Water Well. Water thoroughly after repotting to help the soil settle around your plant's roots. Plenty of moisture will also help your plant recover from the move better. If you have a saucer under the pot, make sure to empty it, so your plant doesn't get too soggy.
After re-potting or potting up, plants tend to enter a period of shock. Don't worry – it's normal! Plants may appear wilted and thirsty, but take care to refrain from watering until about a week after re-potting to ensure that any roots damaged during re-potting have healed.
Water heavily, drench them, right after you repot. The water on the surface will evaporate relatively quickly, but moisture will still be trapped in the deeper soil... so that's where the roots will do. You'll be encouraging deep, healthy roots that anchor the plant AND provide it more access to water and nutrients.
If you have a bare root plant, let it soak in a bucket of water for several hours. Make sure soil in a new pot is damp already, and water again after transplanting. If you're moving to a new spot in the yard, fill the new hole 3/4 full with water before setting the plant in.
For larger plants or trees, it can take months or even years for all problems caused by transplant shock to resolve. A simple case of wilting after repotting can be resolved with good care and often the plant has no residual signs of damage. A more severe case can result in dead or damaged foliage.
Pot Size Is Linked to Growth
Potting up (moving a plant to a larger pot) tends to encourage it to grow faster and become larger. It's the sort of thing you do to a younger plant, sometimes more than once a year.
Maybe the pot is too small for it. Perhaps the soil needs to be changed. There might be a pest or disease problem. Plants need water; If they don't have enough water, they can't take up nutrients from their soil, which means they'll wilt and become sick.
Botanists explained that the roots are delicate and touching them can break the smaller ones. While this is still considered true, the current view is that you can do more damage if you don't wash the soil from the tree roots before you plant.
Repotting Plants: How to Do It
Make sure the plant is well watered 2-4 days in advance. You don't want to repot when it's sopping wet but being too dry will cause stress. Take the plant out of the pot. If the rootball is a bit tight, gently massage the roots to loosen them up.
Plants can get stressed, just like us. Whether it happens overnight after being repotted in your cute new pot or over the course of several days after their environment drastically changes, they are great at communicating their stress with us.
However, repotting can be a somewhat traumatic experience for plants, and some are more sensitive to this disruption than others. The journey from the garden center to your home is quite an adjustment for your plants, and they should be given a little time to rest before repotting.
Stop Watering the Plant
But stopping your watering is always the first step. If you're overwatering, you'll likely notice that the soil is wet, so you want to make sure that soil is bone dry before you're ready to break out the watering can again.
Transplant shock is a term that refers to a number of stresses occurring in recently transplanted trees and shrubs. It involves failure of the plant to root well, consequently the plant becomes poorly established in the landscape.
The 'best of the worst' is simply that plants stop growing for a while after repotting. But done right, they will quickly bounce back and grow better than before. Symptoms of transplant stress from repotting include yellowing leaves, leaf drop, wilting even when watered, no new growth or root damage.
But the good news is that, in most cases, plants can recover from transplant shock and go on to thrive in their new home. Even if your plants look like they're beyond hope, it's worth giving them a chance to recover. With a little care and attention, you may be surprised at how quickly they bounce back.
Sugar water does not do anything to help plants with transplant shock, and it can make it worse. Often, plants recover on their own. Just give them time, keep them well-watered and protect them from too much sun to prevent more leaf scorch.
Fertilizer can dry out the roots and worsen the tree's already fragile state. Be patient: If you treat your tree well, the tree should recover from shock and establish itself. It can take up to 3 years for a tree with transplant shock to fully recover.
Trees provided with regular irrigation through the first growing season after transplanting require approximately 3 months (hardiness zones 9-11), 6 months (hardiness zones 7-8), or one year or more (hardiness zones 2-6) per inch of trunk diameter to fully establish roots in the landscape soil.
Recently potted or repotted plants will not benefit from fertilizer. Their fresh potting mix is packed with nutrients they have yet to use! To avoid potentially damaging recently repotted plants, wait 2–3 months after freshly repotting before fertilizing actively growing plants during the growing season.
For most tropical houseplants, if the soil is dry and due for its next watering, go ahead and water it thoroughly and let it drain completely before you begin to repot. If the soil is already wet, you can skip this step.