I have a question that is puzzling me for some time now.. My wife took a clipping of a plant and put the clipping in a pot of soil.. It is a clay pot about 3" in diameter.. She filled up the pot with good soil and just let it grow.. Other than water, it was not fed anything.. After some time, the plant grew big and although I am not good at that, even I noticed the plant needed to be planted in a much larger pot.. I helped her do exactly that.. She got another large pot, put in some soil and asked me to turn the smaller pot upside down and insert it in the larger pot.. Well, when I did that I noticed that the small plant pot was ALL ROOTS with no soil at all.. My question is............ WHERE DID THE SOIL GO ???
Couldn't find anything in my search for potted plants and soil. It is possible that the soil was discarded if water was drained from the base when there is an overflow that's what I see when this happens to me. What appears to be dirty water is the soil.
The roots of the plant takes in the nutrients from the soil, in effect eating it. Plus, good soil includes a good percentage of uncomposted material which will shrink as it breaks down.
Ken... Are you trying to tell me that plants eat soil??? I thought they only wanted water and that's all.. I am not a gardener as you can see and I am learning by asking questions.. Patsy.. The plant is called .."A Plant"... I have no idea what it is but it grew into a large plant over time.. Von Jones.. No it didn't have any overflow because there wasn't a hole in the bottom of the pot..
Would the nutrients eat away at the soil ??? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm !!!! I really don't know that is why I am asking..
Plant eating the soil is a simplistic but basically correct statement. Soil is built on several different things, minerals which is your rocks clay and sand, your humus, which is decomposing organic matter oxygen water and microbes. The microbes are actually the ones that eat the organic matter and produced a sugar like substance that the plants absorb by Their roots. We have been learning in the last few years how important the microbes are in plant growth. Dovie