GardenMaid| Picking Healthy Plants

Picking Healthy Plants

For a variety of reasons, most people choose to buy their flowers as plants instead of starting them from seed. If you are taking this approach you need to be able to select healthy, happy plants that will grow and prospur.

It is tough to find a healthy happy plant at the BORG (big old retail gaint) as most of these stores were not designed for the selling of plants. They haul them in, flop them down on the hot blacktop, and then fail to water and care for them properly. Sometimes you can save a plant from death row at the BORG but often you are just wasting your time and money.

Your best bet is to buy the plant from a nursery or local garden center. Even then you must carefully select your plants since an incompetent nursery worker can absolutely ruin the future of the plant by putting certain chemicals or fertilizers on it. I have adapted to this frustrating fact by learning to choose the healthiest plant of the bunch. Here are some of the techniques I use in my screening process for plants.

When looking at plants, you can truly judge a book by its cover. If a plant has been well cared for and has no diseases or pests, you can almost always tell by how nice it looks. If a plant has grown up in improper soil, or has harmful bugs living in it, you can tell from the holey leaves and wilted stems.

Blooms sell flowers so even the best of garden centers will feature plants in bloom. Plants are less traumatized by the transplant if they are not blooming at the time they are transplanted. It's best to find ones that just consist of buds. However if all you have to choose from are flowering plants, then you should be prepared to cut off all the blooms. It will be worth it for the future health of the plant. The plant will adapt much quicker and reward you with even more blooms in the near future.

Carefully slip one of the plants out of the multi-pak and check the roots before you flop down your money to purchase the plant. If the roots are in absolutely terrible condition you should be able to tell by looking at the rest of the plant.Inspect the roots very closely for any signs of brown, rot, or softness. The roots should always be a firm, perfectly well formed infrastructure that holds all the soil together. One can easily tell if the roots are before or past their prime, depending on the root to soil ratio. If there are a ridiculous amount of roots with little soil, or a bunch of soil with few roots, you should not buy that plant.

Once you purchase the plant take every precaution you can to avoid transplant shock in the plant (when it has trouble adjusting to its new location).Transplant shock can cause health problems in the future or even kill a plant.

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