If you want your bougainvillea to grow well and bloom abundantly, should you use a tall pot or a short pot? A flower grower tells you

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Bougainvillea is a flowering plant that everyone is fairly familiar with and quite fond of. Getting a bougainvillea to bloom all over is the ultimate goal. Besides scientific care in the later stages, the choice of flower pot is also an important factor in achieving this goal. The pots on the market come in all sorts of odd shapes and sizes, with tall pots and short pots, so how should you choose?

From a care standpoint, short pots are simpler to care for than tall pots. Take watering, for example: a short pot is easier to water thoroughly than a tall pot, and watering a tall pot thoroughly once takes quite a while. Every heavy watering is an act that worsens the loss of organic matter in the soil.

Repotting is safer and more convenient with a short pot. Bougainvillea generally needs to be repotted once a year or every two years. During repotting, a short pot causes less damage to the bougainvillea, while with a tall pot, because the root system is deeper, pulling it out causes relatively more damage to the fine roots.

When bougainvillea is grown in a short pot, the root system is more robust. With the roots in the soil, most of the fine roots spread outward while the main root grows downward, and the fine roots have a larger area of contact with air in a short pot, so they breathe more freely. A tall pot simply cannot match this.

No matter how you control the growth of the branches or how you prune, a bougainvillea will slowly grow larger and gradually thicken. From a safety standpoint, a short pot is safer and more stable, and it does not tip over easily.

Fertilizing is safer with a short pot, since the fine roots are the main force for absorbing nutrients. A short pot has a larger rim area, so when fertilizing, the fertilizer is farther from the root system. The rims of tall pots are generally rather small, so when fertilizing, the fertilizer is closer to the root system, and the chance of burning the plant is greater than with a short pot.

Tall pots came about merely to satisfy certain visual preferences. Some people like short pots, and some like tall pots. Many people may not know that when some tall pots are used for growing flowers, a portion of the inside is filled up with material. The downward extension force of a bougainvillea's root system is also limited, and the soil at the very bottom often cannot be used at all.

So, my personal suggestion is that when growing bougainvillea, you can choose a short pot. If you pick a tall pot, the bottom quarter can be filled up with gravel or small stones. A tall pot is not suitable for growing tall, thick, sturdy seedlings of bougainvillea.

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