Weather I’ve been Waiting For
I always have a nursery area in the garden, space where I can grow out cuttings and put new plants until I decide where they will go in the borders. When we first moved here I made a nursery area in a space that was not suited for this. The plants did OK, but the soil was terrible and it was in an inconvenient location for watering. The results were terrible, invasive weeds started taking over, some plants dried up and died, the rest languished. I’ve been needing to move all the plants, but have been waiting for the perfect weather.
Whenever I need to transplant things, I try to wait for the perfect window of weather. That means lots of rain and cooler days. Plants are much less stressed with this type of weather and I have found that I rarely lose a transplant when I wait for the right weather window.
After an extremely dry spring, yesterday was the day to make the big move. I dug up and transplanted over 30 shrubs, trees, and perennials. It was lots of work, but I know they will bounce back quickly because of the rain and cooler weather. Luckily, we’re supposed to get an inch of rain overnight which will water everything in well. Even if you can wait for one rainy, overcast day that will give you plants a bit of a reprieve during transplant and help them make it.
Do you have any tips for transplanting success?
Just did the same thing, more or less. I had wanted a special variety of marigolds to be able to feed my rabbits the flowers dried. No big box or nursery seemed to have them this year. So I finally bought seeds and planted them in this big shallow flat, really a bread tray used by the men who deliver bakery goods to stores. They did way better than I thought. I planted out a bunch of them a couple weeks ago by just gently tugging them out of the soil. They transplanted like a dream,
Then I was taken aback by how many I still had and no where to plant them. Slowly I was able to clear another bed but the weather was so hot and dry by then and the spot was on the southwest side of the house. But the last few days had some pretty good rain chances so I finally put many of them out and tho a few wilted a little bit at first, the rains came and watered them in so much better than I could have. And now we are due some dryer but cooler weather to help them settle in even more.
I always try to transplant when these conditions are present.
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