Artificial Emotion
Bluelighter
Jibult there's no such things as a silly question, especially as I didn't explain it anyway.
If you take a pot of soil, say 20L with no plant in it and you water it regularly so the soil is always soggy wet, it will invite mould and most importantly, the amount of oxygen it holds will be vastly diminished. If you have that same pot with 20L of soil except there is a plant in it and the root system goes right through the whole mass of soil, when you water it the roots will be very efficient as sucking up that water rapidly to be used by the plant for making sugars etc. and also to go right through the plant's transpiration stream and into the air. You will know this because the soil will dry out very quickly, letting oxygen-rich air into the soil whereas the other 20L pot filled with soil will stay wet and soggy. So, it is always a good idea to have as much of the soil volume being occupied by a root system as possible.
The way to achieve this is to pot up a fully rooted through root ball into a minimum amount of soil so there is enough fresh soil there to allow the roots to grow and enough nutrients to feed the plants but not so much fresh soil that is not being used at all for long periods of time. If you regularly provide this new soil at each pot up you are giving the plant nutrients from the soil so it can be fed and you won't have to feed until a couple of weeks after the last pot up, in the early flowering stage.
People mainly in north america have a really bad habit of planting into massive pots when this is not necessary and counterproductive. They try and get around the issue of soggy oxygen depleted soil by adding lots of perlite to the soil which in theory aerates the soil and improves drainage but in reality this really isn't the case - or I should say it doesn't work to the extent that many people would hope it would. Perlite can definitely be useful but in my opinion it is no substitute for potting up regularly. A lot of this unused soil often ends up never getting used by the plant and so waste is also sometimes a consideration as you say.
As for the perlite thing - from all the research I have done myself into soil science the best way to improve aeration and drainage is not to use perlite but to use soil with very large 'chunks' of material that give large gaps of air in the soil. Things like bark work very well, but it needs to be composted thoroughly before use as otherwise it can 'rob' nitrogen from the soil. There is a medium called 'fytocell' which is white in colour and very spongy in texture which when added to the soil will improve aeration but it's hard to get, especially if you don't live in the UK. The type of pot interestingly is also key to improving drainage. A very tall container that is not very wide will make the soil drain a lot better than a very shallow and wide pot, so if you can get as tall a pot as possible it will make a big difference.
Finally I wanted to add that the number of pot ups I suggested before can actually be cut down to something a bit more manageable like this:
small seed pot --> 1-1.5L pot --> 6L pot --> 11-15L pot, with no big effect on plant growth.
So in reality it's not that crucial to have so many stages but it certainly won't hurt.
It should be fine I would have thought. Growth may be stunted for a while but I reckon it should be okay. Fingers crossed, hey!
If you take a pot of soil, say 20L with no plant in it and you water it regularly so the soil is always soggy wet, it will invite mould and most importantly, the amount of oxygen it holds will be vastly diminished. If you have that same pot with 20L of soil except there is a plant in it and the root system goes right through the whole mass of soil, when you water it the roots will be very efficient as sucking up that water rapidly to be used by the plant for making sugars etc. and also to go right through the plant's transpiration stream and into the air. You will know this because the soil will dry out very quickly, letting oxygen-rich air into the soil whereas the other 20L pot filled with soil will stay wet and soggy. So, it is always a good idea to have as much of the soil volume being occupied by a root system as possible.
The way to achieve this is to pot up a fully rooted through root ball into a minimum amount of soil so there is enough fresh soil there to allow the roots to grow and enough nutrients to feed the plants but not so much fresh soil that is not being used at all for long periods of time. If you regularly provide this new soil at each pot up you are giving the plant nutrients from the soil so it can be fed and you won't have to feed until a couple of weeks after the last pot up, in the early flowering stage.
People mainly in north america have a really bad habit of planting into massive pots when this is not necessary and counterproductive. They try and get around the issue of soggy oxygen depleted soil by adding lots of perlite to the soil which in theory aerates the soil and improves drainage but in reality this really isn't the case - or I should say it doesn't work to the extent that many people would hope it would. Perlite can definitely be useful but in my opinion it is no substitute for potting up regularly. A lot of this unused soil often ends up never getting used by the plant and so waste is also sometimes a consideration as you say.
As for the perlite thing - from all the research I have done myself into soil science the best way to improve aeration and drainage is not to use perlite but to use soil with very large 'chunks' of material that give large gaps of air in the soil. Things like bark work very well, but it needs to be composted thoroughly before use as otherwise it can 'rob' nitrogen from the soil. There is a medium called 'fytocell' which is white in colour and very spongy in texture which when added to the soil will improve aeration but it's hard to get, especially if you don't live in the UK. The type of pot interestingly is also key to improving drainage. A very tall container that is not very wide will make the soil drain a lot better than a very shallow and wide pot, so if you can get as tall a pot as possible it will make a big difference.
Finally I wanted to add that the number of pot ups I suggested before can actually be cut down to something a bit more manageable like this:
small seed pot --> 1-1.5L pot --> 6L pot --> 11-15L pot, with no big effect on plant growth.
So in reality it's not that crucial to have so many stages but it certainly won't hurt.
It should be fine I would have thought. Growth may be stunted for a while but I reckon it should be okay. Fingers crossed, hey!
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