that, and then let’s get started so choosing the right pot for the succulent that you are going to put in. It is really important because you need to really have a balance between establishing a really good root system, but then also enjoying, you know, a really big full plant whether it’s a full rosette, or you know, one that’s growing sort of lots of babies and getting really nice and big and besides light and watering schedule, you can also help develop that by using the right size pot. So this here is, um, a moon stone. Um, Pacquiao fighting overfirm. Uh, a moonstone. Uh, leaf crop. Okay, and as you can see, it’s doing really well. Um, and it’s ready to pot on. That wasn’t my little prop tray. It’s just been growing along on its own, and I want to put it now in its own pot, so it can start to get bigger. Um, you can see that. It does have a really small little root system. It’s actually got lots of leaves already, but a really small root system. So what would be very unhelpful for this? Little plant is to say well. I’ve got this new pot. Um, which if you haven’t seen already, this is from my, um, how to drill holes in pots video. And if I put that in there, you know, I might think I’ll put some nice stones around the top. Once I’ve planted it and it will look great, but the problem with this is that what this plant is going to do is focus all its energy on producing a bigger root system. Because if you fill this pot up with soil and then you water it. The water is going to sink down to the bottom of the pot. You know, as well as drain out. But there will always be some settling down there at the bottom. What will happen is these roots will have to then start growing and grow and grow and grow and get really long and big, and that’s what that plant is going to focus its attention on doing instead of growing lots of leaves and becoming a bigger plant. It’s actually going to just grow a bigger root system, Which is the part that you don’t see. Yes, you know, that can make it healthier, but it doesn’t necessarily add to the look of the plant, So then what I think is better is to use a much smaller pot, so you might not have, um, a big supply of pots. These come as 48 you can buy for about five pounds in a big tray from like Wilco’s or Asda when it’s in season, But what I also like to do is keep these little, Um, fromage fray pots and I stab a hole in the bottom or you can. If you heat up a skewer, you can poke a hole in the bottom, and these are a much better size because they give the plant enough space to begin to develop roots and get a nice big root system, a deep root system, but it’s not going to spend all its time growing roots to fill the pot. So when I repot this one, I’m going to use a little teeny baby pot. I think it’s about a two inch one and a half to two inch pot. Okay, or this sort of one one inch little petty flu pot here, and that’s a much better size. Okay, that’s what I’m going to use. Okay, If we move on and have a look at this Hawaii here, It’s got a very well developed food system already and it would not be beneficial Really to put it into a teeny tiny pot like we just talked about, because all that’s going to do is let it become root bound very quickly again. I do quite like the size because I don’t really want it to spend loads more time developing roots, you know, even more roots. I wanted to work on growing these babies and making small babies for me, so you don’t want to go too much bigger, and I think the takeaway from this is that we’re not looking at the size of what’s above We’re looking at the size of what’s below here. Another example would be if your plant doesn’t have a root at all. So this little baby Gasteria came off the mother Gasteria little Morty here. Now, this one, in fact, you could just put straight into your leaf prop tray or again. Put it into a really teeny tiny little pot. It’s not going to have any roots to hold it up, so you’re going to need a nice sort of gritty? Mix, um, to hold it in place, and with this kind of, um, plant here that doesn’t have any roots. You need to be very careful with your watering. I would really, um, only water once every couple of weeks to sort of encourage some roots. Um, or even less than that and definitely don’t miss it because it’s not going to absorb anything from the roots. Okay, so I’ll find an example here is sort of the opposite where you actually have a really big root system at the bottom, but only a teeny tiny plant at the top. Okay, so this little topsy turvy has had a little bit of a hard life. Um, I’m not quite sure what’s up with it. But, um, this is an example where actually you could put it into a slightly bigger pot. Don’t bow by the size of the rosette go by the size of the root system. So I would maybe go for more of this size terracotta pot because again, the roots fit in there quite nicely. There’s still a bit of space for some more root growth. Um, yeah, it’s going to look a little bit silly, because it’s such a massive big pot with a tiny rosette, but it is going to give the plant an opportunity to then grow much fuller roses because that’s what it’s working towards now. So when you’re planting up your succulents, think about recreating succulents, natural environments, they like to be quite squished between rocks. If you think of desert succulents, they like to be really arid and dry, hence using a nice, gritty soil mix. Okay, that’s not rich at all and very rarely sort of fertilized and what we’re trying to recreate is. Um, you know, they don’t mind being slightly root bound, so another example here really large plant on top very, very small roots so again, I’m only going to go with a small little pot to try and encourage root growth. Get them a little bit sort of tight in there. Not exactly root bound, but just get them nice and tight and encourage that root growth encourage them to grow down to the bottom of the pot by a nice, deep watering every time, not misting on the surface, and that should help your plants flourish. Okay, so I’m gonna just pop up. Um, some of these succulents. So I’ve got my little plasterboard. Um, tape to go in the bottom there. So the soil doesn’t just all drop out the bottom. When you’re choosing your pots, it’s very tempting to just choose. You know something that’s really cute. Um, even if it doesn’t fit the size of your plant, you also have to be very careful with glazed pots like this and also plastic pots because they don’t, um, absorb the water in the same way or breathe in the same way and what I mean by that is when you use a terracotta pot. These are ideal in that they absorb any excess moisture and it can evaporate from the side, so all of these have been potted up now in the appropriately sized pots, and I’m going to wait at least a week before I give them their first watering, and when you do water them, make sure that you’re giving them a really thorough drink. Not just misting the soil because that helps their roots to grow down deep as opposed to just searching at the surface when you mist them trying to look for moisture and it stops their roots drying out.