Garden

[Twins Mom]

In cleaning out pots of plants, I noticed most had small root systems- not deep or wide. I was watering a lot. All was fresh potting soil this year and new pots for most. Any advice for next year. Begonias, marigolds, vincas, geraniums.

[ValuSkr]

Did the plants look okay?  Then I wouldn't be concerned.  Annuals don't always have time to develop an extensive root system; I guess it depends on the type.  And you're just discarding the plants at the end of the season, right?

[jlkz]

@Twins Mom

Before you toss the begonias:  remove from soil, snip off the root hairs, place them in shallow pot or box and store inside.  Next spring plant them and enjoy flowers again.

Note: if you can, store them sitting on their base.  This way you will know which “ end is up “ for planting.  It gets fairly hard to tell if you don’t.

Good Luck !

[JustJazzmom]

When I plant annuals or any rooted plant, I try to tease out the roots from the center and get them to spread out. If they are in those 4 or 6 cell packs, I usually rip off the bottom part (about an inch) and plant them in the pots or ground.

Ground planting allows the plants to spread out their root systems, pots are constricting.

[gardenman]

Smallish root systems are pretty much the norm for annuals. About twenty-five years ago we added a front porch to the house and had a large-ish (maybe 24" in diameter) round planter with annuals in it on the porch. I decided that some of the plants were too pretty to just let die at the end of the season, so I decided to pot them up. I took a selection of pots out and carefully removed each plant only to find all fit easily into four inch pots. I put them all into a short cardboard box to carry them inside and had a brainstorm.

I'd been researching building planter boxes around the perimeter of the porch and was losing my mind. Pretty much no one agreed on the ideal depth or type of construction for window boxes. Some said they should be 18" deep, which seemed excessive to me, while many commercially available window boxes were only three or four inches deep. 

 While getting ready to carry in that box of saved plants, now all potted up in four inch pots, I realized that maybe that was the way to go. Each plant with its own soil, in a four inch pot. The more I though of it, the more I liked the idea. So I built the planter boxes to hold plants in four inch pots. I've been doing that ever since with great success. I was one of "Flower and Garden Magazines" show how you grow winners and my planter boxes were featured in their July 1996 issue.

Small root balls on annuals are pretty much the norm and nothing to worry about. Annuals are short-lived plants so they don't waste energy creating massive root systems. Their job is to grow, flower, set seed, and die. They tend to create just enough in the way of roots to achieve that.