How do I detox my tea plants?

A few months ago a bought 2 large tea plants (camellia senensis) for the forest garden. When they arrived, there was a note with them, that they had been sprayed with pesticides due to a federal law. It said to use gloves to handle them, and not use any leaves for 6 months.
Obviously I can’t plant them in the forest garden as is. It will contaminate the soil, and kill off insects.
Does anyone know what to do?
I was thinking about first washing the top with water and Castile soap. Then take them out of their pots and remove and toss the soil. Then wash the roots with clean water before planting them again.
Is there a better way to do it? Will the tea plants be able to handle this kind of cleaning? Anything else I can do?
In all my years of gardening, I have never been in this situation, and the plants were too expensive to just toss.

I would not worry about it too much- you don't know what was used, and it might not be something crazy insane (assuming you got them in CA, where you probably have to have a Prop warning on a baking soda spray).
You can only do what you can do-- I'd spray with a weak soap solution like you said, the same kind of thing I'd spray for aphid control, leave it on a bit and then hose off. What's in the leaves will only come off when the leaves drop. As for the soil, I honestly would not go nuts- it is going to further traumatize the plants. When I plant them I'd not put any extra soil from the pot in the hole, but I'd not harrass the roots. I'd cover the area with something that is going to grow some fungus- some nasty hay and rabbit manure, let the mycelium get to work. And I'd definitely wear gloves while handling the plants.

I have found the root harassment method to be very successful but maybe others haven’t. When I get a new plant I take the plant out of the pot, and either massage the roots, mixing the soil in with the rest, or I go to the pond and wash them. This way I can straighten out or cut off malformed, too long roots, twisted roots and unbind them from each other so that they take on a natural root spread. I then plant and water once (this is Vermont so rainy!) I haven’t had a failed transplant yet, either. They all come up vigorously.

The one time it wasn’t a success was with lupine. They grew the first year and then died over the winter. I’m not sure what happened—probably a combination of cold, a bit of wet, and competition.

Maieshe Ljin wrote:I have found the root harassment method to be very successful  

Thank you so much for sharing this, I've always assumed that it was bad because of trauma I've had when dividing and moving plants, but I'm going to try this next time-- what's the worst that could happen, right?

Tereza Okava wrote:I would not worry about it too much- you don't know what was used, and it might not be something crazy insane (assuming you got them in CA, where you probably have to have a Prop warning on a baking soda spray). .

Thank you for your advise. I got them from North Carolina, since I couldn’t find what I wanted elsewhere. They are from a nursery specializing in tea plants. They have a large selection of strains and sizes. The plants themselves look really good, and so far are handling our weather good.

Maieshe Ljin wrote:I have found the root harassment method to be very successful but maybe others haven’t. When I get a new plant I take the plant out of the pot, and either massage the roots, mixing the soil in with the rest, or I go to the pond and wash them. This way I can straighten out or cut off malformed, too long roots, twisted roots and unbind them from each other so that they take on a natural root spread. I then plant and water once (this is Vermont so rainy!) I haven’t had a failed transplant yet, either. They all come up vigorously.

I think I am going to do this before I transplant them. Until then, I will give them both a bath. I usually do that anyway, since a lot of nursery plants bring pests with them. Then I will wash the roots like you recommend when it’s time to transplant.
One of my coffee trees was covered in scales when I got it, and it’s gone now, but unfortunately it managed to spread in my nursery, because I missed one lower leaf with a lot of it, the first time around. Especially tropical plants usually likes to get a bath. I only use Castile soap to wash them, and rinse it off afterwards.
We are building a large arbor trellis 3’ x 6’ and 7’ high, for my black pepper and long pepper to climb on. It’s my plan to plant the tea underneath it. This way, they will be protected from the high temperatures we get from July to October.
I plan on mixing our soil with some pine, rabbit manure and compost

Tereza Okava wrote:I would not worry about it too much- you don't know what was used, and it might not be something crazy insane (assuming you got them in CA, where you probably have to have a Prop warning on a baking soda spray).
You can only do what you can do-- I'd spray with a weak soap solution like you said, the same kind of thing I'd spray for aphid control, leave it on a bit and then hose off. What's in the leaves will only come off when the leaves drop. As for the soil, I honestly would not go nuts- it is going to further traumatize the plants. When I plant them I'd not put any extra soil from the pot in the hole, but I'd not harrass the roots. I'd cover the area with something that is going to grow some fungus- some nasty hay and rabbit manure, let the mycelium get to work. And I'd definitely wear gloves while handling the plants.

I found out what pesticides were used. It’s Bifenthrin. I have attached notes from their website Fact page

that's great you found out what it was. it appears that this treatment is mostly focused on the soil, not of the plant itself, from what the fact sheet says (I take back what I said about leaving the soil in the root ball!)
It