Shock the monkey, not the plant

I love having a positive outlook on life and everything that I do. My garden is right up there; it makes me happy and I get to see the results of my hard work. I'll be honest though, there is something that gets me down.

Transplanting often times shocks plants and they look very sad and often dying for a few days or even a few weeks. There are a couple of ways to prevent this though.

1.) When digging up and moving:

The root or root ball is where the nutrients and water are going to be pulled into most plants. When you're digging up that bush or flower, be sure to know how wide around it you should be entering the soil.

For example: I was gifted a euphorbia from my neighbor who is putting in a vegetable garden where her flowers all were. The plants around the base were pretty dense, so I tried to get as close to where I imagined the root ball stopping as possible. As luck would have it, I trimmed the roots a tad bit too much. I transplanted it to my garden to the perfect spot, watered it well, made sure it was secure, and then watched the leaves and flowers slump, whither and fall of the stalks. Not awesome. Some out of season pruning, a little extra rich soil added to the base and some love and attention have turned it around. There is new growth and the euphorbia is coming back to life slowly, but surely.

2.) When re potting:

If you've ever lived in a house and then moved into an apartment, it's tough to adjust, right? Well, it's the same concept for plants. While there are some plants out there that like to be root-bound, most that you'll be moving from pot to pot or ground to pot do better with a little more room to grow. Also, some plants do better with soggy soil and some need it to be more dry, so take than into account.

For example: I had an unfortunate accident with some potted violets that were struggling. A windstorm happened and knocked the smallest of the pots off the ledge and it shattered in the driveway. While this sucked, I took the sad little violet and put it in a larger pot...and watched it take off. The new pot didn't drain as quickly and it had room for growth. Today, it's a crazy li'l violet and is rockin' the suburbs!

3.) When separating from a bunch:

Take a few minutes to do a little research about the plant that you're getting ready to thin out. Some plants love to be separated and thrive with the stimulation. Others show shock, just like euphorbia did. If you can find out a little about the roots of the plant you're going to work with, you may be able to work a little magic and it'll never know that anything happened.

For example: The iris is a great flower because of how well it does in both sun and shade (an really acidic soil). Its rhizomes (think ginger root) are right at the surface and spread horizontally, which makes it really easy to see where to pull up the plant from. You can look at a bunch, see where the narrowest part is, see how deep the off-shooting smaller roots go, and then successfully break it away from the rest of the pack. This is the case with the traditional Purple Iris, but other varieties may be a little more, shall we say, mysterious below the soil. Anyways, once you've been able to separate some irises from the bunch, it's pretty easy to dig a small ditch just deep enough to fit the small roots and the rhizome, and then cover them with soil and pack it down. Keep them good and moist for a few days and they should do just swimmingly. If your irises do shock, just trim back the spear-like leaves and in no time you'll see fresh ones shooting up from between the old ones.

I hope this is helpful. I've had some amazing luck and made some horrible mistakes, so I hope that you can learn from what I've already done.