Blister said:
I've noticed this before. The ones in pots (or in your case fabric pots) take off and get a good lead on the ones in the ground. Things look a little bleak. The good news from my experience is that the ones in the ground tend to catch up and pass those in the pots by a little bit.
Neil
I think part of that is because I used higher grade potting soil in those 5 gal. The slow release fertilizers in it do a pretty good job *assuming* the moisture levels stay somewhat constant. Once the plants in the pots grow to a size where they are out-running their water supply (mine are now sucking up all of the water and drying out each day), the more frequent waterings and wet/dry cycles seem to not let as much of the fertilizer work.
Then, comes the point with the roots can't get any bigger. The cloth pots keep them from circling up as bad as in plastic pots, as it also prunes them. That makes the cloth-bagged plants continually try to put more effort in to the roots (no different than if you "topped" the plant, how it puts more effort in to foilage). When roots are pruned it disrupts the auxin balance. Tells the plant "wait, quit growing bigger, we have a problem down below." Roots continue to branch out, over and over again, until you've got a monster root cluster. When root space is exhausted, the plant will (nearly literally) explode with foilage & new growth, and likely kill itself if you don't carefully sustain it with liquid nutrients.
I've got a few "hydro in exhausted soil" specimens growing for the second or third year now.
This is a 1 1/2 year old Bhut Jolokia in approx 1 year old potting soil. The soil is exhausted; there's not much left, as the entire pot is filled with a network of roots.
Worth noting, it produced massively more than the overwinters I gave fresh soil to this year.
I'm trying to figure out how to time this because once the plant realizes (via auxins) that the soil is exhausted, it seems to want to go "bats--t f'n crazy" on production in one last massive reproduction attempt, before it dies.
Once those Bhuts ripen, I'm going to prune it back, de-pot it, wash & prune the roots, and re-pot it in fresh soil as early as possible, so that by next summer it's exhausted (once again) and triggers another bloom explosion.
At least, that's the plan. Repotting in mid-spring didn't work out so well. All it did was slow the plants down.
