While the size of the plant that you purchase may be one of the important considerations for the type of plant that you will grow within your home, it is not always the most important variable.
Another aspect of plant purchasing that is consistent among buyers is their desire to purchase the largest plant available at the lowest possible price. Experienced growers and nursery professionals will recognise this desire immediately. The size of the plant is the metric that is used to compare all other aspects of the plant. A plant of larger size will appear to have more value and will immediately be considered to be of more value after planting.
The size of a plant at the time of purchase is one of the least reliable indicators of how that plant will perform once planted into the ground. Optimising for the plant size at the time of purchase but ignoring the other variables that determine the establishment and success of that plant is one of the most common and most costly mistakes in planting. For Plants for Trade, visit www.palmstead.co.uk/wholesale-plants-for-trade-in-kent
The quality of the root system is the variable that matters most to the establishment of the plant. The best way to know if a root system has the quality that will allow a plant to establish itself well is if the plant has been in its pot for the right amount of time. In this case, the plant will have developed a root system that fills the pot without becoming pot-bound. This means that the plant will establish itself well in the ground with a root system of this quality. Plants with a root system that has been circling the pot for months are likely to perform poorly for years after planting.
Provenance is one of the variables that most buyers never even think to ask about in a plant’s description, but it is one of the variables that has the most impact on how the plant will perform in certain conditions. If the stock plants have been grown under the same conditions as the site into which the new plants are to be planted, those new plants will have a better genetic and physiological preparation to perform well in those conditions than if they were grown in a nursery with a different climate. This is especially true for plants that are to be planted in challenging areas of the country.
The growing medium in which a plant is grown can have an impact on how that plant will establish itself in the site soil. For example, a plant in a growing medium that contains a high level of peat and which is free draining but that is planted into soil with a high clay content may have difficulty establishing itself in the site soil.