Don't Rush to Water When the Soil in Your Flower Pot Is Compacted - I Watered Wrong and the Roots Rot

When growing flowers, it is easy to run into some tricky problems, such as yellow leaves, root rot, or failure to bloom. In fact, caring for potted flowers really requires "heart." Besides heart, you also need to learn some basic knowledge of care. In the past, I always heard gardening friends talk about many terms like "grow flowers first by growing roots," "for flowers, three parts fertilizer and seven parts water," and "water when dry, stop when wet." Only now have I realized that just understanding the terms is not enough.

Sometimes, experience is more useful than the knowledge learned from textbooks. For example, by common sense, what should you do when the soil in a flower pot is compacted? Many people's first answer is: water it! In fact, this is wrong. When most gardening friends are growing flowers, as soon as they see compacted potting soil they water it, and the next day the flowers rot at the roots and wither.

When the soil in a flower pot begins to compact, most of the time the situation in the picture above appears, that is, the potting soil has "cracked." At this time, if you water immediately, it is very easy to cause root rot. Why? Because once potting soil compaction appears, by the time you see it, the compaction has already lasted a long time. The bottom of the potting soil and the root system of the plant have long since stuck together!

Watering at this time will not only fail to ease the compacted condition of the potting soil, but will also worsen the sticking between the roots and the soil, and the nutrients in the potting soil will not be quickly absorbed by the roots. After all, the roots in their current state have almost no ability to absorb nutrients. In addition, when flowers have been short of water for a long time, giving water immediately will also cause an imbalance inside and outside the root cells, easily leading to cell rupture and then the phenomenon of root rot.

The potting soil is compacted - if you do not water, what should you do?

The most effective method is to immediately change the pot and change the soil. At this time, there is no need to worry about whether it is summer. Although summer is not suitable for changing pots, the potted flowers cannot wait, so it is still best to change the pot as soon as possible. When changing pots, you can choose to do it in the morning or in the evening. When taking out the potted plant, be sure to gently loosen the compacted soil and do not damage the roots.

If you find signs of root rot, use scissors to clean it up first, and then transplant. The period just after transplanting is very important, especially in hot summer. After changing the pot, do not place it in the sunlight immediately. It is best to put it in a cool place with good ventilation for one or two days, and water it thoroughly once on the second day. This way the survival rate will be somewhat higher.

Also, let me remind gardening friends again that the reason the potting soil becomes compacted has multiple causes: first, watering too little; second, fertilizing too much; third, using chemical fertilizer. So when growing flowers in the future, avoid these!

That is all for sharing the knowledge about potting soil compaction. Thank you for reading!

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