Native plant roots need room to grow

Last year I started some lead plant seedlings and time got away from me and I never got them transplanted. They sat out all winter. As the weather warmed up a bit, I was working on transplanting them yesterday. Lead plant is a wonderful hardy prairie type plant with beautiful purple flowers in summer (right around the 4th of July here). Lead plant grows in many ways like a shrub. It doesn’t die back to the ground and new growth will come from the woody stem. It is a slow grower, often taking a few years before it flowers. However, it starts right away developing an extensive root system. Early settlers sometimes called it “Devils shoestrings” due to how deep and tough it’s roots were to clear for farmland. In the pic you can see the woody growth above my thumb. Look how much more the roots have developed than that little stem! We sell small starter plants. The reason I show this is that one of the common mistakes people make when growing them is thinking they need to baby them and put them into a pot “till they get bigger”. We think they are better off in the ground. These and most other native plants, particularly the slow growing ones, need room to develop roots and are better off in the ground where they can develop deep roots. The best thing you can do for a new, slow growing plant like lead plant (and many others) is to plant it in the ground and keep faster growing competitive weeds and other plants away so it can develop those roots. Flowers and size will come with time, but roots are the most important part.