Common Potted Gardening Mistakes all Beginners Make
Of all the at-home hobbies and projects I do on a regular basis, potted gardening has so far proved the most low-maintenance and the least difficult to master. Unlike cooking, writing, or crafting, the plants you’re working with are probably capable of getting by on their own with very little help from you. Since they’re removed from their natural environment (and possibly selectively bred to be more dependent on human intervention), you’re going to have to give them some support. However, once you get through the initial stages, a potted garden will eventually fill your home with beauty, fragrance, and nature without taking up a lot of your time.
If you grow herbs and/or veggies, gardening can also be one of your most practical and tangibly productive hobbies. I’ve found it a little harder to grow veggies in an indoor garden because it’s tough to fulfill their sunlight needs in a window and because a lot of them eventually get way too big for a pot anyway. However, I have a ton of herbs that do quite well in a pot, such as parsley, rosemary, basil, thyme, spearmint, and lavender (this one’s not technically an herb, but because I cook with it a lot, I classify it as an herb for the purposes of this post).
Almost all plants like it better in the ground, but there are some distinct advantages to growing in pots. First, and probably most self-evident, pots don’t take up a lot of space and don’t require any alterations to your house or yard. This means that if you live in an apartment, a potted garden is likely your best — and maybe only — option. Second, pots are portable. I live in central Texas, which is subject to the whims of the weather pretty much all year round. Severe storms, damaging winds, wild temperature fluctuations, extreme heat/drought, flash flooding, and hard freezes are all things I’ve had to deal with multiple times since moving to Austin. And I’ve only lived here two years! It’s been a lifesaver to be able to move my more fragile plants outdoors when the weather is nice and indoors when it gets too rough for them. It’s also great to have the option to put them in the car and take them with you when you move, which is obviously impossible with in-ground plants. Third, pots offer you a lot of environmental control aside from just keeping plants out of the weather. You can decide exactly what growth medium your plants are in, exactly how much sun they get, and how much water they can have. It’s also much easier to keep potted plants away from pests.
That being said, there are a few challenges unique to growing plants in a pot, and especially an indoor pot. While I hope to get individual posts going specific to all the different plants I grow both in pots and in the ground, this post is going to deal with some of the most common issues beginner potted gardeners face — no matter what they grow — and how to overcome them.
Incorrect Watering
This is a biggie: if you have a lot of different plants, they’re going have a lot of different water needs and probably different watering schedules. Plants’ watering needs aren’t always intuitive either. For example, moth orchids naturally occur in humid, subtropical areas in Southeast Asia, so you would think they need a lot of water. However, since the plant is an epiphyte, meaning it grows attached to trees rather than in soil, it actually needs a ton of drainage and circulation, and it’s very easy to overwater it. Succulents are the same way. Aloe looks like a cactus. Common sense says “cactus = very little water.” However, aloe vera is not a cactus; it is actually a member of the lily family. If you don’t water it enough, you won’t get those long, juicy branches that are great for everything from mixed drinks to skincare. The best way to know how much water your plant needs is to know what kind of plant you’ve got and do some research on it when you first bring it home. There are a ton of great resources out there.
A lot of the time, plants will tell you if you’re not watering them correctly. Most plants will start looking pretty sad if they’re not getting enough water: herbs and flowers will get droopy, and succulents will start to shrivel. If you see your plants beginning to sag, with leaves slumping over and flowers bending downwards, chances are they’re just dehydrated. Give them more water, wait a few hours, and they’ll probably perk up just fine. If they don’t, then it’s time to look for other possible issues.
By the same token, your plants will start to develop physical indicators if they’re getting too much water. Root rot is a common ailment. This is when the roots of your plant start to drown because they’re constantly inundated with water. An overly moist pot is also a great medium for bacterial and fungal infections to flourish, further damaging and even killing your plant. Common symptoms include a foul, wet odor around your plant, wilting (with the leaves usually yellowing and dropping off from the bottom up), and flaccid, blackening roots. If your plant starts to develop root rot, the best thing to do is repot it as soon as you notice the first signs. Trim away the soggy, brown roots, leaving only the firm white/tan ones. Then, place the plant in dry soil with good drainage and don’t water it as much in the future.
Speaking of drainage, there’s almost no pot that doesn’t need it. It’s best to buy pots with built in drainage, but if you have a plastic or wooden pot without it, you can punch or drill a few holes in the bottom. If you’ve got a glass, clay, ceramic, or other container you cannot drill through without breaking it, you’re not totally out of luck. The best thing you can do to make sure your plant’s roots stay dry enough (besides not overwatering) is to create enough circulation in your plant’s environment to allow the water in the pot to evaporate. You can keep a ceiling fan going if you want; just make sure the plant isn’t under a direct draft. You can also place a few rocks or a little gravel at the bottom of your pot to prevent dampness from collecting down there or mix some bark in with your potting soil to help the water move around. Just make sure you’re tailoring your circulation to each plant’s specific needs, which you can always find out through a little digging.
Insufficient Sunlight
This one is especially problematic when you start to run out of southern window space (or northern for anyone in the southern hemisphere). Different plants need different amounts of sunlight. Some need to be directly in a window pretty much all the time, while others can do just fine with a few hours of indirect sunlight. Most of the time, the plants will have a tag or sticker telling you exactly how many hours of sunlight they require when you purchase them. If they don’t, you can always look it up.
Again, plants will often tell you if they’re getting too much or too little sun. A plant that’s getting too much will often start to exhibit telltale scorching on its leaves. Sometimes they’ll just turn yellow if they’re sunburned; sometimes they’ll brown and shrivel up. If this starts happening, just move your plant to a shadier spot. On the other hand, if your plant isn’t getting enough sunlight, it won’t grow very fast (if at all), its leaves may darken or fade, and it may get leggy, meaning it starts to lengthen its stems and fan out its leaves in an effort to catch more light. This will leave it looking spindly and tattered. Moving it to a sunnier window or even outdoors — weather permitting — should help, but if your plant is already super leggy, you might have to prune it.
A lot of indoor plants are prone to getting leggy anyway, no matter what direction their window faces. This is because they’ll generally lean towards the natural light outside instead of artificial indoor light. The best thing to do to prevent them from fanning out or tilting too far is turn them either a quarter or half-turn when they start to lean one direction. You’ll be amazed at how fast they’ll start to lean towards the other.
Lack of Nutrients
One of the biggest advantages that in-ground plants have over potted plants is that they can be naturally fertilized by storms, water runoff, decaying plants, animal waste, volcanic activity, etc. Potted plants are typically not exposed to any of these elements, meaning they’re dependent on you to make sure they get the nutrients they need. If your plant sits in the same soil too long, that soil will eventually become depleted as the plant uses up all the available minerals and organic matter. You can replenish the nutrients your plant needs a couple different ways.
Repotting is the best way to ensure your plants get enough nutrients. You’ll notice your plants become a lot happier within days of getting a fresh container of potting soil. You typically need to repot every six months to a year — once in the spring and possibly once in the fall, though individual plant’s needs will vary, and you should generally avoid putting any plant through the stress of repotting while it is in bloom. Repotting also helps prevent root overcrowding. If you notice when you pull your plant out of the pot that its roots are crammed together and smushed towards the bottom and sides of the container, it’s time for a bigger pot. If your roots are still evenly distributed and don’t have that “squished” look, you’re fine to put the plant back in the same container with some new dirt. See this post on how to repot for tips on exactly how to remove and replace your plants.
Plant food is also a good option for introducing nutrients into your plant’s environment, though it’s not a replacement for repotting. It will only help increase your time between repottings. Plant foods come in a ton of different mediums, from granules to dropper liquids to sprays to foams. A lot of them are also made for specific plants. Every couple of weeks to a month, you can sprinkle these foods over your plants to ensure they’re happy and healthy. Just make sure to follow the instructions listed on the package.
Final Thoughts
So now that you know some common things to look out for once you have your plants, you’re probably wondering how to get started with your potted garden. For the sake of brevity, I’ve put that in a separate post. I know it probably seems counterintuitive to publish the above post first, but I thought it would be better to outline some of the problems you’re most likely to encounter so you can avoid making the same mistakes I did when I was first starting out. I wish I’d read what not to do first, then what to do, rather than the other way around. It probably would have saved the lives of a few of plants!
