sounds like a florist plant.. thats where i seem to find the all peat filled pots ...

and i agree you need to get it out of that .. i would think its a greenhouse potting system.. and your house isnt a greenhouse .. eh??

except for the extremes .. like cacti e.g. .. i like all my houseplants in the same media ... so that watering across the houseplant spectrum... is basically the same .. pots of the same size.. mostly need water at the same time ... it never hurts to make things easier for yourself ...

so.. in my world.. warped as it may be.. i would repot it .. but i would do it in a few weeks .. to let it settle down from all the stresses of shipping from grower.. to seller to your house ...

and because watering protocol is very important ... i wouldnt bother to worry about timing.. and whether fall is a good time to do it ... the odds are higher that i will kill it in all peat.. than the downside of poor timing ... act according to the most important variable ....

soooo.. all that said.. the actual plant type ... within the general houseplant family .... doesnt really matter ... the media is more important .. imo

ken

One significant difference about growing in containers vs growing in the garden/ beds is that a container media doesn't need to feed the plant. The most important aspect of container media revolves around how the soil is structured and how long it's able to retain that structure. Media based on large fractions of fine materials (peat, coir, compost, composted forest products, sand, topsoil, .....) are too water-retentive at container capacity (measure of how much water the medium holds when it has just stopped draining after being thoroughly saturated) to allow the grower to offer plants an equal opportunity to realize as much of their genetic potential as (s)he would in a highly aerated, fast-draining medium. The reason is, media based on fine materials (as listed above) support a layer of medium which is 100% saturated w/water at the bottom of the pot. The water is referred to as perched water or a perched water table (PW/ PWT). The average ht of the PWT in commercially prepared media hobby growers are most likely to encounter is about 4.5" and the average range is about 3-6", but taller PWTs are not uncommon. For any given medium that supports PW, the max ht of the PWT is a constant, regardless of container size or shape.

If you're growing in a 10" deep pot, the top 2" of soil can be dry to the touch, while the lower 6" can be full of perched water. This fact makes the advice to 'water when the top inch or two feels dry to the touch' little more than a recipe for over-watering. When soils are saturated, it limits the roots oxygen supply. This limits root function and quickly kills fine roots which do almost all of the plant's heavy lifting insofar as water/ nutrient uptake. Chemical messengers in the plant inform plant central whenever there is an inadequate volume of functioning roots to support new growth, causing top growth to be suspended until root repairs/ replacement return the plant to a state where the roots can support new top growth. When the grower is not aware of moisture levels toward the bottom of the pot and waters at inappropriately short intervals, it can sap the plant of nearly all of it's growth potential; limit the plant's ability to defend itself against insects/ disease, abiotic pathogens; and seriously affect the plant's eye appeal.

A 50/50 mix of peat and perlite is little different than growing in all peat. The perlite helps marginally by reducing the volume of water-holding peat in the fraction of the medium which supports perched water, but does not increase aeration significantly until the amount of perlite becomes by far the largest fraction of the medium.

If you have a jar full to the top with peat, and start mixing marbles into it, what occurs? While displacing/ reducing a volume of peat equal to the volume of the marble - limiting the volume of medium available for root colonization, it also decreases the o/a level of aeration in the jar. Perlite is no different. When you start to add perlite to peat, the amount of aeration in any given volume of medium decreases. As more and more perlite is added, you reach a point where there is exactly enough peat to fill all the air spaces between perlite products (the threshold proportion) you have created the combination of peat/perlite most difficult to grow in. Only when the volume of coarse material is so large there is an insufficient volume of fine material to fill all airspace between the coarse material does the level of aeration begin to increase, and it increases rapidly.

The pine bark-based 5:1:1 mix works well because it is highly aerated and supports far less PW than its counterparts based on all fine material. It's peat content is used only to adjust it's water retention. and provide more contact surface with roots, which helps with nutrient uptake.

Al

Thank you Ken and Al. Ihave had very good success so far with the 5-1-1 mix in my indoor ficus and interior/outdoor citrus, plus some crotons and pothos. i had read that most calatheas liked a little more moisture, but iI may just need to monitor the soil with my bamboo skewers (thanks for that too Al) and try to keep it a little more moist without drowning it. Didn’t know if there was any value in adding a little more peat to the mix or not.

The trait that sets apart media like the 5:1:1 and gritty mix is their comparative inability to hold too much water between the larger particles which make up the largest fraction (by far) of the mixes. From the perspective of how watering intervals affect root health and function, it's best to have the medium as free of perched water (at all times) as possible and have to water more frequently, than to depend on perched water as the provider of extended intervals between waterings.

It's common for growers to say "I was worried that the gritty or 5:1:1 mix wouldn't hold enough water so I added another part of peat". Both mixes hold an amount of water that offers easy opportunity to keep roots extremely healthy, as long as the grower is willing to ensure (s)he is watering at appropriate intervals.

I think I recently mentioned upthread (or in another thread related to yours) that in a mix that includes fine particles and coarse particles of appropriate size, the most difficult to grow in is most apt to be the one where there is exactly enough fine material in the mix to fill all voids between the large particles with fine material. Whenever the media consists of that "threshold proportion" or has a greater volume of fine material than coarse material, it's pretty much the same as growing in only the fine material. A pint jar full of marbles has great aeration, but adding a pint of peat to it leaves you with A) a reduction in the volume of medium which roots can colonize B) an o/a reduction in aeration C) roots growing only in the fine material which has almost exactly the per volume aeration as there would be with or without the marbles.

IOW, as long as there is enough or more than enough fine material to fill all the large pores between large particles, there will have been little reason to go through the bother of making the mixes. If we're making our mixes or amending them, the coarse material generally needs to be more than than 75%-100% of the mix. A well-made 5:1:1 mix has about 85% coarse material (pine bark + coarse perlite) and only 15% fine material. Still, it will support a small measure of perched water, but far less than media based on all fine materials and averaging PWT heights in the 4-6 or 7" range.

Al

Thanks again Al! i am still learning, just find it quite impressive soils like the 5-1-1 are not more widely used!i suppose the pine bark fines could be harder to find on a larger scale than peat Moss commercially, but for the houseplants i have switched over so far, they have all thrived. Now if my house only had more south facing windows to grow in…