When Pots--and Plots--get Root-Bound

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

One of my bamboo plants was starting to look unwell. A few leaves here and there turning yellow and dropping--nothing dramatic, but enough to signal that something wasn’t right, because my bamboo have always been among the healthiest of my plants!

And what was really odd was that this bamboo was in front of a big window with two other pot plants—another bamboo and a bonsai fig tree—and they all get the same amount of sunlight and water and the other two seem fine. So what was wrong with this poor bamboo?

So--after a very full week (including some Aunty Lee excitement now that the series is now out there) I finally took my poor bamboo plant out onto the patio for some investigative procedures...

My poor bamboo was completely root-bound!

When I finally managed to loosen the sides enough to get it out of its pot I saw its roots had taken over completely. They were a dense, tightly packed mass in the exact shape of the pot!

And there was almost no soil left. Water must have been running straight down the sides and out again without ever reaching the poor roots at the centre.

In fact, though I'd not realised it, my poor plant was dying of thirst and malnutrition, not to mention stress from overcrowding.

All from being severely root-bound.

And I realised that was pretty much the state my manuscript has been getting into recently. Everything inside it came about naturally and kind of works, but there's just too much stuff and it's all packed too tightly.

It's easier to tackle a poor root-bound plant. Or rather, there's a simple and slightly brutal method that usually works: loosen the roots as much as possible, remove compacted soil and dead roots and trim some of the roots before repotting them in fresh mix.

But that's where the difficult part comes in--I wasn't just trimming dead roots but some of the living, healthy ones too. Because there just isn't enough room for everything.

In my WIP the scenes I’m looking at are good scenes, funny exchanges and observations that I love. And all these fine roots/ threads/ themes have potential to grow into exciting developments.

The problem is, they all have HUGE potential, and given unlimited space, time and energy, I would keep and grow them all!

But I don’t have unlimited space, whether on my bathroom window ledge or on my calendar.

My bamboo might be happier flourishing in the wild with pandas, but in this dimension it's part of the green modesty screen in my bathroom that I enjoy tending to and that makes me happy every time I look at it.

Like for my WIP, my material is crying out for epic space but I'm working to fit it into a book somewhere between 75,000 and 80,000 words.

Even this post has to fit the space it’s given--so something has to give.

I trimmed my bamboo plant--stalks and roots both. I tried to be selective, but still—every cut hurt.

And when I've finished this, I'll head back to do the same with my manuscript.

I'm finally beginning to see that culling, cutting and editing isn’t about removing what’s bad or that doesn't work. It's just acknowledging that there isn't enough space for everything.

Too many roots, too many ideas...

It's not a bad thing. It's a wonderful problem because it means my bamboo was/ is healthy enough to expand to its limits.

My bamboo is recovering.

It's already looking much better!

Now I'll go trim and repot my WIP and hope it survives and recovers too and that both book and bamboo go on to flourish!