Thinking like a plant can be fun. Especially since their one and only goal in life is to reproduce! This applies to everyone who loves to garden, whether you're a soil or soilfree gardener. In order to get started, lets imagine ourselves as a plant from the ground up.

First, think about your roots! Hmmm. That sounds weird, and it is. Having roots is like having hundreds of very slow moving legs that are also thousands of hungry mouths looking for dinner!

Your roots serve many functions; they are a foundation to support your growing body, they grow out and hunt for foods and water, absorb oxygen and release carbon dioxide. And they sometimes store excess materials for later use (kind of like love handles!). The health of a plant's roots are often neglected, and account for the most common cause of sick plant syndrome.

From your roots sprouts your trunk or meristem, the purpose of which is to support your branches and connect all your parts together to transport foods and water back and forth between your leaves and your roots.

So are we ready? Do we have our meristem all nice and comfy? Good. Let's begin our feature on what roots really do and how to use this knowledge to have healthy plants no matter what the color of your thumb. To continue, Click here!

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