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Choosing Healthy Plants and Seed
Give your home flower garden a good start by choosing healthy plants and quality seed for planting in your landscape.
We’ll provide information on how to judge quality and health for both transplants—grower-produced flowering plants—and for flower seeds.
Quality Flower Seed
Finding, choosing, and buying good seed is about as simple as buying a box of breakfast cereal.
Check to see that the seed in the package is less than a year old—its packing date is stamped on every seed package.
Examine the seed package closely. Its should have been stored properly in a dry, cool, airy place.
Pass seeds by if their package shows signs of wetting and drying, or looks like it’s faded from sitting in the sun.
You’ll likely have good results if your seed packages pass both these tests.
Quality Transplants
Buying high-quality, grower-reared transplants is a little trickier—more like picking out good produce at a grocery store.
You’ll face an array of choices, from six-packs of seedlings in 1-inch (2.5-cm) cell packs to nearly mature plants in 1-gallon (3.8-l) containers. Which should you buy?
If it’s still early in the season and you can wait eight to ten weeks for your garden to mature, go for the inexpensive 6-packs or flats of bedding plants.
If you’re starting late, buy larger transplants for instant color. Remember that larger transplants have established root systems and may suffer transplant shock, so water them regularly.
Who to Trust
Trust independent testing experts, such as All America Selections.
They test plants in a variety of climates and choose the best performance using both scientific data and the judgments of a panel of experts. Most testing organizations check bloom quality, vigor, and sun-to-shade adaptability. Take time to read the plant tag information.
After you’ve narrowed your selection to species, variety and hybrid or cultivar, inspect your prospective plants. You’ll want to make sure they’re healthy.
Trust quality garden centers that have lots of good local reviews and a solid understanding of your region. Avoid general retailers that only have seasonal garden departments for a few months each spring.
Inspect Plants
Take a good look at the plants before you choose those you’ll buy.
Under-watered and undernourished plants—or those that have grown too large for their pots—will disappoint and will be slow to establish themselves in your flower garden. Most will bloom poorly and need constant watering.
Here’s what to look for when examining transplants:
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- Look at where the plants are displayed: make sure they’re not baking in the sun and that their soil is moist. Ask garden center staff members when they received the plants. Avoid plants that have been in inventory for more than two weeks.
- Pick plants that are uniformly shaped, compact, and bushy; avoid those that are spindly, floppy, or slouching. These are care problems that rarely cure themselves over time.
- Check the foliage. It should be healthy and vigorous, and rich green—not yellow or brown tipped with signs of improper watering and malnutrition. Leaves should never be mottled, wilted, or brittle.
- Check that leaves are firm, springing back into place when brushed to the side or downward.
- Look at the undersides of the leaves for whiteflies—a flurry of tiny, white, winged insects—and spider mites—pinpoint-red spots with telltale tiny webs—or foliage that looks spotty. Inspect leaves, stems, and shoot tips for sappy, sticky residue, a sign of aphids.
- Look for signs of leaves with insect or disease damage, such as chewed holes or the gray powdering and deformed leaves of powdery mildew.
- Growth should be uniform throughout the plant; for plants that sprout directly from the soil, examine the number of stems or growing points: more points mean a bigger plant.
Since the long-term growth potential of a plant resides in its roots, examine them carefully, beginning with a look at the container and the soil around the rootball:
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- The topsoil’s surface should be free of roots and there should be no sprouting weeds.
- The drainage holes on the bottom of the container, or where its sidewall meets the bottom, should contain only only a few root hairs. If many surface roots are visible or are growing out of the drainage holes, move on or check the plant further.
- When buying perennials in smaller containers, avoid all that are root bound. Since young plants have large, fast-growing root systems, many will be permanently stunted once their growth stalls.
- Remove the rootball from the container: Gently compress the sides and—with your hand splayed around the plant’s stem and over the soil surface to support it—turn the container upside down. Gently tap and slide the container up and off of the plant.
- The rootball should show firm, white roots that loosely fill the pot. Reject plants with a mat of tangled roots or roots that look brown or show signs of decay.
Plant Quantities and Spacing
Knowing how many flower plants you’ll need depends on the species’s spacing requirement, not their size when you select them.
Check the Planting tab on the plant guide pages of this website to find out how far apart each plant of a species should be spaced from its neighboring plants or structures and edges. Some seed packages and plant care tags also provide spacing information.
Using the chart below, multiply the number of plants per square foot (square meter) by the square footage (square meters) of space allowed for plants of that species in your beds.
Step-By-Step Instructions
Working with concrete allows you many options for a flower bed or border edging with different shapes, colors, and patterns.
Add interest by texturing the concrete. Use split shingle forms, brush the concrete as it dries with a stiff broom, add color tints, or press in stones for surface decoration.
Gather together straight-edged shovel, hammer, wooden or plastic bender board for forms, a bundle of stakes, nails, a mixing trough for concrete, and a spade.
To build the forms and pour the concrete, follow the steps shown:
Choosing Healthy Transplant Stock
Look at the overall shape of the transplant.
Choose plants with short, sturdy, dense growth and springy foliage.
Pick plants with uniform growth and with several strong growth points in the crown.
Avoid any with broken stems or leaves.
Avoid plants with fully developed flowers.
Check leaves and stems for deep color and any signs of diseases or pests.
Avoid plants with faded, yellow, mottled, discolored leaves, or damaged branches and stems.
Turn the plant over and examine the drain holes on the bottom of the grower’s container.
Roots should be visible but should not be clogging or growing out from drainage holes.
Avoid plants that have been held too long in their containers.
Gently loosen the plant from its container by compressing the container’s sides.
Carefully remove the rootball from the container by supporting the top of the rootball with one hand, upending the container, and sliding the container up and off of the plant’s roots.
The plant’s roots should be firm, white, and have ample space for growth.