Website Memory Lane

Do you remember we tried to start a blog with writing by our talented members?  Though there were only 3 or 4 entries, they were each fantastic.  I’ll post them again over the next month or so so you can enjoy they anew.

Root Washing

by Deborah Cheadle

Tuesday October 2007

My favorite time in the garden is mid-Fall through mid-Spring.  I’m happiest when I can move plants around like pieces on a chess board.

So, in spite of a bad cold and a driving rain, it’s a good day.  Hector is here.  I suit up and head outside.

I want this plant moved over there, which means moving that plant….where?….which means moving – no, let’s toss that one, or perhaps put it out on the side of the road with the FREE PLANTS sign.  I love Hector.

Eventually, we come to a little one-quart New Zealand Pittosporum tenifolium, which we unpot, assuming we’ll stick it directly into the ground and move on.  No such luck.  The Pittosporum’s roots have been molded into a tight, netted mass. In the past, I might have scratched away at the surface with a hori-hori knife, maybe sliced off the bottom or pried with my thumbs to loosen some dirt. And then I would have plunked it in the ground.

But no more.  I’ve been converted.  I’m a Linda Chalker-Scott root-washing evangelical.  This plant must be released from its prison.

Hector moves on to dig up another plant somewhere while I hold the little plant over a bucket and direct a strong spray at the rootball.  How cooperative will this little guy be?  The answer is, not very.  I leave the plant in a bucket to soak.  When I return to try again, a little more soil comes loose.  A lot of white pumice too, that infernal stuff that will be left floating after the next big one sinks Seattle into the Sound.   Every time the bucket gets full, I must now haul it to a hedge to hide the weightless white.

Like untangling chewing gum in a child’s hair in the bathtub, I tease and spray, bounce and tease.  Clumps of root hairs come free and must be gently wiggled out.   The most egregiously contorted roots are cut to the quick.

Finally, at the base of the tiny trunk, I find a knotted baby-sized fist of half-hitches and figure-eights. The poor roots have grown in every direction but the healthy one, which is to radiate out like the spokes of a wheel.  But at each stage of its life, this poor plant has become pot-bound.  The roots, having nowhere to go once they hit the pot’s edge, headed up or down or sideways or turned back in towards the center – anywhere there was a spot of soil in which to continue growing.

When the roots are finally free of all soil, I place what’s left of them in a shallow hole, gently forcing the tendrils to lay out flat.  I stuff soil beneath and place soil on top to both support and weigh down the contortions.  I “mud it in”, by gently pouring water on each successive layer of soil as I replace it around the roots.

Then I cross my fingers.

This is so counter-intuitive to what we’ve been taught for years, which is to disturb as little of the root-ball as possible.   But it’s essential, both for freeing and straightening the mal-grown roots as well as for removing all potting clay or soil mixture so that the roots are grown directly in the soil of the garden.

I was fortunate enough to win Chalker-Scott’s generous offering at the Christmas Auction last year. She came to my house last Spring and we spent most of the day root-washing plants from my garden that had not been thriving.  We tackled several four-foot Rhododendrons, and some small Camellias.

I can report that all of these plants did beautifully. I kept them watered through our hot summer weather to compensate for their reduced root mass.  They not only recovered from the trauma of the root pruning, but seemed to have become vigorous again.

I will never again put a plant in the ground without first removing its soil and checking the roots.

It’s the end of the day.   Hector has headed home, and I’m back inside, drinking hot lemonade, feeling grateful for a day well spent and content knowing that my little Pittosporum is tucked into good, warm, composted soil, recovering from its major surgery, ready to take off in the Spring with vigor!