Comments on: Bending the Rules, Planting Shrubs

By: The Iceman Cometh: April freeze casualties

The Iceman Cometh: April freeze casualties — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:34:30 +0000

[...] days. I’m hoping that once it settles in it won’t be so precocious in breaking bud, but Don tells me that it has a tendency to get in this sort of trouble. I hope it proves worthy of the extra [...]

By: Kathy’s Autumn Picture Show | Cold Climate Gardening

Kathy’s Autumn Picture Show | Cold Climate Gardening — Sun, 06 May 2007 23:26:39 +0000

[...] shrub is a native; do you recognize it? I had to look it up when I got home, only to discover I’d planted five of them just this spring. Sheesh. Since this is a fruiting female, there must be a male shrub nearby, but I didn’t see [...]

By: jenn

jenn — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 16:15:11 +0000

Oh, and my sympathies to Collin. And to you. Hard to tell when the teenaged tendency to hyperbole crosses into something real.

“Deeper than a shovel.”
!!!
I’d've wailed, too! (But then, I’m a gardener and would have known exactly ‘how’ you meant it.)

By: jenn

jenn — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 16:12:57 +0000

To further Don’s commentary – you can use a bit of floting row cover to keep the frost off, and this can be left in place until the weather settles, as it lets in light.

My little local nursery uses the row covers over their plants in this iffy weather (they of course, pull the cloth off for display and replace it each night.)

By: Kathy Purdy

Kathy Purdy — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 12:21:45 +0000

Don,
The hydrangea is planted on the north side of the house, and I don’t think shade cloth will provide more shade than the house does. But I already found out the hard way about the freezes. (I love having garden friends come to visit and offering their hard-won advice.)

By: Don

Don — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 03:39:10 +0000

Kathy,
You might need to use some shade cloth over that hydrangea until it gets its roots down, if your weather turns hot; nothing leaf wilts worse than those big leafed macrophyllas. Even when they are planted from pots, they usually wilt badly on hot, dry days for the first couple of years around here. Be sure to protect it from late spring freezes too… they are very sensitive to leaf damage from freezing. (I love this feeling of being in a bunch of people standing around in your yard telling you what to do with your new shrubs!)
Don

By: Kathy Purdy

Kathy Purdy — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 18:55:52 +0000

Judy, thank you for that great information about heeling in. That swampy clay only occurs in that one corner of the property, so I don’t have to face it too often.

By: Judy Miller

Judy Miller — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:55:16 +0000

It’s one of those Gardening Sagas we collect on ourselves! Like the time I was sent by the nursery I was working for to “transplant some peonies” which turned out to be a driveway-length row that had been in situ for 25 years, in clay soil…some of the roots were literally the size of my leg.

I salute your ability to cope with that kind of swampy clay.

I think I can safely say your directions said 48 hours because they wanted to be sure you would get on the project, not leave them in the box for a week before looking at them. You’d be amazed at some of the confessions I get!

Heeling in is a relict from the days when people had gardeners, and from the trade, where you get a semi-truckload of plants, some b&b, some bare root, and those 500 spirea and 80 fruit trees & 200 roses just have to wait so they get heeled in. You can use a big pile of mulch for that, it doesn’t have to be a literal trench. Slice a big hole in the side of the mulch pile, stand the plants in the slice so their roots (or more) are covered, and soak the patootie out of the whole thing. If you can provide yourself with a pile of mulch (shredded bark, whatever is cheap locally) in the fall, and tarp it so it is not a pile of frozen chips in the spring, you’ll have a ready-made heeling in spot above the waterline. If you can do this in a shady spot, perfecto. Or if you have a dark shed with a concrete floor (an unused garage is great), just sling everything in there, water them down, spread said mulch liberally over the root area, water again & shut the door. Dark/cold/damp—pretty much like being in the ground. Then you can dig your holes at a reasonable pace.
Nota bene: don’t use soil for the mulch/heeling in pile; tender new roots will spring into the soil and get broken off when planting. They can’t hang on to a friable mulch and won’t be harmed by being shaken out of it.

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:52:54 +0000

Okay, I feel better now. Maybe my call in the middle of the “PROJECT” kept you from planting the “Southern Gentleman” in the wrong place!! This write-up, assuming that all does go well, should give hope to those of us who really don’t know what to do when plans go awry!

By: Laurie Gano

Laurie Gano — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:50:04 +0000

What a heroic story. Don’t we all order more plants than we can readily cope with? Some friends of mine gave me a wild plum whip that had spent 1 1/2 years in a bucket of water, and it was still alive. On the other hand, our neighbor paid our teenage sons to plant literally hundreds of little trees and then neglected to water them. A handful survived.