what size holes?

i suggest a chopstick, but a well mixed soil shouldnt get compacted

Poking holes with a solid object compacts the soil around the edges of the 'hole' and at the bottom. In other words, the holes you are creating aren't really holes. To make real holes, you would need to remove little cylinders of potting mix.....but as utsharpie says, if the soil medium is already plenty coarse and porous, making new holes should never be necessary.

If you need to poke holes in that soil do you think you should poke holes all over the lawn to loosen it up a little for the same reason. It is best to use the right kind of soil then you dont have to poke---Oh maybe poke a little joke just for fun. HA HA HA

people poke holes in their yards all the time with an aerater to encourage lawn growth. its called "aeration", its very common for football,soccer,baseball fields,ect..

I agree with Rhizo - spike aeration actually compresses soil, and doesn't work in the lawn, much less a container. Core aeration is great for a lawn, but a container has a tiny volume of soil in comparison. The best way to aerate is to use a soil mix that is well aerated from the start (i.e., add perlite and hard fired aggregates, such as Turface, to the mix).

utsharpie...aeration IS very important for sports fields! But it is accomplished with a real aerator....a piece of equipment with hollow tines anywhere from 4 to 12 inches in length. Small plugs are pulled from the soil. You can rent aerators of all kinds that pull small plugs. Punching holes in the ground is NOT aerating.

One of the best examples might be the modern golf course where 'spikes' are no longer allowed on the greens (or anywhere else. Golfers were compacting the heck out of their precious greens!

If you think about it, it will make sense. ;-)

golf spikes werent compressing the greens but making them rough for putting.

and when you compare a large lawn to a small pot the ratio of the hole sizes should most definately be smaller.LOL.

and punching holes in the soil does spread out the soil if you punch it all the way to the bottom with a chopstick, you might get 1/2 a centimeter of compression,LOL, its not like you are going to use you fist or anything that big for aeration holes in a CONTAINER

forgot to add, the real "aerators", the ones that take out cores, also compact the soil just below where the core is taken out.

of course the compression is negligible just like if you were to use a chopstick with the sharp end pointing into the soil

I should mention that spike aeration was, for a time considered by many (myself included) as beneficial, but more recent university research has proven it is detrimental. This was reinforced to me this past fall in one of my Master Gardener courses, which uses current information and theories from trials and experiments conducted by state universities. I've found many horticultural practices have changed over the last 25 years since I got a plant science degree, and we need to constantly be open to relearning new ways of doing things. In any case, I believe changing the soil mix is the way to go if a container plant has poor drainage or compressed soil.

I doubt poking a chopstick in the planting medium is going to do much good or bad.

Use a good mix and repot when it is no longer a good mix is a better bet.

I suppose if I was using yard dirt for a container and the plants were suffering and repotting wasn't an option for whatever reason I might try poking holes to get water down deeper to try and compensate for the season, but the next year I would use a more suitable planting mix.

Good job, rjm! ;-)

For container growing, it really boils down to making (or finding) a sturdy, coarse textured planting mix that doesn't need holes poked into it! We ALL agree on that, for sure!

This needn't be a discussion about the pros and cons of core aerators....but I have GOT to say.....if you pull plugs from the soil, you are creating a large void. That surrounding soil will loosen to fill that void, creating MORE SPACE between the soil particles. Simple as that. To simply punch a bunch of holes in a soil (no matter if in ground or in container) is not productive.

You know, the golf course green is a pretty good example to use for this conversation. That teensy bit of real estate is a completely constructed mix! Because of the constant foot traffic (spikes or no spikes) and equipment traffic, the compaction is such a problem that the golf course industry turned to what is almost entirely a soil-less medium. (This is just for the greens, mind you.) They needed something that would hold up to the abuse.
It's funny....a high quality green 'soil' will consist of a great deal of sand, peat (usually), and typically a long lasting product like Turface (WHERE have we heard THAT before???).

Interesting, huh? I don't play golf, but have only consulted for several. I found myself wanting to swipe buckets of greens mixes for my container plants, lol. I've been modeling my own container mixes after those golf course greens mixes for many years.

here
http://www.extremehowto.com/xh/article.asp?article_id=60258

poking holes for small areas such as containers or small grass patches does just fine

another

http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/pages/g00035.asp

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exgarhow.html

I use a Philips (star) screwdriver small size, about 1/8" diameter, maybe smaller even 3/32". I perforate the top of the soil around the stalk of the plant, but don't go much deeper than an inch or two so I don't disrupt the root system too much. If I'm sprinkling powedered bat guano around the plant prior to watering it, the powder goes into the holes and when the water is applied, slowly so it sinks where you want it to, it takes the nutrients down into the root system rather than just flow off to the side.

i recently poked a hole in the soil and put M fungi in the hole then hit the whole thing with compost tea....i used about 13 holes around where i pictured the ends of the roots and it did a lot of good i suspect though the fungi didnt take but the bacterial and algae flush made the growth and maybe the holes allowed the bacteria to penatrate...and some oxygen

@tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)

Eye-opening article; thank you for sharing!