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deckplanter

Repotting from a window box

deckplanter
16 years ago

Greetings all,

I have a fuchsia (cultivar unknown! It's a trailing type) that I bought in fall 2006. It was flowering and growing happily all last summer under a shady table on my south-facing deck, then it took a break for December, and now has lots of frisky new shoot and buds. Here's the issue:

It was a small fuchsia and I planted it in a 24" x 6" window-box style planter, meaning to put some primroses around it and have a colorful shade planter. The primroses are long gone now and I would rather repot it to hang under the eaves, BUT... it's been growing a long time in this long, narrow, rectangular box. I imagine it has sent long roots out to the left and right, and short ones under the stem, thanks to the box's skinny proportions.

So how do I transfer this fuchsia to a round planter for hanging? I have a 10" plastic hanger that's a little deeper than most hanging baskets - more like a pot than a bowl. Should I just trim the long roots? Curl them around into the new pot? Leave it where it is if it's not rootbound? Is this even a good time to repot? For that matter, is the 10" diameter pot going to be too big?

I hate to mess with success, because my fuchsias usually do not make it through the Santa Ana season and this one has survived that twice. It would be *much* easier to take care of the plant in a regular pot though, especially since the landlord butchered the nearby tree this fall and all my filtered shade is gone *sigh*. I'll probably have to move it around to keep it well-lit but not cooking in the summer sun.

All wisdom gratefully appreciated =)

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