GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

07-04-2003, 11:32 PM

The message
from (Steve Harris) contains these words:

In article ,
(CK) wrote:

look at the rootball before buying ANY plant
from ANYWHERE, however reputable!!
I am always amazed how few people do so.

So, when you're at a Garden Centre, you tip plants out of their pots,
knock the compost away and take a good look. Then you scape up the mess
and put it back?

If the plant is fit to be sold then it should be perfectly possible to
carefully hold it in one hand, and gently slip off the pot without
disturbing the compost at all, like a sand pie. What you hope to see is
a network of fine roots covering at least half the surface of the
compost where it touches the pot. If you find a tangled mass of thick
long roots spiralling round and round the entire compost surface and
going out through the drainage hole, that plant has been there far too
long and will find it much harder to establish in your garden; if it's a
tree it will probably never do well. Carefully slip the pot back on.If
your careful sandpie instantly collapses because no roots are holding
the compost together at all...you are probably at a cheaty underhand
place that potted up some of its bare-root roses or hedging plants
yesterday, and is now selling them as "potgrown plants" :-(

Janet.