Mailing adult plants?

Helvete

Helvete

Hey everyone
 
Some of you may know that I'm moving across the country from Virginia to Alaska.
I'm going to attempt mailing a few of my older plants, ones that are in their second year.  I've mailed seedlings before with no problems but never tried adult plants and was wondering if there are any tips/tricks some of you might have for doing so.  It would seem that perhaps it would be easier, people mail adult bushes and bulbs all the time, especially mail order companies but I'm not so sure.
 
I was considering trimming the root ball and wrapping it (slightly moist) in something like a piece of cut tarp and mailing it pruned down to the main stalk, I've gotta do this with a minimum of 3-4 plants that I want to keep, plus I have some that I'm probably going to send to other people.  I think I can probably fit them all in a LFRB.  Since I'll be in Alaska I will of course be growing them indoors and I have someone competent there to pick them up for me ahead of time (my new landlord.)
 
Tips/advice would be appreciated.
 
pepper_rancher said:
How big are teh plants, do you have have pictures?  What are you moving to Alaska for... that sounds cool  :cool:
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The size doesn't matter since they'll be trimmed down to root balls and main trunks anyways.  I wouldn't just try to ship a whole plant in a 20 inch pot lol
 
I'm moving to Alaska because of job opportunity and it's a nice clean place to make a life for myself.
 
We ship adult plants at work all the time, although they're usually in the one to three gallon range. We leave them in the pots, stake them, and prune them back a little. The stake acts as a spacer, keeping the plant from moving around too much.
 
hmm so I'm thinking I might have better luck if I go ahead and put them in 1 gal containers a few weeks before I ship them.  Most of the ones I'm talking about are currently either in-ground or in large containers 15+ gallons.  They did fine in the 1gal over the winter though.
 
I'd try to repot them as early as possible. This is the only case I can think of where being somewhat rootbound is a good thing. It's a balancing act, though. If they're rootbound, the odds of losing dirt during shipping are much reduced, but the chances they'll dry out too much are greater.
 
Last time I did something like this, I broke cardboard boxes down into sheets and wrapped them around the rootball/pot to make a tube to fit within another box. Worked well, though they were only two days in the box.
 
priority shipping up there takes about 3 days, best to ship on a Monday.  I like the cardboard pot idea thing too
 
If you ship them in 1 gallon containers, I just pack the top of the soil with paper,tape the top of the pot, baggie the whole pot, and then use heavy duty string, or wire for heavy pots, to tie them down to the bottom of the box, in case the box gets carried upside down.
 
miguelovic said:
Last time I did something like this, I broke cardboard boxes down into sheets and wrapped them around the rootball/pot to make a tube to fit within another box. Worked well, though they were only two days in the box.
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I'm actually doing something similar to this with cardboard around solo cups with extremely pruned plants.  I'm putting pictures in this thread as a cross reference:
 
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/56147-blue-ribbon-fatalii-peppers-d/
cycadjungle said:
If you ship them in 1 gallon containers, I just pack the top of the soil with paper,tape the top of the pot, baggie the whole pot, and then use heavy duty string, or wire for heavy pots, to tie them down to the bottom of the box, in case the box gets carried upside down.
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I'm definitely going to tape the top of the cup around the trunk of the plants.  This is very much an experiment since they're cut back so drastically but I didn't damage the core rhizome so I think as long as I can keep them moist they'll probably be fine.  I'll post more picture in either this thread or the one I linked to show my results.
 
Ok this was the method I used, the longer MFRB boxes (which actually have a slightly larger volume than the others) are about 3.5" wide so I made square tubes at 3.25" and put a wrapped/taped heavily pruned plant (moist FFOF soil) in there.  I taped the bottoms of the tubes and stuffed some packing paper (not pictured) and crammed the plant down in there.  3 of them fit raher nicely into the MFRB with a little bit of room in there for some other items I'm sending.
 
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Ok the plants have made it and have even begun making new node growth in the boxes!  I was a little worried because USPS had the package a day behind but they're alive and well and are currently enjoying the back porch right now, it's a nice 72 degrees outside :D
 
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and here's a cool photo of I took on the way back from the post office, Mount Redoubt a local active volcano:
 
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