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The day I realized my 3 year old pothos was suffocating in the same pot because I never checked the roots
I always thought a plant that looked fine above the soil was fine below it too. My pothos sat in the same pot since I bought it at a nursery in Sacramento about three years back, and it kept pushing out leaves so I figured it was happy. Then my neighbor asked to see the root ball when she was over for coffee, and when I slid it out, the whole thing was one solid brown knot wrapped tight around the drainage hole with barely any soil left. I had been watering it twice a week the entire time, which I now know was basically drowning a plant that had nowhere left to grow. The tip off was honestly how the leaves near the base kept going yellow and dropping, and I just blamed it on light or the season instead of pulling it out of the pot. I cut the roots loose, put it in a bigger container with fresh mix, and within a month the new growth came in darker and thicker than anything I had seen in two years. I still feel a little dumb that it took someone else squinting at my shelf to catch it. How often do you all actually pull a plant out to check the roots if nothing looks sick up top?
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the_hayden8d ago
Tbh I did the same thing but with a snake plant, left it in this tiny pot for like two years because it literally never showed a single sign of struggle, and when I finally yanked it out the roots had busted through the bottom and were growing into the carpet somehow. My wife still brings that up when I act like I know plants now. That yellowing at the base you mentioned is such a sneaky one too because it looks exactly like overwatering or low light, so you just keep adjusting the stuff up top while the real problem is the pot. I check roots maybe once a year now, usually in spring when I'm repotting anyway, but I'll be honest and say if a plant looks happy I still leave it alone way longer than I should. The whole thing taught me that "looks fine" and "is fine" are two very different things with these plants.
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