Gang,

This is probably no secret to many of you, but if you are planting with the hope of digging and making divisions in the future, it’s best to plant young seedlings and single or double-rooted divisions horizontally on their sides.   When dividing and making planting pieces with the intent of digging the resulting plants in the future for propagation,  it’s wise to try and produce planting pieces which lend themselves to being planted on their sides as well.  While customers and home gardeners may like to see divisions with many roots, all of which have been trimmed back, propagators tend to favor divisions with just one or two roots, so there will be less in the way of old root material to deal with when digging and dividing time comes.

When planting seedlings and divisions, it’s tempting to plant them as they grew – upright, with their roots pointing straight down.   This can be a sensible way to plant, if one is planting for the garden and does not intend to dig later.  But when it comes to propagation, it’s best to plant roots horizontally.

The reason is this.  With plants planted vertically, new storage roots often emerge from ends and sides the deepest roots of the plant – locations where they are often not useful for making divisions.   In contrast, roots planted on their sides, with the root close to the same level as the crown,  tend to make their new storage roots from locations around the crown and the eyes, where they are useful in the production of future divisions.   Sooner or later most plants will make new feeder roots from the crown area, but one of the goals of propagation is to encourage these crown-emerging  storage roots to develop as quickly as possible, which side-planting materially helps with.

From a practical standpoint, horizontal planting makes planting easier- just make a furrow and lay the roots down on their sides in the furrow.  This is the approach that commercial growers take, and which makes the planting out of large numbers of young single-rooted seedlings easier too.

Bob Johnson