Re: Hosta Growth

John:

>Attention to plants grown to lush sizes in pots of growing medium 
>versus plants that have been field grown and divided. Personal 
>experience, in most cases for me has shown that plants I have 
>acquired from Wholesalers Growers/Retailers as large specimens in 
>containers, grown in medium with constant fertilizer/water, while 
>looking good for initial purchase don't perform as well as field 
>grown, bareroot divisions in the following year. This problem is 
>magnified if the growing medium isn't removed and roots completely
>untangled when planting.

You also need to be very careful about tissue cultured plugs that are 
transfered to larger pots.  Most growers just take the plug and put it 
into a pot.  If you buy those pots and leave them in the pot you may 
discover the following year that the root system hasn't penetrated 
into the additional planting mix.  If you buy potted hostas that were 
planted from TC plugs you should replant them as soon as possible and 
make sure the roots are untangled.  This is a major problem with a lot 
of perennial material because home gardeners don't know that they 
should break up that root ball and straighten out the roots.  Several 
years ago a neighbor was having a proble with a lot of junipers he 
planted some 5 years earlier.  When I checked them I found that I 
could almost pull them up single handily - after five years all the 
roots were still within the size of the original pot.  There was no 
root growth into the surrounding soil!

Joe Hlainar

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