Specialty Gardening: MRI show that pots limit plants, 4 by tapla

tapla wrote:
"Doing something" about tight root masses of bedding plants and plants in larger containers you're going to transplant can be extremely important to future growth/vitality. Many of us have planted root bound bedding plants, only to have them languish w/o growth for the entire growth cycle. If you can lift your plants from the cell pack or pot w/o the soil wanting to fall off the roots, they're too root bound to plant/transplant w/o giving up potential growth vitality.

I literally rip the bottom 1/2-2/3 of the root mass off the plant, and then tease the remaining roots apart. For larger plants, I use my fingers (3" pots & larger) to tease the roots apart by working them up into the center of the roots (this is AFTER tearing the bottom of the root mass off) and then outward, but for cell packs I use a nylon tool I made specifically for that purpose to tease the roots apart after tearing the bottom of the root mass off. This doesn't hurt the plant at all (witness the pictures above). I do it to every plant I pot in containers, year after year, without a hint of a problem.

Al