Hi,
Late last summer I bought 8 large flowered hybrids. They were in 6" pots and had just been cut down to the soil. It took me a couple of months to plant them in a new raised bed. When I pulled them out of their pots I noticed that the nursery used very dense clay soil and there was some root rot. In fact except for a few roots that fell out of the bottom I could not see any roots coming out of the potted soil and I knew that was not good. Not realizing the high clay content, I had probably over watered somewhat but I suspect there was never a dense root ball present. I was really suprised that they used clay since I had just had about 10 yards of it removed at great expense/ labor when I prepared my garden!
Many of these are not doing to well. They only have 1 or 2 viable stems and apparently even in the raised bed I managed to overwater 2 of them because they started to wilt and immediately recovered when I stopped watering!
Anyhow, they are growing slowly. I'm willing to live with a few poor performers this year assuming the plant roots can break out of their clay prison. There are 3 other clematis from the same nursery that had better soil in the original pot and they are doing very well so I know my bed is well prepared. Another possibility is that they were planted a little high because on a couple of them I could see the base of the stems. Since they were planted in a slight depression I easily corrected this by adding some compost/soil around the stems.
Any idea if these plants will be able to establish themselves with a little TLC?
Thanks
PS. I don't really want to mention the nursery, but I have since then I have bought a couple of Caroline Clematis from Silver Star and the difference was night and day. A dense root mass and at least 5 12" long stems!
Poor performers recover?
Hey! You're a neighbor!
Alex, in all probability the plants will recover. Except for wilt I've never lost a clematis but you are right to go to a good supplier. They seem to grow very slowly here it seems and I have some that are several years old with basically only one stem. It depends on the cultivar too. Josephine has been in the ground for at least 7 years and has only had a few blooms on it in all of that time. Remember that you can buy clematis just as a sort of bulb with no green at all - and then it really takes a very long time. Pot it up and see what happens.
I have had clematis come cut down to the soil too but it hasn't hurt them any. The root ball was much bigger of course than the 6" pot.
Wow, you are serious to haul out all of that clay. I should have thought of it myself! But clay shouldn't be a problem for them.
Why don't you want to mention the name of the supplier that sent you plants that weren't adequate? You could put it in the watchdog if you would rather do it there than on the thread but it's always helpful to the next person if you state your experience objectively.
Doss
I didn't mention the name because I really feel for the medium suppliers. As you may know, many of them have already closed their doors and many of the rest are hanging by a thread. This is because of the mega marts of the world.
Another reason may have been that this was one of my first specialty plant purchases and I went to the nursery, which is mostly mail order, and picked up the plants (of course I sent an e-mail well before hand with a list of plants). I think most of the specialty nurseries would rather just do mail order. I may have ended up with some dogs because of this since one can't really see the roots. I suspect because of poor sales etc. many of the plants end up staying in pots way too long.
I once went to another specialty nursery in person and picked up an unusual wisteria and it had obviously been in that small pot for a long, long time.
I think the moral of the story is when buying plants in person from speciality nurseries is -
Ask how long they have been in the pots and ask if you can pull out the plant to inspect the soil/ root ball.
Since then I have mail ordered many medium to medium- large sized plants that are shipped removed from the container and there is no way to really hide the root ball.
I can see your point. I guess it's something all of us have faced at one time or another - us crazy people who need to have a rare or unusual cultivar. If it helps put it in perspective, this 'The President' has been in the ground 5 years. Slow - and I feed them with my roses too.
A big thumbs up for Debbie at Silver Star Vinery!
I sheepishly told her about my poor performers (which were not purchased from her, but I have purchased other plants from her) and she immediately replied. I told her that I hated to throw away plants but I did not want to baby a dog for a year or more if the likelyhood of recovery was low.
She told me that no clematis should be planted "as is" if the soil containing the root ball is clay or waterlogged. In fact she advised that I pull out all of the poor performers and wash off the roots in effect creating a bare root plant. She said to carefully inspect the crown area for rot. If that part is rotted all is lost. If it is not rotted, then she advised to plant them in pots for the first year, pinching buds to allow formation of a strong root system.
Awful nice of her considering that when I e-mailed the owner at the original nursery he essentially told me that I caused the problem (which at the time, I was willing to acknowledge that but I still wanted to be educated).