Root-bound Planting in the Herb Garden

At this time of year, a lot of planting happens in the herb garden.  Here we grow edible plants, edible flowers, herbs for cooking, tea herbs, dye herbs, and many other herbs.  I enjoy planting in the herb garden because everything smells so good!

Pam (the gardener in charge of this garden) used to be an art teacher.  So, she plants the garden with a strong eye for color, shape, and texture.
Pam Says:  If you're going for a more natural look when planting, try to plant plants in triangles and avoid straight lines of three or more plants.

In case you were wondering about the difference between an herb and a spice:
Pam Says: An herb is a 'soft' piece of a plant, like a leaf or a flower.  A spice is a 'hard' piece of a plant, like a seed or bark.

In the herb garden, we grow three types of plants: hardy perennials, tender perennials, and annuals.  Annuals are plants that only last one year.  They set seed, die back, and their seeds will sprout the next year as new plants.  Perennials are plants that can survive through the winter and live for a number of years.  We call a plant a hardy perennial if it can survive the winter in our area (in this case, New York state).  We call a plant a tender perennial if it can survive the winter in a different part of the world, but not here.  (Really, who can blame them?)  But, if you bring these tender perrenials inside during the winter, they can still grow for many years.

Now that you know some more plant vocabulary, here's some tips about how to grow root-bound plants!

Many plants that have grown in a pot for a long time will be root bound.  That is, their roots will have run out of space to grow and will have started to grow along the perimeter of the pot.  Here is a root-bound pineapple sage that I'm about to plant in the herb garden:

A root bound pineapple sage.

These roots are not healthy roots: they're stuck in funny positions, so they won't absorb nutrients well from the soil.  So, we want to give this sage a little help with its roots.  Pam showed me how to do this.

Step 1: using some garden clippers, cut a cross shape in the bottom of the roots.  The cut should be about 1 cm deep: pretty shallow.  Continue the cut all the way up the side of the pot.

The cross-shaped cut on the bottom of the roots

The cross-shaped cut continues all the way up the side of the pot.

Step 2: using your clippers or your fingers, scratch the roots until the whole root ball looks "fuzzy."

Now you're ready to plant!  But, when you plant, be sure to evaluate the angle of the stem.  Did the plant grow at a funny angle?  Plant it so that the stem sticks straight out of the ground:

This is the angle at which I planted this pineapple sage.  The soil isn't straight, but the stem is.

A bit of wisdom from Glenn, another gardener, about root-bound plants:
Glenn Says: If you're going to buy a tree, go ahead and buy a smaller tree that is not likely to be root bound.  Some of the bigger trees get very root bound and have a hard time establishing healthy roots once they're planted.  A small tree may overtake the growth of a larger, root bound tree in a few years time!