How to grow "nursery rejects" that are sometimes free!

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Plant nursery’s “rejects” can often be a cheap source of bulk annuals for any garden or “mass plantings”. I often seek out the worst of the worst in a nursery’s collection and make an offer FAR below the original price. Almost always the owners would much rather take a substantial loss than simply throwing plants away..

Here is an example of a few that I rescued today. I needed lots of Pansies for the rest of the cold season and purchased these decrepit little guys for 5 bucks:

These were mass grown flats of 24 that had very few blooms and were severely root bound in their tiny 1×1×2 growers.
Here is how you bring these type gems back to life without ANY transplant “shock” at all.

All of us have seen this when we pull a small annual out of it’s container:

See all of the circling white roots? That is cutting off the “nutrient intake capacity capability” of the plant and will kill it in the long run, if left this way.
The solution is to “calmshell” the root system and literally tear it in half like this to free up the roots and provide more surface area for nutrient intake:

Yes, I know the process looks brutal, but the next few planting steps will show you how this works so well!

The key to transplanting ANY plant is WELL hydrated roots BEFORE it goes into the ground! The old thought of placing a dry root ball into soil and thinking that you can water the area enough to hydrate the roots is TOTALLY FALSE. The transplant needs to have totally saturated and hydrated roots BEFORE it is placed into it’s final home.

Here is the organic magic that makes this happen: We begin by mixing a solution of compost tea, liquid sea-weed, and fish emulsion in a pail or other handy container:

When we first dip the plant’s roots into the solution, do not be surprised if you hear some bubbling. That is the trapped air in the roots being displaged by the solution.Squeezing the roots gently will help release air pockets and bring in more hydration. If some dirt falls off, that is good because most of the potting dirt contains chemical fertilizers anyway.
Our little planting will now look like this after about one minute:

With the planting totally saturated, place it into the soil, fill in dirt around it an then drench the area with the solution from the soaking container:

Water once every two days for about a week, then once a week and the little guys will take off and thrive like crazy without the use of any chemicals!

_N2O

• 27 Jan, 2010
• 5 likes

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