I think he's talking about the fancy cache pots that the grower pots sit in. There are a lot of EA plants that come in a fancy plastic cache pot. I find myself always dumping the water out of them whenever I go to the store just so that others aren't faced with rot when they buy the plants.

This is the exact setup that my red ag came in...

red cache pot.

no drainage with only about 1/4 of an inch between the bottom of the inside and outside pots.

inside pot is firmly stuck. You cannot remove the grower pot without a lot of shimmying because there is are tabs holding the inside pot in place. You can see one of the tabs dead left.

The plant was there for less than a week and it was already floating in the pot. This is not EA's fault but maybe it would be something to look at to give classes for associates on how to properly care for EA plants in store. When my son worked garden shop at my hometown K Mart I would constantly go in and school him on the plants and how to take care of them. He had the least amount of plant loss in store and people would go there instead of Home Depot for nice plants.

Mentha:

You are right --- there are plenty of other plants we do in "upgraded" pots that don't have drainage so as to protect people's furniture when they bring them home. (Not everyone assumes pots have drainage holes. In fact, not everyone who buys plants realizes that they need to check and see if a pot has drainage holes.)

---Justin

" there are plenty of other plants we do in "upgraded" pots that don't have drainage so as to protect people's furniture when they bring them home. (Not everyone assumes pots have drainage holes. In fact, not everyone who buys plants realizes that they need to check and see if a pot has drainage holes.)"

1. Save the furniture and kill the plant?

2. There are nursery pots with holes that extend from the bottom up the sides, Impossible to miss, and, if someone does miss it, they deserve to have their furniture ruined. You already know this.

Hi aruzinsky,

You're right, of course --- there are plenty of other upgraded pots we do without drainage, largely at the request of shoppers and our retailer customers. We try to provide an option/solution for everyone, but we also know there's no one solution that will make everyone happy.

---Justin, Costa Farms

Justin, it seems as if you're beating around the bush here. Give us straight answers as it is clear that we are having problems and concerns with your products. It's quite evident that we are not novice gardeners here.

I, too, purchased your red aglo at Lowe's in a pot identical to Mentha's. Less than a week later, it started to look limp, lean over and one stem even broke. Guess what? It did not have an ample root system for support, and since it was a new shipment, it couldn't have been from overwatering. Needless to say, I lost the entire plant except for one stem which I'm hoping develops enough roots to survive.

Yesterday I purchased a hoya rubra in Walmart, A beautifully full pot with an immediately noticeable overfilled soil line. Fresh, dry soil was mounded up and around each stem and covered the lower leaves, making future watering difficult. Underneath the dry soil was a totally saturated soil that when squeezed, a handful released about 2 tablespoons of water. On top of that, there was a very shallow root system. I assume the extra soil was an attempt by your grower to stabilize the plants for shipping. The plant is now in a more appropriate soil and no leaves are buried. Each and every stem was rooted from about 1/4" of stem.

I have noticed your Exotic Angel plants are not as well-rooted as those that were from Englemans, and you have raised the prices.

I totally agree with aruzinsky's comment regarding furniture. I also know for certain that retail sales associates do what they're told - water the plants, not water the plants according to their cultural needs.

Justin - Hope your growers are able to work out a better solution.

I've also run into fabric-type net pots from other growing companies and they are also disaster to cut out! They are hidden inside the soil as well, never a good surprise.

Hi adaorand:

I apologize. It's not my intention to beat around the bush and I'm sharing the information that I have. (And I hope you're not feeling like I'm being condescending and treating you like a novice.) I'm not a grower, so I can't personally speak to the situation regarding the net pots. I can only share with you what the growers are sharing with me when I ask. I'm not here officially as a representative of Costa Farms --- the company isn't asking me to be online like this. I'm just a guy who works for Costa Farms and I want to be able to help answer questions and show you that the company listens to your problems and concerns.

I'm very sorry to hear about your Red Aglaonema experience. This kind of thing should be a one-off fluke, and not a consistent consistence. I know it may not seem like it, but Costa Farms cares about quality (at least that's what I see from the inside, in dealing with everyone that I work with and the messaging being passed down from our management). Unfortunately, things do slip through the cracks, especially when you grow as many plants as we do. In a case like this, I'd recommend taking the plant back to the store for an exchange/refund. And if you see more than a handful of our plants with the same problem, you should absolutely let us know so that we can look into the situation and see what's happening.

I have emailed one of our Exotic Angel growers about your hoya experience and I'll let you know what he says. Because I'm not a grower, I can't say what's happened --- or even if our head growers are aware that this kind of thing happens. I will let you know what his response is.

I'm not sure why you're seeing a change in quality since we joined with Exotic Angel Plants. It's the same growers using the same equipment in the same greenhouses who are growing the plants. In all the meetings I've been a part of, the focus of the Exotic Angel collection is that it is the "premium line" of plants. No one should be cutting corners around here, especially with those plants.

As far as prices go, I can speak to two things:
One is that we're not the retailer, so we don't control the prices at which they sell you the plants.
The second is that, every few years, Costa asks the retail stores it sells to, to pay us more for our plants to cover our costs. Costa Farms' costs go up every year -- grower pots grow more expensive, producers charge more for coir, for fertilizer, etc. Costa pays its employees more each year (I, for one, greatly appreciate getting an annual pay raise). Having a Plant Hunter and research and development department to find new varieties -- and test them to make sure they're the right plants to be offering -- cost money. That said, Costa is aggressively looking to reduce costs as much as possible. And it's done things like install solar panels to cut down on energy costs. I know it's wildly unpopular to talk about things like this, but ultimately, if the company doesn't make money, Costa Farms will go out of business.

In regards to the furniture comment: I personally don't know what to say to that. As someone who is unofficially representing Costa Farms here in this forum, I can't say that if you don't look to see if there are holes in the bottom of the pot, you deserve to have your furniture ruined. That would make the company look incredibly insensitive to all of the novices out there who don't realize that some pots have drainage holes. Remember, after all, McDonald's was legally challenged because their coffee was hot.
:-(

Whether someone buys a plant in a pot with drainage or without, we do provide resources on our website --- plus a couple of horticulturists who help answer questions via email and social media --- to give tips and advice on proper care for the plant.

I'm sorry you have dissatisfaction with Costa Farms and the Exotic Angel brand. I have sent an email to our growers about the hoya situation and I'll let you know what they say, adaorand. Let me know what else I can do?

---Justin

I just bought, or should I say rescued, several Red Aglaonemas off of the clearance rack. I noticed they had the smaller net pots as well. This doesn't bother me one bit. They can easily be cut away with minimal damage to the plant's roots. Whenever we go to repot any of our plants, there is always going to be damage caused to their roots. This is completely unavoidable. I find that Aglaonemas are fairly tolerant of having their roots disturbed. Losing a few roots isn't going to affect the health of your plant. It may set it back temporarily, but it will simply grow newer roots to compensate.

Justin, sometimes it seems as if you're damned if you don't and damned if you do. I have many of those colorful pots that some of my plants were in originally. All of them drained just fine. Though, I always repot all of my plants into my own containers. I don't look at these pots and containers as permanent homes for any plants. They are designed to grow these plants effectively in the greenhouses and then house the plants while they're both shipped and sold at retail stores. It's the stores that are responsible for the neglect that gets inflicted upon these wonderful plants while they sit on the shelves waiting to get sold. When we bring our new plants back home, we should always repot them into more suitable, permanent containers. This allows us to inspect the entire plants and treat any problems we may find. Before repotting them into the pots that we know work for us, as well as using the potting mixes that we know works for us, too. Do this, and you won't have to worry about pots that don't drain, or pots that end up leaking all over your furniture. I absolutely love my Red Aglaonemas.

And ALL costs for every thing eventually go up in this day and age.

I agree!

if it doesn't look good or right to you, simply don't buy it. Youre already getting a great deal as their plants often cost 5x less than those at a nursery.

i got a beautiful heathy Costa farms Schefflera from lowes in December for $12. The same exact sized plant at the local nursery is $69.00.

i understand there are certain things we think they could do better, but a good portion of the people buying these plants know nothing about them, stick them in a dark corner and kill them anyway.

I'm not complaining.

May as well post a photo that I took today:

http://www.general-cathexis.com/images/RedAglaonema1.jpg

The red aglaonema on the bottom middle had no roots, just a broken stem stuck into my potting media.

You can see the two nursery pots with holes on the side, my favorite kind.

Those are beautiful!!! I always seem to kill Alganoemas.

Just a FYI I am not angry. I have usually been happy with my purchases of EA/Costa plants. There are a few things I have questioned but Justin has always been patient with my questions and concerns I have never intentionally been angry or rude to him.

Hi aruzinsky:

Sorry to hear that your Red Emerald aglaonema had a broken, unrooted stem in the pot. Did it seem like the stem had recently been broken, as though it may have happened in store? Or was it calloused enough that you think it happened before it arrived? We do our best to make sure the plants we ship out are all healthy and up to spec, but sometimes things slip through the cracks before it goes out the door. If you're not happy with the quality of the plant, please email or message me privately.

Mentha: I appreciate you being patient with me, too! I enjoy your questions --- and greatly appreciate the questions/suggestions I can use to try and make improvements here at the farms (especially the stuff that directly falls under my responsibilities, like the website).
:-)

---Justin

I accidentally broke the stem while removing the net pot. The stem was surprisingly brittle and took little force to break. Most of the leaves that you see grew under my care, after I bought the plant on 12/4/15.

" I always seem to kill Alganoemas."

I had it on my windows sill under a red and blue LED spotlight that used only 4.5 watts of electric power:

http://www.general-cathexis.com/images/WindowSillLEDs2.jpg

You can buy lamps like that for about $18 from Chinese Ebay stores, but they are sold as "27 watt" which is a lie.

The trick is warmth and humidity, I think. My red Ag doesn't seem to care what sort of light it gets, but does not like to dry out. It has been in my bathroom all winter. It is also one of the few plants I have put it in a glazed pot. It seems to do well in it.

I'm more upset at Walmart and the horrible care the plants get. Their clearence rack is full of red Alganoemas and Draceanas. The Alganoemas stems look to be rotten and the Draceanas leaves are black. Such wastes!!;

jamilalshaw26:

Let us know which stores are the biggest culprits. We contribute to a service team that helps care for the plants. If they're not doing their job, we're wasting our money --- so let us know which stores and we'll work to address it. Please feel free to email or send the store info via private message.
: )

---Justin

I can't figure out how to send you a message

click on his name then on the right hand side of his banner picture there is a message button. You may have to follow him before you see it.

Hey jamilalshaw26:

My email address is the first letter of my first name, followed by hancock and then the at symbol costafarms.com (Sorry for not posting it, but I'm afraid if I do, the spammers will be all over me!) You can also reach me via the Contact Us page of the Costa Farms website: http://www.costafarms.com/contact-us/contact

Hope this helps!

---Justin

Thanks guys

Judas. Thank god that Photo Synthesis came on and explained his experience with Red Ag because it is the exact same positive experience I had and have. When I purchased mine in the Spring from Lowe's, I repotted it when I got it home, as i almost always do, except with Phalaenopsises (sp) that also come in those dumb outer holeless pots. Who doesn't inspect their plants when they get home??? Because I was busy, I potted my Red Ag in mostly perlite and it just beamed and grew and put out blooms and just looked beautiful. It should have done badly but it didn't. Just today I finally repotted it in the Cactus/Palm/Citrus mix that I should have potted it in originally and some perlite. Most plants would have died in such bad mix back when I brought it home, but not this one. I love this stunning Red Ag. I love all my plants but this one makes me happy when I look at it under my lamp at night. Thank you, Costa Farms.

All my Costa Farm plants have done well. I am grateful for them because I would never of been able to the variety of plants that I have. I love my plants.

Even though
this is an old thread, I wanted to thank you all for the information. I bought
two Costa Farms plants at WM February 24th, and I would've been quite surprised
by what I found if you hadn't had me so well prepared.

One of the
plants is a beautiful Red Aglaonema. I wasn’t planning on repotting right away,
but I couldn’t get the inner pot pulled loose from the outer, decorative pot.
Not trusting myself to keep this baby alive if I couldn’t give her free
drainage, I reluctantly pulled her out for repotting. And ran right into two of
the plastic “net pots.” Both with many roots hanging out. I cut through the
plastic with great care, trying to remove the pots without causing damage, but
a handful of roots were broken.

One of the
three main stems had a single, short root. About half an inch long. It looks
like the stem was broken at the soil surface. Long enough ago that it has
calloused and put out the new baby root. Deeper down, I found a three-inch
chunk of stem, loaded with roots, and also calloused. There was no net pot for
this plant.

The two
healthy Aglaonema stems are in a new pot with gritty mix. The stem with the
baby root is in the original soil and is looking pretty sad. Today I cut off
three of its five leaves.

A bigger
problem is the second plant: Pilea Dark Mystery. His dirt felt awfully hard, so
I took him out of his pot and tried to remove all soil. Couldn’t do it. It’s
like cement. I ended up soaking him for six hours, running water over the
roots, massaging and gently poking with a skewer, but there is still a wad of rock
solid something in the center of the root ball. I put him into a clay pot and
gritty mix, and have him sitting on a heated seed mat, but I don’t think he’s
happy with me.

Are there
other things I should be doing to try to save Dark Mystery? Or the Aglaonema
with the baby root? Any suggestions would be most appreciated!

I have had the same problems with this plant that I purchased at Lowes last fall. It is in a reddish pot with no drainage holes. It was big and bushy when I first bought it, but now it has gotten much smaller and less bushy. I did not realize that there was something wrong with the pot until I came on this forum. I have some extra plastic pots at home that have good drainage holes. I will repot it in one of these and then see how it does.

Every 5" pot Aglo in Europe comes in one of these things (looks like a tiny waste bin).

It's a pain as we try and compost our old rootballs, these things take a bit of getting used to.

They used to come in a little block of 'Oasis' type foam, but haven't seen that in years.

I still have my red aglo plant. It is doing OK, but still not as bushy and full when I first bought it from Lowes. Lowes employees do a terrible job of caring for their houseplants. The Lowes in my area have a lot of plants that are dried up, under or over-watered, and sickly looking. They had gotten a new shipment of cacti and succulents , which looked very healthy. The tropical foliage plants are another story. I do not plan to purchase any more tropical foliage plants from Lowes. I just started buying some small tropical foliage plants from a local mail order nursery here in Ohio and they have been doing great. I bought 2 small philodendrons and one zz plant from this nursery. They have a store on eBay. All of the plants that I got from this nursery have been excellent. The Lowes in my area tend to have these really large showy houseplants that look great in the store. Once you buy them and take them home, they start to deteriorate no matter how meticulous you are in caring for them. When I bought my red aglo last year, it should have never been placed in a very tight cheap plastic cache pot. It did great for a few weeks, even growing a spathe flower. Then it deteriorated. I do not over-water my plants or give them too much light. I only water them when the soil is completely dry. From what I understand, chinese evergreens are low light plants and reg aglaonema is a type of chinese evergreen.

Hey Sharon!

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with the local home improvement centers in your area with plants. If you'd like, send me a direct message with the address of the Lowe's stores that are a particular problem and I'll pass on to our team to address. We're doing our best to work with retailers to help keep our plants healthy in stores so they can be purchased rather than thrown away.

Just to specify one thing: Chinese evergreens (Aglaonema and Red Aglaonema) tolerate low light, but typically grow faster and more lushly in medium or bright spots (as long as the bright spots don't get direct sun). Most plants will go up the light continuum just fine (plants that tolerate low light grow in medium and bright), but most don't go down the continuum as well (high-light plants don't grow as well in medium or low-light spots).

---Justin, Costa Farms Horticulturist

Thanks Justin. I just sent you a private message about the Lowes stores in the Columbus, Ohio area.

Thanks for this post.. if it was not for yours adviseI wouldn’t be able to save my red aglonema which I bought from Lowe’s last spring... it’s been almost a year and the plant showed no signs of growth. instead the leaves started turning yellow... I tried everything but no luck.... I just failed to check one thing and that was the roots. Today I decided to repot my plant and found the roots badly root bound in the net pots. I managed to save few roots and repot in a new pot. Hope it grows well now.

I sincerely wish the plants weren’t potted with net pots in it. For a rookie like me in gardening it was disheartening to see my plant in such bad shape.

>>I only water them when the soil is completely dry.

that's a mistake with aglaonema. it should be allowed to dry only to top 1/3 of the pot and grown in well draining medium. keeping it dry and in low light is why yours declined after purchase.

in nurseries they are kept in medium bright light and on bottom wicking mats.

it NEEDs several hours of sun late or early in the day indoors to do really well with color. that is NOT low light. that is true of all thai aglaonemas - they usually have pink in the leaves.

the grey-green chinese aglaonemas can stay in lower light without any sun, but still not in a dark corner - but they are much more tolerant of low light.

Can't please all of the people all of the time. Costa farms is in the business to sell plants to non-plant-people so they cater to decor rather than horticulture. They aren't in the business of teaching people how to properly care for plants. Most people see potted plants as a longer lasting floral arrangement that gets replaced when the old one dies.

People who are in the know, know you have to cut little net pots off root systems before you replant them. This is a common way to grow baby orchids and the roots grow out of the pot. Breaking the roots sets the baby plant back considerably so it's best to sacrifice the net pot. Aglaonemas are much more robust but any significant root loss will cause a set back.

I have a good sized Red Ag that I was contemplating re potting when I noticed it had a small plastic netted pot at the base just under the soil, choking it...so I took it out & cut that pot off. The roots were affected by the pot, meaning, they were being misformed, misshapen, etc...with that said I do Love Costa farms plants. And will continue to purchase if something catches my eye.

Here's a pic of the plant after some roots were broken off..looks to be in shock, but I'm sure it'll come back.

it should be ok - it's a nice size. But they grow very slow - this particular one looks like 'Sapphire Suzanne' to me -it's ultra slow.

those little peat pots are used widely to propagate. and most people are not aware that plants will outgrow them very fast. the problem is not the peat pot itself, but the netting that holds it together - it needs to be removed to allow the roots to spread. and often the nursery propagating them will not do that and just pop the peat-pellet into a new larger sized pot.

I was surprised to find my net pot,my first,after 40+yrs of plant buying,but it posed no problem.

The plant itself did and is doing very well.

This thread answered some questions. Thanks to everyone.

Justin,thanks for taking your time to bring us better plants.

Mine wasn't a net per-say...it's was hard plastic cup like cage I had to cut with side cutters...but still not a problem...

normally roots can get thru openings in the net/cage while they're thin and young.

but cage can choke larger older roots and it's hard to cut it out then without damage.

hm-m..i'll keep a lookout for this in the future when i buy a plant. though i mostly buy young plants and repot them examining roots, so this would be quite obvious early on and easy to remedy.

have you had the plant for awhile growing in the original bought pot?

Me? I would say a year, then transplanted up.

so, you just transplanted recently and found that there was a plastic 'cage' in the middle of the pot with more mix around it and roots were bound by it and not growing into the mix? just thinking that the roots should've grown thru the cage anyway. guess when you saw it, you decided it had to be removed ?

Yes. They were growing through the cage into the mix but were distorted, it had to be removed.

I've found cages of that kind when repotting orchids.

Aglos in Europe come in a little plastic thing that looks like a trash bin/basketball net. It's a bit of a pain when disposing of old ones, as we compost our plants and they have to be extracted from the roots first.

Long ago, the growers used to use a bit of that Oasis foam florists use.

Lol I've read upthread and realised I've written exactly the same thing as a year ago.

I make certain I don't purchase any more from Costa because extremely difficult to repot due to Costas initial poor potting technique. I love the plants but have lost several trying to repot. SaSad!

Hi Tamara,

I'm very sorry to hear that, and understand your point of view. Happily, our team is looking into alternative methods that won't have a negative impact on plant quality. As soon as R&D finds a better option, they'll roll it out.

Because the net pots don't cause the plants any long-term harm (the roots grow out just fine), I usually tell folks not to worry about trying to repot out of the net pots. But I do understand the points of criticism.

---Justin

Costa Farms Horticulturist

Re: the roots growing out through the net pots - it doesn't always work that way :-) Many annual and perennial starts are propagated this way beginning as plugs and I can't count how many that have failed and when dug up or unplanted from a larger container, all the roots are still contained in that tight little net casing. No lateral movement or penetration "through the net pot" at all.

Not removing it just saves time for the wholesale grower (and time is money). Leaving it in place is of no benefit to the plant and often a handicap.

Six years later and this appears to be the only place on the internet that answers this same question I have about a red agleonema I purchased yesterday at home depot. I think I’ll go ahead and repot to get rid of the 3 little plastic pots each plant is in so that the problem doesn’t get any worse as the plants grow.

That is what I would do. That's crazy.