A flower pot that couldn’t pull any more than its weight in population?? In reality Kandalı was a town-sized pit where the humidity was practically a glass curtain, so you had to part it with your hands to move forward, measure it with scales instead of a barometer. A flower pot that couldn’t pull any more than its weight in population, where anything that overgrew would dry up and croak before long. It was a place of olive consumption, of olive tree harvesting, of downing a spoonful of olive oil to fortify oneself for rakı drinking. And sawdust was all over the place. I would like to know what does " couldn’t pull any more than its weight in population" here mean ,Thanks .