Pansies

Are you familiar with the saying;  "Do as I say, and NOT as I do?"  Well that applies to me this week end.

I have been wanting to get a few pansies for a couple of weeks now and Saturday the sun was out, it promised to be a lovely day and I decided this was the day I'd get some.

Pansies do well in cool weather and usually a few in pots will last until late May when they can be replaced with other annuals. Plus the colors are just welcome at this time of year when everything is slow to show it's green.

So, I eagerly drove off to my favorite nursery, only to find a very limited selection, (and what they had was quite a bit more expensive then I'd been expecting).  Disappointed, I left without any and moved on to nursery number two where I met a similar situation. Not fine!

There is where my problem started.  I broke my own advice and went to the nearest big box store with a nursery department and finally I found tons of pansies.

I was soooo delighted!  I spent a long time choosing colors and filled my cart with more than I needed, but couldn't resist just one more color....  Did I ever look at root systems- no! Check for healthy plants-not really!  (They all looked delicious!)

So home I came ready to fill my pots and welcome spring to my front porch.  Then I noticed there were long roots sticking out of every pot and there were roots circling and growing out of the tops of the pots.  (I would tell anyone not to buy these, but in my fervor to buy some I'd never even noticed this pathetic condition until I got home.).

(out!)

They were so root bound that I had to cut the plastic to remove them from their little pots.  Fortunately, they were very wet which was keeping them looking good, but in that condition they had very little time for survival.

I patiently cut them out of their little pots and tried to uncircle them a little- almost impossible- so I ended up sticking a finger up the middle of the bottom of the root mass and tearing them slightly in 4 directions to try to spread out the roots before I planted them.  If you plant them the way they come out of their tiny pots without spreading out the roots they tend to continue to grow the same way and eventually choke themselves.

They're all planted now and I'll keep them watered well and hope for the best. They look OK, and I was only hoping for a month or two of color before I can plant other annuals, but hopefully you won't be as desperate as I was this week end and buy such overgrown seedlings!

Thanks for reading Julie's Garden Journal and happy spring!