Video: Tips for Moving Small Shrubs

This quick video provides some simple tips for moving small shrubs, such as rose bushes, to minimize damage to the plant, and make it easier on you as well. Ideally, plants should be moved in the fall or winter to allow the root system to reestablish in the new location before summer comes along and the plant needs deeper roots to pull up the water during hot weather.

Check out this demonstration to see how to do it:

Moving Shrubs.mp4
Tips for successfully moving a shrub or small tree from one place in your landscape to another.

Moving Plants of All Sizes: A Winter Garden Task

Winter, when plants are dormant, is the ideal time to move plants, although they can be successfully moved at any time throughout the year provided care is taken. Smaller plants, under three feet high, are the easiest to move. Here are some tips to moving a small plant or shrub to a new location in your garden:

1. The first step is to trim the plant or shrub back by about one third.
2. The next step is to dig the plant out ensuring that the root ball is approximately the same diameter as the plant.
3. The plant can then be transplanted to the new position in the garden. (See below for details on the final steps for placing the transplant.)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The procedure with bigger plants in the 3-foot to 5-foot range is much the same but will take a little more time.

For Step 2, once you have dug around the plant to a depth of approximately 1 to 1 1/2 feet, you should leave it for a week before finishing the removal. After a week ease the plant out by digging under the roots and trim off long or damaged roots before transplanting.

For bigger plants and trees the procedure gets a little more involved.

1. The first step is to dig down deeply on two sides of the plant, through the roots at the drip line.
2. The plant should then be left for a week or two before the same procedure is repeated on the other two sides of the plant.
3. As with the smaller plants you will need to trim the plant back by about one third before starting.
4. After having dug around all sides of the plant you should wait another couple of weeks before digging under the roots.
5. Again, you will need to trim off long or damaged roots in preparation for the transplant.
6. Let another week or two pass before removing the plant and wrapping the root ball with Hessian cloth to protect the roots.

Placing & setting the transplant:
1. You should have already prepared a new hole that will be slightly bigger than the root ball of the plant you are replacing.
2. Add compost, mix and slow release fertilizer before transplanting the plant.
3. Top up the soil and water it well.

Provided you have taken good care along the way your plant should settle in to its new location without any problems.

Choosing Healthy Plants for Your Garden

Whether you are buying or receiving plants from someone there are a few things that you need to look at before deciding to plant them in your garden.

You will generally get a better quality plant from a garden center and it will be less likely to have disease or other problems that could spread to other plants in your garden. But there is still the possibility that the garden center plant might not be the healthy specimen that you might expect so you should still check it out before parting with your money.

Image via Flickr

The first thing you need to do is look at the plant and see whether it looks healthy. This might seem very obvious but we often assume that buying from a garden center will assure us of a healthy plant when in actual fact even garden centers can have problem plants and you don't want to be the new owner of their problems.

Plants are very good at showing any signs of distress so if a plant doesn't look healthy, it generally isn't.

Check the conditions of the leaves, stems and roots of the plant where possible. You should also look at the condition of the soil that it has been growing in, as this will have had an effect on its health.

If you are buying flowering plants it is always best to buy the ones that have yet to flower, as they will withstand the trauma of transport and transplanting better than those that already have flowers. If there is no alternative but to buy or receive plants that already have flowers then many people suggest that you should remove all the flowers to give the plant a better chance of survival.

While you might be reluctant to do so, you will probably have a better plant that will be stronger and healthier and produce more flowers in the future.

If there is anything on the plant that concerns you, seek advice or decide against having that plant in your garden.

Planting In Fall In Preparation for Spring

You may be aware that there are certain things you can plant in your garden in the autumn, in preparation for growing time in the spring. Very likely you know you should plant bulbs in the fall, and this is also the season for dividing and transplanting other things in the garden. You might know as well that you can plant many perennials at this time of year, so they are well established come springtime. However, perhaps you could use some tips for how to go about all these things, so everything is planted properly and all you need to do after that is wait for the spring reward.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First of all, if there's anything you need to transplant out of the garden and move inside, now is the time to do it. So the perennials that should be potted indoors over the winter should be moved before the temperature goes too low. This would also be the time to thin out or transplant things that you want to give away or put somewhere else in the garden.

To plant bulbs, do it about six weeks before the ground freezes. Make sure the soil is well drained. As a rule of thumb, plant bulbs three times as deep as they are high, so a two inch bulb would go six inches deep, for example. Be sure the pointed end points upward or, if you can't be sure which would be considered the pointed end, plant the bulb sideways instead. When the bulb actually starts growing, it will pull the right end upward as it does.

When you plant perennials, make the hole about three times wider than the root ball of the plant, and just deep enough for the ball. If you're going to add something to help with root growth, now is when you do that. As you set the root ball into the hole, very gently try to loosen some of the roots on the outside. Hold it steady as you fill the soil back in, and tamp the soil fairly lightly. After a good watering, put a three- or four-inch layer of mulch over the soil, leaving a couple of inches of space clear around the stem of the plant. Keep watering, enough just to keep the soil most, until the ground freezes.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you're planting seeds rather than partly grown plants, you need to be sure the ground is prepared and tilled properly first. Then scatter the seeds over the area as evenly as possible. And again you'll want to keep the soil moist, to give them the best start you can before the frosts arrive.

Even a lawn grows better when it's started in the fall, so now would also be the time to work on that if it's in your plans. The cooler temperatures will give the grass time to get its roots firmly established, in this time when it's not being encouraged to produce a lot of foliage. You should either seed a lawn or lay down new sod eight weeks before the first killing frost, if not slightly sooner than that.

It's kind of encouraging to think that a great many of your plants might already be planted and ready to grow when the spring comes. You'll have enough work still to do when the weather gets warm, so it's good to know you can get some of this done before winter. If you plant properly and keep your plants or seeds secure through the winter, your garden could be half ready in the spring before you even do anything!