Not to mention extended sessions of jammin'.

Accordingly, the Society for Experimental Biology hopes you like jammin', too.

Firstly, who the frack grows sugarbeets (or any beets) or barley in pots? Secondly, if your dirt is unusable then your potted plants will OUTPERFORM their full potential for your spot.

Have they never heard of Bonsai?

BunkyBrewman: What's next? They going to tell us small aquariums stunt goldfish growth?

That has more to do with shiatty living conditions than the fish's body saying "Hey, this is a small bowl so I will stay small".

You can make tiny little stunted humans by feeding them poorly and locking them under the stairs. A well fed human will easily outgrow it's container

grossfatpeoplebulgingoutoftheirtightclothes.jpg

If some of my plants are repotted in bigger pots it will take three men and a crane to get them inside for the winter.

_{Like to see if seeds will sprout... avocado, lime, lemon, and date palm sprout very well....
The ginkgo trees are going to be planted outside in the fall.}

One of the things I have always wanted to do when I retire is have a garden. I am thinking a Green house.

Posh Naranek: Firstly, who the frack grows sugarbeets (or any beets) or barley in pots? Secondly, if your dirt is unusable then your potted plants will OUTPERFORM their full potential for your spot.

I know plenty of people who grow things in pots because they live in apartments. I doubt any of them grow beets, but I know people who grow a mix of other things.

jamspoon: Have they never heard of Bonsai?

I was hoping they'd discovered the mechanism by which plants can sense a boundary.

Instead we get the classic Fark "Scientists discover sun; say it is hot and bright" type of not-news.

/though it's been about ten years since I last repotted my arboricola... hmm...

Posh Naranek: Firstly, who the frack grows sugarbeets (or any beets) or barley in pots? Secondly, if your dirt is unusable then your potted plants will OUTPERFORM their full potential for your spot.

It's called a model system. Look at the yellow roots of both plants. The barley is representative of plants that have a majority of the roots near the surface, whereas the sugar beet is representative of plants that dig down with a majority of deeper roots.

Bigger pots for plants? It's plant warfare, I tell ya! We've got to fight the red menace or we'll be consumed by plant socialism!

Huh? I'm pretty sure I learned this a few decades ago. As plants grow, I thought it was common sense to move to a bigger pot to allow continued growth and that's exactly the rationale I've always had for doing it. I learned as a young boy that pots stunt plant growth. Is this a hoax?

That's a neat article. I've observed this phenomenon a couple of weeks ago, with my attempts to grow tomatoes in containers.

When the seeds were planted in small coffee cups all tomato plants didn't grew over about 5cm, no matter how much I watered them or how much time they were in the sun.

When I transplanted them to 0,5l containers, every single tomato plant showed a growing spurt, with every plant growing to about 15cm.

Then, I transplanted a couple to 1,5l containers and both showed a growing spurt, growing to about 30cm and stopping at essentially the same height.

Finally, I transplanted a tomato plant which was still in a 0,5l container to a 5l container and, in spite of staying the same size for ages, in a matter of days it outgrew the tomato plants in 1,5l containers.

The best thing about these articles is that it lets people like me take their own observations a bit more seriously.

maggoo: That's a neat article. I've observed this phenomenon a couple of weeks ago, with my attempts to grow tomatoes in containers.

When the seeds were planted in small coffee cups all tomato plants didn't grew over about 5cm, no matter how much I watered them or how much time they were in the sun.

When I transplanted them to 0,5l containers, every single tomato plant showed a growing spurt, with every plant growing to about 15cm.

Then, I transplanted a couple to 1,5l containers and both showed a growing spurt, growing to about 30cm and stopping at essentially the same height.

Finally, I transplanted a tomato plant which was still in a 0,5l container to a 5l container and, in spite of staying the same size for ages, in a matter of days it outgrew the tomato plants in 1,5l containers.

The best thing about these articles is that it lets people like me take their own observations a bit more seriously.


"Correlation does not equal causation" is the phrase that is going to lead to the death of science. Correlation is what leads people to study the matter further. Correlation is the first step. But that pithy phrase is used to dismiss observations as being unscientific - despite science being conducted solely through observations.

What I'm trying to say is, always take your own observations seriously. They're the best evidence you can possibly get in this world.

Posh Naranek: Firstly, who the frack grows sugarbeets (or any beets) or barley in pots? Secondly, if your dirt is unusable then your potted plants will OUTPERFORM their full potential for your spot.

Raised gardens? That would work for the beets, anyway. No idea on the barley, cereals are usually grown in big fields.

Actually I think cereals are sometimes grown in pots for scientific study and special breeding etc inside greenhouses. So I suppose it might be an issue in those situations.

I should probably repot my plants, come to think of it.

This is not news. People have known this for thousands of years. The fact we can look at it with an MRI doesn't make it any newer a discovery than the first guy who re-potted his plants.

Acharne: This is not news. People have known this for thousands of years.

Yeah, I think Japanese bonsai experts aren't going to look at this and go "shocking!"

Even plants like broccoli require 40cm deep pots, which ends up being a quite large pot overall. I have a little courtyard garden I adore. Built a raised bed as well as pots. Nothing more frustrating then being limited to a handful of
plants at a time due to space. /falls asleep most nights pondering plans for the garden I will put in if the house my partner and I are building is ever... Started.

Acharne: This is not news. People have known this for thousands of years. The fact we can look at it with an MRI doesn't make it any newer a discovery than the first guy who re-potted his plants.


I was thinking this too... I mean, how obvious is this? But then I thought about TFA a little more and I do see one part which is interesting. The distribution of the roots throughout the volume of the container. They mentioned that the MRI revealed that the roots were disproportionately hugging the wall of the container. That very, very little of the roots were in the middle of the container.

I could see the potential for creating containers with different internal shapes to get different performance from the plants. Like, having a hollow cavity in the middle might mean that the whole contraption could possibly be much lighter without sacrificing much plant performance, perhaps. Things like that.

mongbiohazard: Acharne: This is not news. People have known this for thousands of years. The fact we can look at it with an MRI doesn't make it any newer a discovery than the first guy who re-potted his plants.


I was thinking this too... I mean, how obvious is this? But then I thought about TFA a little more and I do see one part which is interesting. The distribution of the roots throughout the volume of the container. They mentioned that the MRI revealed that the roots were disproportionately hugging the wall of the container. That very, very little of the roots were in the middle of the container.

I could see the potential for creating containers with different internal shapes to get different performance from the plants. Like, having a hollow cavity in the middle might mean that the whole contraption could possibly be much lighter without sacrificing much plant performance, perhaps. Things like that.

Interesting idea. Wonder if the plant could be gamed into thinking it was in a huge pot by such a ring arrangement, plus you could stack many pots inside of each other. Would make it very easy to supply with water via a drip arrangement to. Or would the plant act like it was a tiny pot since the walls would be close.

Flumple: Interesting idea. Wonder if the plant could be gamed into thinking it was in a huge pot by such a ring arrangement, plus you could stack many pots inside of each other. Would make it very easy to supply with water via a drip arrangement to. Or would the plant act like it was a tiny pot since the walls would be close.


Yeah, at first TFA seemed like a no-brainer, but the specifics that the MRI revealed do seem to present some interesting possibilities.

I have a decent sized yard, so I grow all my veggies in raised beds and my herbs in containers on my porch. It was obvious that the size of the container was having an impact on the size of the plants (I'd noticed this with basil in different sized pots), and it was sort of intuitive. The root system is pulling nutrients and water out of the soil to be processed by the plant, and the plant is essentially a machine for processing those minerals it's pulling out of the soil... so I figured bigger pot = more roots = more nutrients and water = bigger plant.

I know with many plants, such as tomatoes the root systems will be sort of... oval-ish if you wanted to picture it in three dimensions. Roots spread out wide, as wide as 5 feet in mature plants, and will drop roots down 3 or 4 feet down from the sides - even deeper sometimes.

But if they spread along the top, find the limits of the pot and then grow down mostly along the walls and it is that ratio of the root width and depth which determines size... not so much the total volume of the soil. Well, maybe I'll have to do an experiment. Two identical pots, identical soil, identical plants. But inside one of the pots I put a smaller, tall and narrow, pot that I've turned upside down, leaving the depth on the sides unchanged, but a big hole in the middle of the soil at the bottom, reducing the total volume. At least just to see if the principle works.

If the plants are roughly the same size in the end, then perhaps we're shaping our pots wrong, and they should be roughly as wide as they are deep with a concave bottom instead of the narrower and tall type which tapers inwards that we usually use.

mongbiohazard: Acharne: This is not news. People have known this for thousands of years. The fact we can look at it with an MRI doesn't make it any newer a discovery than the first guy who re-potted his plants.


I was thinking this too... I mean, how obvious is this? But then I thought about TFA a little more and I do see one part which is interesting. The distribution of the roots throughout the volume of the container. They mentioned that the MRI revealed that the roots were disproportionately hugging the wall of the container. That very, very little of the roots were in the middle of the container.

I could see the potential for creating containers with different internal shapes to get different performance from the plants. Like, having a hollow cavity in the middle might mean that the whole contraption could possibly be much lighter without sacrificing much plant performance, perhaps. Things like that.

I had this thought as well, but ultimately concluded it was in the same vein of 'common knowledge'. I remember being taught this by my mother when I a child when she was re-potting plants. One can very easily observe the end result of the root structure simply my taking it out of the pot. In fact, if a plant dies people often do exactly that. Or those who have used vessels of multiple sizes but with the same plant and same seed. They also observed it. I really think this entire article and the science mentioned really extends only as far as 'MRIs are goddamn cool, let's look at e're'thang we can'. But really nothing more.

Acharne: mongbiohazard: Acharne: This is not news. People have known this for thousands of years. The fact we can look at it with an MRI doesn't make it any newer a discovery than the first guy who re-potted his plants.


I was thinking this too... I mean, how obvious is this? But then I thought about TFA a little more and I do see one part which is interesting. The distribution of the roots throughout the volume of the container. They mentioned that the MRI revealed that the roots were disproportionately hugging the wall of the container. That very, very little of the roots were in the middle of the container.

I could see the potential for creating containers with different internal shapes to get different performance from the plants. Like, having a hollow cavity in the middle might mean that the whole contraption could possibly be much lighter without sacrificing much plant performance, perhaps. Things like that.

I had this thought as well, but ultimately concluded it was in the same vein of 'common knowledge'. I remember being taught this by my mother when I a child when she was re-potting plants. One can very easily observe the end result of the root structure simply my taking it out of the pot. In fact, if a plant dies people often do exactly that. Or those who have used vessels of multiple sizes but with the same plant and same seed. They also observed it. I really think this entire article and the science mentioned really extends only as far as 'MRIs are goddamn cool, let's look at e're'thang we can'. But really nothing more.


See, you say that... but I didn't believe that knowledge was quite so common. Being a gardener myself I assumed that the bulk of the roots tend to be distributed throughout the soil when possible. And also that when it wasn't it's because the plant was in a pot below some sort of minimum it needed.

mongbiohazard: See, you say that... but I didn't believe that knowledge was quite so common. Being a gardener myself I assumed that the bulk of the roots tend to be distributed throughout the soil when possible. And also that when it wasn't it's because the plant was in a pot below some sort of minimum it needed.

Well, perhaps they confirmed some suspicions... but I don't see that as an important discovery. In my experience people know this. I live in a relatively highly agricultural area, perhaps it is in 'in the culture'.

On an unrelated note. I'm wildly envious of your pooch. My other half and are looking forward to when we live somewhere we can realistically have a couple. Been a long time since I had my boyhood spaniel.