How to plant something - properly!

There comes a point, in the life of every professional person, when they come across an example of something done by an "amateur", in their professional field, which makes them do that thing where you want to laugh, but you don't want to embarrass the "amateur", so you try to suppress it, and it comes out as a sort of snort, through the nose.

I did that, the other day.

And what, you might be wondering, was the cause of all this suppressed merriment, on my part?

Exhibit A, m'lud:

In case you can't quite make up what that is, it's a perennial, cut down for winter, in a coir pot: which has been planted about 2" proud of soil level.

Oops!

*snorts through nose*

So what's so bad about this?

And, "what's a coir pot?" I hear someone at the back asking.

Well, first question first: plants are "supposed" to be planted out in such a way that the soil level within their pot, becomes level with the soil level in the bed or border.

Not sticking out above soil level.

Why? Because that margin of 2" contains the most active water-absorbing roots. Plants create deeper roots, often for stability rather than for feeding, but the roots nearest to the surface are the ones which gets first dibs on fresh rainfall, fresh application of feed or fertiliser, so they are quite important.

By digging an insufficiently deep hole - which is basically the problem here - this top layer of active roots are waving around in mid-air, instead of being safely tucked under the soil: and the air will dry them up and kill them.

This means that the poor plant has to start again, two inches further down, to extrude new roots into the soil.

Plus, it looks ridiculous! I mean, look at it! The tide has gone out, leaving it beached high and dry, poor thing!

If you find something like this, the only option is to dig the whole thing up, deepen the hole, and pop it back in: water it well, give it some liquid feed if it's during the growing season, and hope that it will recover.

And try not to snort through your nose, at whoever planted it...

Now let's take a look at the subject of coir pots:

Coir pots were a fad from a few years back: instead of buying your plants in a nasty plastic pot, which was not recyclable, and which were rarely re-used, some bright spark came up with the idea of making plant pots from a natural, waste material: and coir is the husk of the coconut - the hairy stuff on the outside of the hard shell. It's a waste product, obviously, as coconuts are farmed for the white "flesh" inside them, and - to a lesser extent - for the "milk". But the outer shells are thrown away.

So it was decided to try making plant pots from the coir, and promoting them as bio-degradable, the idea being that, instead of removing a plastic plant pot, you can plant the whole thing, coir pot and all, out into your garden: this means no root disturbance for the plant, and the pot will gradually rot down into nothing. 

Or at least, that's the theory. 

Here - left - is a plant which the owner asked me to lift and split, as it was getting a bit congested.

When I lifted it, look! The remains of the coir pot, still pretty much intact.

"How long ago did you plant it?" I asked. "Oh, about four years ago," came the reply.

Yes, the roots have grown through it, which is good, but it hasn't exactly bio-degraded down to nothing.

So on balance, I'm not a big fan of coir pots, and when asked to plant out new acquisitions which has been purchased in such a pot, I will wait until the owner isn't looking, then cut and peel off the coir, before planting the plant. 

As an aside, I have often wished that there was another word for "the act of putting a living plant into the ground or into a pot", other than "plant". Because "planting the plant" just looks daft... anyway...

Having removed the coir, I'll pop it onto the compost heap, although again - to be honest - I have found the remains of coir still fairly intact after a year in a compost heap, so I'm not at all convinced about their success!

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