POTTING AND REPOTTING 33 



as good. Use whichever is the handiest. 

 Broken charcoal is very good also. The 

 larger sizes of pots — three-inch and up — 

 need crocking; use from a quarter of an inch 

 to two inches of drainage according to the size 

 of the pot. If you use broken pots, put the 

 pieces in with the convex side up; the crocks 

 will fit better. Over this drainage put some 

 of the coarse screenings to keep the finer soil 

 from washing down through. If there are 

 no coarse screenings, use sphagnum moss. 



THE FALLACY OF LARGE POTS 



Don't work on the principle that the 

 larger the pot and the more soil, the thriftier 

 the plant. It is not the amount of food 

 available, but the amount assimilated, that 

 counts. As a rule, any pot which seems to 

 be in proportion to the plant, holding soil 

 enough to keep it from being top-heavy, 

 will be sufficiently large. Most amateurs 

 make a mistake in the size of the pot, using 

 one a size or two too large. It is very 

 easy, indeed, to over-pot a plant, strange 

 as it may seem, and really nothing in the 

 plant's life can be more disastrous than an 

 overlarge pot. Nine times out of ten the 



