I am now growing some young zonal pelargoniums- and a few scented-leaved,
all indoors in pots. On re-reading the cultivation info for these plants I
see different suppliers saying the same thing- pot these young plants (rooted
cuttings) in a 9cm pot to begin with and then 5-6 weeks later repot into a
pot that is 2 sizes bigger. I didn't have enough small pots when some of
these plants arrived so i used some of the larger size pots (4-5") but now I
do have some more small pots. I'm wondering two things:

1] Do I need to take the recent arrivals that went into larger pots but that
do not seem to be quite as lively as the ones that went into the small pots-
and repot them into small pots for a while, or can I leave them and hope they
will not fare too badly from being somewhat "overpotted"?- and-

2] Why is it necessary to put these small plants into small pots at first if
they are to be moved into bigger pots only a few weeks later? This seems
counter-intuitive to me, since in the wild, and even in the garden, plants
all go into the biggest pot imaginable- the ground- and presumably do not
suffer as a result. I'd really like to understand this.

Joe B. remove composer for email