Test tube plants a far cry from putting seeds in soil

I have a new hydrangea that I need to plant, but there’s a problem: I can’t get it out of the test tube.

You read that right. The Jetstream oakleaf hydrangea that should grow to 5 to 6 feet tall is currently a tiny 2-inch plant with leaves no larger than a pea and growing in a jellylike substance in an 8-inch-long test tube. It’s just one of millions of plants that start their life through a process called tissue culture.

In this form of propagation, genetic clones of parent plants are created using a tiny piece of the plant and then grown until they are true plants that are big enough to sell. That sounds simple until you realize that most of these plants start as a four to six-leaf seedling no more than an inch tall  that are grown in a nutrient dense gel under grow lights.

The process is painstaking and highly technical, requiring sterile laboratory conditions, special growing facilities and an army of trained workers. It’s a far cry from putting a seed in some soil, and far more expensive.

So why would companies choose to produce plants in such a tedious and costly manner? Because when you’re mass producing some plants, it’s often the most cost-effective way to ensure a disease-free clone of a plant that makes it to the nursery. Seed-grown plants are inexpensive to produce but are genetically different from their parents.

Under bright lights, workers use scalpels and tweezers to divide and stick tiny quarter-inch stems into specially developed nutrient gels. The growing medium for each variety of plant is perfectly tweaked to meet the needs of that specific plant, and the recipes are a closely guarded trade secret.

After seedlings grow en masse for several weeks, most varieties are transferred into individual test tubes, where they continue to grow. Several weeks later, they will finally meet soil, when they are transplanted to a tray with hundreds of half-inch cells. They are grown and transplanted again and again until they are big enough to be planted in a field or container to grow for another one to three years, when they are pruned and shaped to become the plant that will eventually be sold.

Although AI trained robots are just now starting to be used, the vast majority of these steps are done by people, meaning a plant might be touched by a hundred people over at least a few years before it will ever make its way to your garden. 

My little hydrangea seedling was a parting gift from a plant manufacturer, and to be honest, it stands little chance of making it to the garden given that I don’t have the precise growing conditions it would normally be nurtured under. 

But at this rate, it may never even get the chance because I can’t find a tweezers long and skinny enough to get it out of the tube.

If I want a Jetstream hydrangea, I’d be better off heading to the garden center. Frankly, knowing what it took to get the plant there, its price would seem like a great bargain. And I won’t need tweezers.