Thought my monstera was just being dramatic when it wilted, then I saw the roots literally crawling out the bottom of the pot when I lifted it yesterday

I live in Portland and bought it three years ago but never repotted, and when I finally yanked the plastic nursery pot off the whole root ball was this solid mass shaped like the container with no soil left, so I had to cut half the roots off with pruning shears just to fit it into a bigger pot, has anyone else ignored a plant so long it basically became a root-bound experiment?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_piper10d ago

The roots literally crawling out the bottom" - that visual is so real, I've been there. But here's something nobody's mentioned yet: that compacted root ball you saw? It's probably because the original soil was mostly peat or coco coir, which breaks down over time and turns into basically mud. I had a fern I ignored for four years and when I finally repotted it, the "soil" was this dense, slimy paste that smelled like a wet basement, no wonder the roots were suffocating.

derekjenkins10d ago

Nah, I'm gonna push back on this, a little. That smell you're describing isn't always a bad thing, it's just organic matter breaking down. Some plants actually thrive in that dense, compacted muck because it holds onto water and nutrients way better than any new bag of soil ever could. You might've actually ruined a perfectly good micro-ecosystem by ripping the roots out of their happy slime pit. How do you know the fern wasn't happier in that wet basement paste? Sometimes a root ball that looks dead is just living its best life in its own little swamp.

gavin_hill2710d ago

Learned that the hard way myself @the_piper, but at least my fern learned how to swim in slime.