pot size relevance - 2 or 4 inch for seedling

[ladyslipper]

Hello folks, I have (I think) 4 phal seedlings and went out and promptly got the wrong size pot. These little guys would be happy with a 2 inch pot; I got 4inch.

Could I pot each of them up in the 4 inch pot and only water close to the plant? Would I still end up risking root rot?

m

[mayres]

I would recommend against using a larger pot for small plants for the reason you have noted. It is possible to grow them in larger pots - even in community pots with many plants in a pot, but it will take more effort to be certain they are being watered ideally. Go for the small pots - won't cost that much and you'll be glad you did in the long run. You can use the larger pots when they grow up! Enjoy! mike

[caseydoll]

I did the same thing with 2 of my phal seedlings. I just recently unpotted them to move them into a smaller pot and they both only had a couple roots left. In the bigger pot it was too hard to judge when to water and I chose to water less because I didn't want to risk rot. I think thats why only a few roots are left. They definately wanted to be watered more! So the moral of the story is to just stick with a small pot and you and your phals will be much happier!

Sarah

[Ray]

If the medium is appropriately coarse and porous (i.e., lots of air flow though it), pot size is irrelevant when it comes to phals. In fact, in my experience with them in s/h culture, phalaenopsis plants in larger pots do better than those in smaller ones.

The reason we have two different schools-of-thought here is probably due to the choice of medium.

Most traditional media have components that vary in particle size. When we use them, the medium particles fill the voids between the coarse ones, and the fine particles fill in the even smaller voids. When we water, the liquid is both absorbed and held as droplets between particles ("bridging" water) by surface tension. The bridging water effectively closes off the free air flow and gas exchange to & from the roots.

If we use a small pot, it dries faster, so that bridging water goes away and all is well. In a larger pot that dries a lot more slowly, it hangs around long enough to suffocate the roots.

If, on the other hand, the medium components are all similarly-sized, the voids are larger, and the bridging water is only occupies the crevices close to the particle contact points, and the airways are still open, so drying rate - or not drying at all, as in semi-hydro culture - is irrelevant.

Here's some more on that, with pictures to make it clearer: Particle Packing