[gingerale]

Posted here in the Advanced section to hopefully weed out dozens of uninformed responses. No offense intended to anyone, and not to sound like an ass, but I'm sick of posting threads only to have a bunch of ignoramuses chime in who clearly have no clue what they are talking about. Anyone who has experience and/or knowledge and/or intelligence and wishes to comment is welcome to do so. Thanks.

What exactly IS "root bind"? We can all agree that it occurs when soil-to-root ratio drops below a certain ratio, but what effects does this actually have on the plant? In other words, WHY does root bind cause slowed growth, etc?

I ask because my current crop is growing in 1 gallon pots, which are too small since I vegged these out a few weeks instead of going straight to 12/12. I have been using fairly heavy dosages of fertilizer, and the slowed growth picked up substantially, plus I noticed the plants expanded in width and height much more than they typically would given the size of the containers. i.e. the "plant doesn't get much wider than its pot" rule no longer seemed to apply once I started fertilizing. It seems as if I must fertilize every 3-4 days, because if I don't growth will stall out and I will start to see deficiencies on some plants, but if I keep up with the regular and heavy feeding they seem to thrive and grow normally.

My guess/theory is that during normal growth, say in the ground with plenty of soil to work with, the constantly growing roots are always running into fresh soil and having fresh nutrients to work with, thus ensuring a steady supply of nutrients to the plant. When root bound, there is much less fresh soil/nutrients available to the roots, therefore growth tends to slow and/or stall out, and the plant starts running into deficiencies.

Based on my admittedly limited experience, compensation with extra fertilization seems to help counteract the problem. But will this have deleterious effects in the long run? Is it possible that, say, harmful compounds might build up in the soil or problems develop in some other way? What other possible/likely reasons could there be to explain why root bind hurts the plant?

Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks.

[VerdantGreen]

you guessed right. rootbound plants have a whole load of roots in contact with each other and the sides of the pot rather than soil that they can feed from. they will probably yield less and fade earlier than plants in bigger pots. regular feeding withing reason will help, i found leaving the pots in a tray of runoff for a few hours helps them feed.

ideally though use bigger pots next time.

VG