GMTA..LOL..we both thought of it..Body bag roses aren't known to be the best to get started..so I thought hmmm...I know what alfalfa Tea does...So maybe I can give this one a better chance...Roses need to be soaked for at least 12-24 hours and can stay days in water prior to planting ..rehydrating is essential for bareroots and most people lose them because they don't rehydrate well enough before planting....I would never put the pellets in the planting hole as I have heard people say they got root burn and killed their plant...I put Alfalfa Tea on all my Fruit trees...they love it...jeanne

Hello! This is my first time canning cucumbers to make pickles. I followed one recipe which told me to soak the cuces in salt water for up to seven days in the fridge before canning. I soaked them for maybe about 15 hours and then canned some. However, when I took them out of the cold salt water they were bloated and softer than when I put them in there! I am using field cucumbers from my garden (not dill pickle cucumbers) and I had also cut off both ends of the cucumber before soaking them (as the recipe suggested). I know I only need to cut off the blossom end but wasn't sure which was which so just cut off both ends. I would think that cutting off the end(s) would leave the cucumber open for more salt water to get inside (and hence the waterlogged result I got). But reading online a bit I see that the idea is to get the salt into the cucumber so as to draw out the liquid - moisture. I think that my result was just the opposite. I washed them off and cut them into spears and canned them. They sure seemed mushy though. I still have 6 medium/ big cucumbers salt soaked but now washed sitting in a collander in my fridge. Might can them or may just compost them....or ??? A shame really bcs straight out of the ground they are really yummy. I watered regularilly and we had a sunny summer. I just cant eat so many of them raw! I am thinking next time just to skip the salt water brine and pickle them straight from the garden. Thoughts and ideas welcome please and thanks :) Jade in Vancouver Island,BC, Canada. Pacific Northwest.

Well, using overstatements is one way to try to persuade others to follow your particular view, but it does leave you open to being dismissed outright. Gardengal48, congratulations on your success growing fruiting plants. May that continue to get better and better for you. But....12 hours soaking in water has yet to kill any of the many, many plants that I have been soaking in nutrient-rich water prior to planting or repotting. My goal was not just to get the roots soaking wet, because that would get done pretty quickly. Instead, I want the whole plant to get fueled up with the nutrients from head to toe. Some get soaked only a few hours, and some didn't get pulled out to plant until 3 or (gasp!) 4 days later when I got to it. They have been coming out of the container with thickened happy roots. No rotting. No stench. No withering away. A guy donated a bucket full of 4 ft tall pomegranate suckers clipped in Winter, and I babysat them for more than a month for another guy who would in early Spring cut them to length, dip one end in Dip-N-Grow, and plant the cuttings to get them to root both in pots and in his field. With no room to refrigerate those, I just put some beneficial nutrients in a few inches of water in that 5 gallon paint pail packed with pom suckers and parked it in indirect light. Well, they not only survived the long term dunking, they eventually started to leaf out on top with healthy new leaves and shoots. When the Winter cold became less of a threat, the other guy picked up the pail of healthy suckers, clipped off the bottom few inches that got waterlogged ,clipped off the leafed out top,, and used the remainder of the suckers for rooting. If a "desert" plant like a pomegranate could make it so well while standing in this 'ankle-deep' water, then I would say that I will do the same exact thing next time this pom situation comes up. I won't buy a tall fridge to put them in. Remember the grade school experiment putting a stalk of celery in a glass filled with water that had been dyed with red food coloring, and the stalk gradually wicked up the red water towards the stalk top. Well, I want many of my plants to wick up lots of fertilized fluid all the way up prior to planting/repotting. I sure would not soak succulents like cacti in water like that, or magnolia trees, but it is a non-issue for many fruiting plants. Otherwise, the first time that rainy weather keeps fruit tree roots soggy wet in 100% soggy mud, they would die from what you described as the roots being deprived of oxygen for 12-48 hours. Sometimes soggy, muddy, rainy weather lasts for much longer than that, and somehow the fruit trees don't croak. Maybe you could rephrase the time period to fit the field evidence. No offense intended, Thank you for sharing from your experience. Don't stop.

dont waste time planting junk ... make appropriate cuts.. and let them dry for a few days ... this time of year.. i wouldnt bother soaking ... just not enough heat to dry the soil to any depth ... just plant them properly ... btw: what lind of iris?? ... and then water them in good after planting ... ken