Prevention is better than a cure

Press, 15 August 1980, Page 11

Prevention is better than a cure

GARDENING

M. Lusty

Trees and shrubs may suffer varying degrees of damage in the course of their lives. This may be superficial and at worst leave perhaps a scar, or it may be severe enough to destroy. Some forms of ailments or injuries are bound to occur during the natural life of any plants and may be unavoidable but others can be prevented. Examples of the following problems can be prevented with little effort or expertise involved, yet they are sufficiently common to warrant comment and advice on how to avoid them. It is not unusual to find that a newly purchased plant has its roots almost otally, if not completely encompassed by a very hard ball of soil. This was once a fairly common occurrence, but is less so now that more friable rooting mediums are much used.

Planting a specimen m such a condition leads to trouble, especially in heavy soils and those inclined to dry out. The roots rarely manage to break out from their confinement of hard soil, and this tends to isolate the plant in the region in which it was planted. There is little stability for the plant, and as moisture fails to reach the roots they begin to wither and so the plant dies as it becomes isolated in the ground. It is imperative to en-

sure that no rootbound plant is planted unless the roots have first been teased out somewhat. Those plants which has the roots encased in a hard ball of soil should be submerged in water up to the base of the trunk and left in this way for' ten to twenty hours.

After such a thorough soaking even the hardest of soils should have become soft, and it will be possible to spread out the roots Without daminging them, something which is likely to happen if an attempt is made to break up a hard, dry root ball. Only when the firm soil of the root ball has been made pliable and the roots teased out, then and only then should the tree or shrub involved be planted, as soon as possible.

Root-bound specimens should likewise have their root system teased out before planting. A plant can become root-bound when it has been confined in too small a container for too long or where it has made rapid growth in a restricted area, growing in a light rooting medium. Most plants are sold with a descriptive name tag of some sort or another attached to a twig, shoot, or more often than not to the main stem. While it may serve a useful purpose in identification until the weather finally obliterates the name, retention of the label, particularly if it is secured by means of string or, worse still, wire, can cause constriction and thus weakened growth and even death of the region above the tag.

As the stem grows it thickens and so swells over the material which attaches the label to the plant. Because there is little give in such a fixture, it begins to constrict the growth of the stem and thereby restricts both the development in this region and also the sap flow past this point. A similar thing can occur when inflexible ties, such as wire or rope, are used to hold vines to supports or to give security to staked plants. Always remove the plant labels as soon as planting has been done—they can be kept for identification purposes or the names can be recorded in other ways —and always use soft flexible ties whenever securing a plant to a support.