ROOT RANT

As the time nears when we will begin our fun filled journeys to favorite nurseries and garden centers, permit me to launch into my blah-de-blah about roots and why what you can't see is more important that what you can see.

Garden centers are businesses, and they like to make a profit. Some of them are better at this than others. Some places raise their own plants, and some buy their plants from brokers of various sizes, who grow and ship plants that arrive in bloom or very close to bloom, or potted up in swanky looking labeled pots with gorgeous full color lables filled with the promise of drop dead gorgeousness that you MUST. HAVE. NOW.

Normally we enter the garden center, go into a trance and begin filling our arms/baskets/wagons/ truck beds with the beautiful blooming specimens that fill our senses with joy.

But do we really know what we are buying for the future? Will the plant return to us next year bigger, fuller and more beautiful than it is at this moment. Can the romance continue or will it only be a dim memory next year, inserted into our consciousness by the discovery of a cracked and faded plant label sticking out of the dirt.

Of course your planting practices have a lot to do with this, but the condition of the plant at the time you buy it is another factor that heavily influences the longevity of your new baby.

I'm talking about the roots.

Now it seems kind of dumb to talk about roots--of course the plants at the garden center have them. But do they have GOOD roots? Not to be a snob about it--but there are roots and then there are ROOTS. The way your baby spent its childhood before it made the journey to your basket can make a big difference in how well it survives at your house.

There is a wonderful greenhouse where I used to shop a lot. One year I was talking to a friend about this place and he told me he had quit buying plants from them. His reason was that the plants routinely failed to winter over for him, and he had realized that the root systems on the plants were consistently weak. Got me to thinkin' and whaddya know--same thing had been happening to me too! I began to examine what I had purchased over the years and what was still alive here and the answer was--not much.

Now this is a lovely place to buy plants--lots of variety, beautiful displays, gorgeous plants in full flower, carefully groomed by a conscientous staff.

But in their haste to make a profit, they "push" the plants too hard. Too much water, too much fertilizer. Life is easy, and the plants don't have to work very hard to live. So they don't. Trouble is, when they get taken off life support, they don't have any reserves to fall back on. They aren't tough, so they can't handle life on their own. Often they have been tricked into blooming long before they are old enough to even go on a date, much less reproduce, so their energy reserves are already being depleted. It all makes for a weakened new addition to the flower bed, and the future holds an empty space and a cracked label marking the demise. A tiny vinyl tombstone to join the legion of garden failures that plague us in the spring.

Plant growers know the adage that every time you handle a plant it costs you money. The sooner a grower can get a plant to fill a 6" pot (or whatever size it is) and come into glorious bloom, the faster the plant can leave the greenhouse and make some money.

Pushing plants like this is common practice. So is treating them with growth regulators that keep them a certain size but allow them to bloom. Essentially they are stunted. This happens more with annuals than perennials, but plants (esp. at big box stores) are carefully managed to fit properly on the displays--not too tall, not too short--everything must conform to a design constraint to maximize the dollar value of the square footage. So where does that leave us? All we want is pretty flowers that will keep looking as pretty as they do at the store, and in the case of perennials, look that good or better next year. We have know way of knowing how plants are grown where we buy them unless we ask someone in charge--but I am not sure how useful the answer to a question like that would be. We have to use our eyes and our own judgement. That means learning to feel what a honkin big root mass feels like in the pot. Contrary to what you might think, it won't necessarily be heavy. Wet soil is much heavier than roots--even well watered roots. And a pot that is mostly wet soil isn't a recipe for success. Oftentimes you can feel the roots when you pick up the pot, or you can tell by looking that the pot is full of them. Does this mean you can race home, dig a hole and plop the baby in, sit back and watch the show? NOOOOOO. Tightly bound roots are like tight underpants. You wouldn't want to grow and stretch if you went around with a permanent wedgie and neither do your plants. The roots need to be uncircled and loosened from their tightly bound mass. Your hands or a garden fork can do this. If you cut some roots its usually okay. Just open the rootball up and plant it in a hole that is as deep as the long roots and plenty wide to accept the now expanded root ball. Roots that have filled a pot will have a lot of air trapped around them--and they need to contact THE SOIL to survive. So keep a watchful eye out for quality roots when you spend your money on plants. Bang for the buck--its what we are all about!