| Fall Is a Good Time to Move Plants |
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By Lindsay Bond Totten
Scripps Howard News Service Transplanting is all about roots. Mind the roots and the top of a plant -- leaves, stems, twigs, buds -- will come along for the ride. With few exceptions, fall is a good time to move plants. Roots are in the right frame of mind, perhaps the best mood they've been in since this time last year. So take advantage of the season to rearrange your garden or add new plants to fill in the gaps. Roots are mellower now than in spring, for good reason. Life is less stressful. They've worked a full shift -- even some overtime -- extracting moisture and nutrients from the soil to satisfy rapidly expanding shoots and a full canopy of foliage. It's time to wind down. With fewer demands on their services, roots are quite willing in autumn to entertain thoughts of relocating. Dig up perennials first. Those roots need a few weeks to settle in before freezing weather arrives. Vigorous growers may send up tentative new shoots and a few small leaves, especially if autumn is warm and rainy, but most won't. If possible, wait to transplant fall bloomers like asters, Japanese anemones and maiden grass until early next spring. Most other varieties, including spring-blooming bulbs, move well in autumn. Concentrate on evergreens next, as the air temperature drops. Needles and leaves are well-hardened for winter, but roots benefit from a brief recovery period after transplanting and before the soil freezes. Wait until the leaves begin to fall to transplant deciduous trees and shrubs. Transplanting is less taxing on the roots if a plant is full dormant. As laidback as they are in fall, you don't want to push roots too far. Human behavior that's guaranteed to make transplanted roots cranky includes: - Planting them too deep: Don't use the top of balled-and-burlapped plants as an accurate indicator of planting depth. Burlap is usually knotted over the ball, adding several inches to its height.
Cut the knot, pull back the burlap, and plant the root ball slightly higher than the tree or shrub was growing in the nursery to allow for settling and a layer of mulch. (Keep the mulch a few inches away from the bark.) Just 2 extra inches of heavy clay soil over the roots is enough to suffocate them. - Planting in synthetic burlap: Plastic burlap doesn't decay. It strangles roots that try to grow through it, practically assuring a slow, agonizing (for the gardener) death. Plastic twine, used to secure the burlap snugly around the trunk, is another potential means of strangulation for roots.
- Planting a container-grown tree or shrub into heavy clay soil without amending it first: Talk about "culture shock"! How's a tender young root to penetrate a solid wall of clay? Amend the whole bed with compost, sphagnum peat moss, mushroom manure or leaf mold before planting container-grown nursery stock. For larger plants, loosen the soil way beyond the planting hole to ensure that feeder roots can "get growing" after they push out of their burlap.
- Dropping a root ball to the ground from the bed of a vehicle or wheelbarrow, especially if the root ball is loose or saturated: A single sharp blunt force trauma to the root ball is enough to disturb whatever feed roots remain intact following digging. A plant can survive, but it may be damaged for life or may simply fail to thrive, in spite of a lack of tangible symptoms. Assuming they don't need water because it's cool outside: Roots continue to grow until the soil temperature reaches 40 degrees, which doesn't occur until several weeks after the air temperature drops below 40.
Also, September and October can be extraordinarily dry months in many parts of the country, creating near-drought conditions several inches beneath the surface. Always water newly transplanted roots thoroughly. Keep the soil moist until the ground freezes or until fall rains begin in earnest. ( Lindsay Bond Totten, a horticulturist, writes about gardening for Scripps Howard News Service.)
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