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SIMPLE PLANTING PROJECT TURNS INTO 3-HOUR MARATHON
I've learned there's no such thing as a simple gardening project. It always seems to turn into something more complicated.
Take last weekend, for example. I went outside to plant portulaca seedlings in the garden next to my driveway. I had started the portulaca (also called moss rose) from seed in late winter. The tiny plants were nearly the last of hundreds of transplants to find a summertime home.
The driveway flowerbed needed some work before the portulaca could be placed in the ground. As I began pulling out larger weeds, I discovered numerous self-seeded rudbeckia plants, along with several healthy clumps of clausa hosta -- an attractive but fast-spreading hosta that needs boundaries.
I decided to carefully dig out all the rudbeckia and transplant them in another garden that contains a collection of prairie flowers.
I also dug out the clumps of hosta and set them aside for relocation under my river birch and white birch trees. Last summer, I removed the sod and formed large rings of mulch around the two birch trees with the intention of moving hosta there, and now seemed to be a good time to complete that project.
As I muscled the spade into the ground to unearth the hosta, resistance on the shovel blade sent a signal to my brain to step down a little harder with my foot. The resistance gave way. I had just succeeded in severing the soaker hose I buried last year to deliver water to plants at their root zone.
A buried soaker hose that's been cut in half isn't going to do much soaking so I spent some time yanking out the cut sections.
Back to the transplanting project. When I transplant, I like to use two 5-gal. pails -- an empty pail to collect the soil (usually clay) that I remove as I dig new plant holes, and a second pail filled with a soil mix I blend from equal parts composted sheep manure, sterile top soil, and sphagnum peat moss.
As I went to fill one of the pails with soil mix, I discovered that I had emptied the soil storage containers for a previous planting job. So, I removed the rudbeckia and hostas from my wheelbarrow and pushed it to my compost bins where my soil mix ingredients are stored. I mixed a new batch in the wheelbarrow, filled the empty pail and stored the rest.
Back at the original site, I reloaded the rudbeckia and hosta clumps into the wheelbarrow, tossed in the spade, empty pail and the pail-full of soil mix, and headed for the prairie garden. As I finished placing the rudbeckia in the ground, I remembered several additional healthy clumps of clausa hosta growing where I didn't want them in a raised vegetable garden 30 feet away. I dug them out and added them to the hosta in the wheelbarrow and headed for the birch trees.
The hosta went into the mulched ground under the birches with no problem and looked terrific in their new home. Only problem, the birches are right next to another small garden that I now noticed had a large void in the middle due to winter dieback of a clump of ornamental grass. Something definitely was needed to fill that space, I concluded. How about that spindly chokeberry shrub I planted six years ago too far under the shade of the giant basswood tree? Good ideaÖmay as well move it right now while I'm at this end of the yard.
At this point, if you're still tracking with my "simple project," I've got newly planted rudbeckia, hosta and chokeberry in three different sites and none of the plants has been watered, so I carry water to ensure their happiness in their new sites.
I returned to the driveway garden where it all began, the flats of portulaca waiting patiently in their plastic six-pack containers.
The space still wasn't ready for transplanting. More weeds had to be removed and the holes from the vacated rudbeckia and hosta needed to be filled with extra soil mix.
Finally, I had the soil surface weed-free and level, ready for the patient portulaca. I lovingly placed them in the ground, finishing this 15-minute job just as my watch chimed 12 noon -- I had started this marathon before 9 a.m.
Oh, did I mention that I also pulled several pesky dandelions here and there in-between the other projects?
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PUTTING DOWN ROOTS:
A Delightful Blend of
Gardening Wisdom, Wit
and Whimsy
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by Cliff Johnson |
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