How to repot a plant - Golden Guide by the Garden Ninja
Channel: Garden Ninja: Lee Burkhill
Date: 07/04/2016

Garden Ninjas guide shows you exactly how to repot your container plants and the benefits of doing so. http://www.gardenninja.co.uk

Repotting can increase the vigour in your plants, allow you to replenish lost nutrients from the compost and also encourage a much healthier plant! Changing the plant container can also allow you to change the style and look of your plants.

This how to guide shows you exactly what you need to do when repotting and moving container plants. Garden Designer Lee Burkhill the Garden Ninja give you a helpful explainaton of compost, drainage and ensuring healthy plants.


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Video Extract: Today I'm going to show you how to repot a container plant into a larger pot. There are a number of reasons why you may do this. In this instance the pots actually been broken so we're going to transfer it to a bigger one to allow it to grow more freely. 

You may also be potting on plants because they have become root bound and thats another good example of this. Unfortunately, I'm repotting in situ here on a porch which is next to a busy road. If youre dealing with large and heavy plants you dont want to be carting them to and from or behind a garden then into a shed, sometimes its better to work with what you have got there and then to save your back and legs. Hopefully this video will be of some use though. You are going to need a few key things to repot a plant. First things first you're going to need a trowel to help break up the plants root structure and also backfil with any growing media or compost. You're going to need a shovel to put the compost in, some crocks which are piece of broken pot or stone which you are going to put in the bottom of the pot so it assists with the drainage of the pot. It the hole in the bottom is left there without being filled it may free drain too quickly. 

There are a few other tools you're going to need. One of them being a kneeling matt they are only a couple of pounds but they really save your knees when kneeling down. A good tip I was once told is that the dirtier the matt the better the gardener as you've been using it for so long! As you can see mines pretty filthy! I always use it when out in the garden. 

You're also going to need some gloves to help protect your hands. I used to garden without gloves but after many years you get callouses dry skin its not very attractive so always use gloves it helps as well with things like thorns and rocks.  Lastly and definitely not least is the growing media, so here we have some peat free multipurpose  compost. Now peat takes thousands of years to manufacture in the wild in peat bogs and its really bad for the environment to go slicing it out to make compost. There are better peat free alternatives that have a lower impact on the environment so I am using this sterile compost to pot on this bay tree. 

Now that I have done that and cleaned the pot I'm going to take these two crocks here which are part of old broken pots and place them inside to assist wth drainage. Hopefully you can see this, just place them down at the bottom. To cover that drainage hole. Now you want to make sure you have some compost or growing media in the bottom of this because this is a much bigger pot than the original and you want to make sure that when you put your new plant in that it comes up to just below the lip. That makes sure that water doesn't run off and spill soil every where and it also means that the plants at a nice angle. So I'm using the compost scoop for this. 

So what I'm going to do here is gently tease this bay tree out of this damaged pot but be careful not to disrupt the roots too much. Ok now as you can see this is what we call 'root balled' where the roots are all compacted and twisted around the original pot. So what I am going to do is use my hands to breakup some of that original root and then position it into this new pot. As you can see they come away quite easily. Ok time to start backfilling. What I will show now. Im going to be using some white pebbles here as a decorative mulch around the bay tree. Just a word of caution always make sure you know where you're buying your pebbles from. What the pebbles will do it they will act as a mulch around the plant which means they will help keep water in and keep the soil from being eroded, washed or blown away from the plant. They also look really nice so its nice to think about what kind of decorative mulch you want, whether it be pebbles, slate, chipped bark or organic matter there are benefits and drawbacks to them all but I think given this is on a porch that pebbles will do a really good job. So last but not least, we are going to give this a water, with some water from a rain butt, again another environmental consideration and then we are good to go!