Teabag technology as they used to call it when we were supposed to be stunned and amazed by how easy it was to cleanly slot a plant into the soil has long been one of my hobby horses ( look in the cobwebby vaults of the forum of you're interested). Glad to see some more of you joining the party , but sad to see it's still necessary. Just another convenience for the conglomerates, sold to us as something that would effortlessly enhance our gardening experience thus freeing us up to better concentrate on buying tat to enhance our outdoor space
I bought a curly Spider plant from Gardener's World Live about three years ago - it didn't really do a lot, which surprised me as I'd grown the usual spider plants before and found them really vigorous. When I re-potted it I found it was actually 3 plants in 'tea bags'! I removed them from the tea bags and potted them separately and now have 3 thriving and reproducing curly Spider plants. I hadn't considered the possibility that this is actually a technique to make more money by selling more plants to replace failures, however, I can't see any other reason for continuing to use something which seems to be universally hated by gardeners!
Also thank to @Nollie for the information on coir - not something I was aware of, but I will avoid it in future.
It industrialises horticulture. You can use machinery and robots instead of expensive humans. There is the added benefit of the horticultural equivalent of planned obsolescence whereby the plant survives far enough from the time of purchase for the gardener to have either blamed themselves for the failure, forgotten where they purchased it or disposed of the receipt.
This all sounds like a good reason to buy from smaller nurseries that aren't over industrialised. They are out there. The problem is because they don't grow at the scale of the bigger nurseries they can't sell at the same sorts of prices - and price seems to sway most folk more than anything else...not that smaller nurseries are immune but yes, the plants that end up the T&Ms of this world or garden centre chains tend to come from industrialised set-ups, too often in places like the Netherlands.
Just to add a bit of balance on the coir discussion, because there is a bit of a growing narrative around how non-eco it is. It's a bit like electric cars - people are sold them, and so come to expect, that the environmental credentials are 100%. When they're not, you sometimes get an overly dismissive narrative develop. The reality is that coir isnt perfectly without its issues. Nothing is. But because it goes so far when wet and expanded, pound for pound things like pure peat are much worse. It's a classic case of not making perfect the enemy of good, to me.
Whether it's a great growing medium is another matter, however.
I'm glad it works for you @WAMS. The usual motto is - if it works for you, keep doing it! Perhaps the old rolls were of sturdier stuff, but I might do an experiment with the next lot of sw. peas I do in a couple of weeks or so. I have loads of collected seed. The only problem is - we're using those double sized loo rolls, so I might have to wait a while for the inners....
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Lol yes. The big drawback with toilet rolls is it doesn't feel right to me to offer them to my friends/neighbours when I am giving away seedlings. They just don't look very nice somehow!
I agree with all the above postings. Been there. Done that. Have the T shirt. Learnt the lesson. I now always remove the teabag container from any plants I buy and repot them. I have never tried coir small pots, many moons ago I tried some coir hanging basket liners, was so disgusted with them I have never used anything coir again. Toilet roll tubes are very good for putting on baby leek plants when first planted out. They help to keep the seedlings vertical and if left on help to blanch the lower part. My leeks never reach a size where the toilet roll tube is too small. A couple of years ago I was short of tubes so made some newspaper tubes from several layers of paper which lasted the life of the leeks and worked very well.
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Glad to see some more of you joining the party , but sad to see it's still necessary.
Just another convenience for the conglomerates, sold to us as something that would effortlessly enhance our gardening experience thus freeing us up to better concentrate on buying tat to enhance our outdoor space
Just to add a bit of balance on the coir discussion, because there is a bit of a growing narrative around how non-eco it is. It's a bit like electric cars - people are sold them, and so come to expect, that the environmental credentials are 100%. When they're not, you sometimes get an overly dismissive narrative develop. The reality is that coir isnt perfectly without its issues. Nothing is. But because it goes so far when wet and expanded, pound for pound things like pure peat are much worse. It's a classic case of not making perfect the enemy of good, to me.
Whether it's a great growing medium is another matter, however.
Perhaps the old rolls were of sturdier stuff, but I might do an experiment with the next lot of sw. peas I do in a couple of weeks or so. I have loads of collected seed.
The only problem is - we're using those double sized loo rolls, so I might have to wait a while for the inners....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Been there. Done that. Have the T shirt. Learnt the lesson.
I now always remove the teabag container from any plants I buy and repot them.
I have never tried coir small pots, many moons ago I tried some coir hanging basket liners, was so disgusted with them I have never used anything coir again.
Toilet roll tubes are very good for putting on baby leek plants when first planted out. They help to keep the seedlings vertical and if left on help to blanch the lower part. My leeks never reach a size where the toilet roll tube is too small. A couple of years ago I was short of tubes so made some newspaper tubes from several layers of paper which lasted the life of the leeks and worked very well.