Whistling in the Garden

by Melissa Volk

Melissa Volk is a writer and horticulture specialist with Sunnyside Nursery, a local retail garden center celebrating its 61st anniversary. Visit www.sunnysidenursery.net.

One of the biggest landscape improvements I've made in recent years isn't in additions but reorganization. It's a cheap fix to overzealous buying, planting without the big picture in mind, and sometimes just luck or the effects of time.

For example, grouping my cypress 'snow', putting my second 'boulevard' cypress at the opposite end of the bed with my first and bringing together scattered perennials of similar flower timing and color have all made my yard look amazingly better. So has expanding slightly and giving each plant more space.

Transplanting is basically the same as planting. Dig a hole as deep as your root ball and two to three times as wide. Check drainage if concerned. Mix natural fertilizer and compost in the bottom of the hole and with the filler soil.

Natural fertilizer won't work until soil microorganisms do, at around 50ºF, but it won't leach much either so it'll be there when needed. Slow release synthetics like 'Osmocote' don't work below 65ºF, and synthetics do have a habit of leaching, so check labels.

Finally, plant and water. It's a good idea to add a root-stimulating hormone like 'B-1' to the drink as a cheap guarantee.

Speaking of water, another benefit to transplanting overpopulated portions of your beds is water conservation. The more space a root system can reach without competition, the more a plant can quench its own thirst. Fertilizers with mycorrhizae also extend root capabilities through symbiosis, a plus-plus relationship between plant and fungi.

Transplanting differs from planting from pots in being more traumatic. Roughing up the roots from a pot or even cutting the last inch off severely root-bound plants still leaves many roots ready to put out new water-harvesting shoots.

With transplanting, even when you ideally take the entire critical root zone (the area that falls underneath the plant canopy), you still keep a lot of structural and cut off a lot of water and mineral mining root hairs that naturally extend far out. Plants are more likely to experience water stress when transplanted than simply planted. It is best done in late winter or early spring when plants are still dormant.

If you have anything large that is near and dear, make sure to get help before digging. We had a 50-plus-year-old Japanese lace-leaf maple at work for a while in limbo for transplanting. I was truly amazed that something so large and beautiful could, with professional help, make the move.

This year in particular presents wonderful opportunity for transplanting. Winter-killed plants will leave holes. Some of those holes should be filled with new plants, but why not consider relocating things that were never well-placed, were over-planted, no longer suit their location or just haven't been happy?

Transplanting is a tool used by even the most organized and knowledgeable gardeners. I don't claim to be one of them, but at least I'm smart enough to know when a change is in order. And all it costs is a little time, compost and fertilizer.

Melissa Volk is a writer and horticulture specialist with Sunnyside Nursery, a retail garden center celebrating its 61st anniversary. Visit www.sunnysidenursery.net.