hi, everyone. my jalapeno germination attempts didn’t go well this year, so i purchased a bonnie jalapeno from home depot. (by the time of purchase today, the plant had reached a foot in height and had flowering buds, huzzah.)
and i’ve encountered something new. this plant came in a small fabric pot, with a few roots poking through. all my previous plant purchases came in disposable plastic pots, so now there’s a gargantuan neon question mark floating above my head.
do i remove the fabric, or do i plant the whole shebang, including the fabric pot? thanks in advance for the guidance!
Roots can grow through the fabric but can slow them down a bit for sure. Transplanting out of the fabric is a pain as it rips roots and causes some transplant shock and is slightly difficult. Some cut them out, some peel the fabric pot out others plant them.
I would probably take a razor blade (or the sharpest knife you have) and put 4 long up and down slices on each side of the pot - just into the fabric. This will better let roots escape. Removing the fabric could do a lot of damage to the roots.
I’ve used jiffy peat pellets before which were contained in similar fabric-like material and could tell that it really hampered growth versus the normal transplants.
I suspect it is safe to follow the directions, but wish you had two plants to compare results. Bonnie is a huge company and a veritable monopoly that has single handedly multiplied the costs of purchasing starts, but I trust that they have researched the consequences of the fabric pots. They are still trying to expand the monopoly. You could always clip a couple openings if you want to play it safe. The roots will find their way.
I start a lot of my plants but don’t have time to start everything in my garden. Luckily I have a small, independent green house grower that still sells 6 packs for a reasonable price as does Agway.
I would try my best if not to remove then shred it as much as possible vertically and in the bottom. Once I lost a honey berry because I didn’t know it had this fabric pot inside. It was shipped to me in a plastic pot with soil, I didn’t see much root when I removed the pot, and just planted it. There were three of them, two made it, third died in the middle of the summer. When I pulled it out next spring I found the roots bounded in the 2 inches fabric pot that was inside that soil it was shipped in. The roots just never found way out and continue to grow in circles…
thanks for the advice, everyone! y’all are a good deal more helpful than google, whose topmost search results pointed to growing cannabis in grow bags.
while transplanting the jalapeno this morning, i finally noted the small print on the plastic wrapper around the plant:
Biodegradable pot by Jiffy. Pots made in Canada. Plant this pot. It will become part of the soil. No pots for trash.
i didn’t want to retard root growth, based on the advice here, so i peeled away as much of the jiffy pot as possible, almost entirely from the lateral parts. the bottom of the pot was thickly interwoven with roots, so i left the bottom alone.
there were several spots of fungal-appearing white growth on the sides of the jiffy pot, so i had more reason to remove what i could.