Repotting guide / Repotting diaries #1

In addition to my longer-form plant care blogposts + ephemeral images I post here on HPH, I thought it would be a nice addition to share some more everyday planty jobs as I go about them, a bit of a ‘what’s on my potting table’ / repotting diary if you will. I’ll make it a category at the top of my website, so you can search these posts easily.

As well as this, I am in the process of organising my photos (there are A LOT) from botanical gardens visits etc. that I thought you’d like to see – I’ll work on compiling some blogposts together for these. When stuck indoors, I really enjoy looking at photos I have taken from trips away + attempting to vaguely organise my ever-increasing photo library into something more than an explosion of green thumbnails all over my desktop. You might have guessed that my background photo is also plant related…actually I will show you – it’s from the botanical garden in Bordeaux, France:

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This post is my first ‘Repotting diaries‘ of the year + as we get into some warmer temperatures (hopefully soon – still the odd frosty morning here) I’ll show you what I am doing with my outdoor plants too. As you will know if you read my last blogpost on getting your houseplants ready for Spring, I have recently moved house so don’t have a balcony garden anymore, but a little courtyard instead. Many of my outdoor plants are being looked after by friends + family until I can safely transport them to my new location. I’ve got my oxalis corms here + my cycads too so things aren’t looking too bare outside my door. In this series I’ll be sharing my potting table progress + what I am propagating etc. in regular intervals on here.

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If you are new to houseplants + haven’t had to repot them yet, this blogpost should help give you some general tips to tackle this task with ease.

As an ‘apartment gardener’ for the last few years with limited outside space, I’ve learned how to get creative with how I carry out my plant care. 90% of the time I will pot indoors + more often than not, the kitchen table (or floor for large plants) is my location of choice. Pest control takes place in the bath, alongside any showering or care of my extra long trailing plants like my Philodendron brasil. If you have smaller potting to do, a storage tub or two (which can later double up as a mini ‘greenhouse’ for humidity loving plants provided it is transparent + gets good light) can work really well as a ‘container gardening’ piece of kit. Here’s mine:

  H P H  R E P O T T I N G   T I P S  :

• Get prepared: if you have a lot to repot, plan this out in ‘batches’, working with similar plants at one time is a good idea.
• Prep your potting mix: Mix up the right amount for the task ahead – I use a plastic tub to make up a mix to suit the plants I am potting. For example, I’ll pot succulents in one session, foliage plants in another, and so on. It makes it easier than having to keep altering your soil amendments. 
• Wash your pots: to avoid any contamination, it’s best to wash any pots out with warm soapy water  before potting. Don’t be tempted to use dirty pots for your houseplants especially if they have been outside.
• Only go up one pot size at a time: generally, plants grow better when slightly pot bound and they don’t like any major jumps in pot size. If they are in a pot that is way too big, they will spend their energy making roots to fill it instead of new leaves or blooms above soil level. Also, if they get over watered when in a very large pot, the mass of wet potting mix will likely cause root rot. 

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I eventually got around to potting up my Philodendron scandens cuttings that have been in water for absolutely ages! This wasn’t really intentional, I just kind of forgot about them. As you can see from the photos, the roots have got extremely long but I curled them around in a little pot + have now hung the plant off my curtain pole in a hanger.

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I always have spider plantlets propagating in various jars and bottles, I really think it can bring a space to life. The mother plant is looking slightly bedraggled now + some of the plantlets naturally drop with age, so I have been popping those in water + I decided to pot these 3 plants together (it doesn’t matter that they are at various stages of rooting):

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Remember this beauty? My lovely jewel orchid is looking quite unkempt after blooming + being moved, so I decided to combine my two pots to make one. I will admit I have been putting this job off because the stems can be quite awkward to work with.

Here it is after all the stems were repotted… this was a messy job but I am so pleased to tick that off the to-do list:

Hope you enjoyed seeing what I have been up to on my potting table this week. Here’s the link to my repotting plants series if you want to see more potting!

Hope you are all staying safe + thanks for reading  —

— Laura

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