Transplanting Root Bound Plants

Hey everyone,

Just came across a tip on how to allow rootbound plants to expand from their current pot and into a larger pot successfully. Often times when I transplant and then finish a harvest and I look at the rootball, it never encircles the larger pot...It mostly keeps the same smaller rootball structure of the old pot. I've read some of Uncle Ben's technique on scoring the rootball to allow it to grow again, but have always been scared to do so in being afraid to kill it. The tip I just heard about is during transplanting a rootbound pot, submerge the rootmass itself in water anywhere between 30 seconds to 3 minutes before uppotting...Evidently, rootbound plants essentially become hydrophobic (meaning water can't penetrate into the rootball very well), and this leads to essentially the roots not ever getting enough water...By submerging the rootball completely until bubbles stop, you are successfully reversing this hydrophobic condition, and when putting rootball in bigger pot, the dry soil around the plant will create a tighter connection to the root system too. Hope this helps, and any feedback about this tip would be appreciated! I plan on trying soon.

I have never even experienced transplant shock, let alone killing a plant by scoring root mass of a pot bound plant.

However, I have killed a plant by trying to transplant when the medium was too wet. If it doesn't slide out of the container, I wait.

Submerging the root mass in non-hydro applications would seem counter-productive. I could be wrong here, but pretty sure removing all the oxygen from medium is not such a good thing.

http://landscapeofmeaning.blogspot.com/2011/06/best-planting-tip-i-ever-received.html

This is a direct link to the article, perhaps it will better explain it than I did before. This is also regarding transplanting I believe into dirt outside in a landscape setting, but again, I thought it might be pertinent here.

Growers should see their rootbound plants as a negative thing, many will potup long before getting to the above indicated position, if they are lazy or dumb, yes this is a great way to correct a bad situation, but this will DELAY harvest date, as the plants absorb there new position, and settle, to avoid stress and arrive on the planned harvest day, potup early