EasyBloom Forum

I was talking to my friend about growing fruits and veggies from seed. He repots his plants three or four times before transplanting them in them into the ground. He told me it makes the roots grow stronger. Is this sound advise and can you think of any kinds of plants that would benefit from this?

Hey Christopher...There are some plants out there that, when given tough love, will come back stronger. Most roses are like that. You beat them down and they come back stronger and wanting more. Every time you repot a plant, you will invariably damage the root system. This can be good and bad depending on many different situations. If you repot in the middle of summer and throw that freshly repotted plant in full sun, even with very moist soil, you can run the risk of causing sunburn or major wilting because the plant has lost some of the surface area for water absorption. When the plant loses root tissue, the plant's inner hormone balance gets thrown off. If you want to get into the science of it, plants have 2 primary hormones that come into play here: auxin and cytokinin. These hormones, when in balance, promote regular shoot and root growth. If one of those hormones gets out of balance, the ratio of auxin:cytokinin will shift and the plant will produce more roots or shoots. What happens is that these hormones promote new growth. Not faster growth or anything like that...just new growth. So what will happen in the root system is the plant will now have more branched roots. Is this better for the plant? It's really hard to say. One could argue that the surface area for water and nutrient absorption will be increased with a more branched root system, but I'm not sure I would say that would cause a significant increase in overall plant health.

One thing that is definitely happening is the transplanted plants have root tissue damage. This can increase the instance of pathogenic infection, but this generally would not be a big issue. It is true that plants, specifically trees, will have stronger trunks if you give them some physical stress when the trees are young. Imagine a physical stress like wind blowing that trunk around. The tree will focus more structural tissue to keeping the tree upright. So it is true that tough love can be good for plants, but I cannot really think of any substantial benefit to several transplants of young plants other than more branched roots and possibly refreshing the nutrients around the immediate rootzone by replacing depleted soil. As for the depleted soil theory, simply letting the roots fully explore the rootzone should be fine for allowing the plant to fully investigate its soil.

I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any further questions. By chance do you know how often your friend transplants these plants and how old the plants are? Cheers...Dr. Robby

Thanks Robby, that *was* really helpful. And I appreciate you going into the science of it. I'm a geek at heart, I eat this stuff up :-)

I don't know how often he does this, but by the time the plant are in the ground, they couldn't be more then 2 months old. I thought he was crazy, then I went home and thought... well maybe... but then after reading your answer I agree that it seems more like a waste of time and probably causes unnecessary stress.