Big Box, small pots

 Have you ever gone to a Big Box store - like Home Depot, Wallmart and other types establishments and visited the garden area? You'll see tons of plants, all flowering, fruiting and more in these tiny pots. Yet when you come home and place them in larger pots or in the ground... they never flower again. wth?

 I've been trying to correctly word my Google searches for days now. and I think I've finally started to find some info on my dilemma. I used the string: ((big plants in little pots how do they do it?))

 Over on Davesgarden.com I found a few comments and a good explanation:

Hi Youngman, the simple answer is yes, they do grow them in those small pots, the growers sometimes treat the plants so they will not grow too big for the pot size or they would have to spend even more time and money moving them up pot sizes before they go to the store, that would more than likely mean we the public would have to pay even more for the plants if in larger pots. some plants flower better when their roots are more restricted in smaller pots too. best thing to do when you buy plants that you feel are too large for their pots is to knock it out from the pot by turning it upside down with your fingers spread over the soil so the plant dont hit the floor, and gently but firmly tap the bottom of the pot and the plant should drop out, this way you can check the roots to see if they are over crowding the pot/soil, if they are, then either move it to a larger pot with some fresh soil or into the garden if it was to be planted out, but if the roots are growing around in circles in tight soil, you would be best to gently loosen some of the roots by teasing them out, this way the wont continue to continue circling the soil in the new pot, give it a good drink also as they are normally kept on the drier side for sale. The white balls you talked of are added to help drainage and lets air into the soil, it is called perlite here but not sure what you call it in CA, yellow balls are slow release feeds added also sometimes. Hope this helps you out a bit, good luck.


 I've not heard of pearlite before, and now those sickly yellow balls I've seen before - I now know it's fertilizer.