On Sat, 7 Jan 2006 23:23:02 +0000, Rupert wrote
(in message ):

I am certain that you will get a few more replies to your post in the
fullness of time. So one lesson you can learn is not to be too impatient
particularly when it comes to gardening:-)

And I was trying SO hard not to appear impatient!

That demo by Alan Titchmarsh was fine to illustrate the pruning of clematis
although it would not always be correct if you wished to achieve lots of
flowers at the top of a clematis that you wanted to flower on top of a
garage or shed roof.

Your plants in 3" pots. Your assumptions are correct . If it's going to be
a big plant then it won't really survive that well in a small pot.
Once the thing has an established root system filling the pot then pot on
into a larger pot.
If you pot on into something too large then you run the risk of swamping a
very young plant with either too much nutrient or water, usually the latter.
However, in the case of something in a small 3" pot the chances are that it
is already root bound. Teasing out the roots to their full length will give
you an idea of what pot size you need.

Thanks for that.

I did see some gardening or makeover programme where a nursery propietor was
explaining about container planting and he said that in many cases he'd
advise to just plant things in the final size pot/container- not as ideal as
increasing pot sizes gradually but it worked well enough.

Looking at my Jasminium Polyanthum it seems that this is something that can
grow several feet in one season. If this is the case it seems more logical to
put it in quite a large pot now.

The Acer seems to be something that grows slowly and so I'd assume is more
prone to the negative effects of too large a pot.

Did that Acer come as a free gift from Thompson and Morgan ?

It was a free gift from J Parker when I bought a number of geraniums and
primulas. I hope the its growth is not going to remain at 4-5" per year!

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