Travel in the summer is dangerous for me. This year, as I drove through Fallon in the middle of July, my car developed a mysterious pull to the left, and came to a complete stop in front of Workman's Nursery, where plants were on sale at half price.
Three flats later, I managed to get the car back on the road, only to need another emergency stop at Flower Tree Nursery, where six gallon-sized pots finally stabilized the car enough to make it home.
Like sufferers of any other addiction, those of us who buy plants face the consequences the next day when we sober up. In this case, the consequences were pretty dire. Temperatures were slated to be in the hundreds for the foreseeable future. I also wanted to set some of the plants on the west side of the house, on bare, compacted dirt where I'd mixed lime plaster the summer before. Until I saw some weeds coming in, I'd assumed the soil was sterile.
Fortunately, I have enough self-control to buy tough plants. I've convinced a few friends that I'm a good gardener simply by choosing plants that are impossible to kill. But even my tough plants were going to need a little tender care to survive these conditions.
As soon as I got them home, I watered my new acquisitions well and put them in a shady place. Even the toughest plants in pots appreciate a little shade in hot weather, especially if they are root-bound, as many of these were.
I planted in the evening. I know conventional wisdom says to plant in the morning, but I wanted to give the plants as much time to adapt as possible before the extreme heat hit. I dug the holes wider than the plants, and just a bit deeper.
This next step is extreme, and it makes my gardening mother wince when she sees me do it, but it usually works for me. I untangle the roots, gently if possible, and roughly if necessary - and it's usually necessary. If the roots spiral around, the plant may live for a while, but it will usually die. I've occasionally taken half the roots, and had the plant do just fine.
I'm a cheapskate, so I often buy perennials like columbines in six-packs. They'll sometimes be so root-bound the small root-hairs form a cloth around the root-ball. When that happens, I scratch the roots with the little plastic tag that comes with the plants, working from the bottom of the root up toward the plant, until I've gotten most of the cloth off. Otherwise, those roots will actually resist water.
Then I spray as much of the potting soil off the roots as I can, even when the plant isn't root-bound at all. Although it's fine to amend the soil for annuals and garden vegetables, I never do for perennials or trees. Unless the plant is unusually vigorous, the roots will have a tendency to stay in that nice pocket where living is easy, because of the difference in soil structure between the planting hole and the surrounding soil. This is particularly true if you've been parking your truck on that surrounding soil, as I'd been doing.
After I dig the hole, I put a little water in it. When that's drained out, I spread my roots out in the hole, making sure to keep those roots moist at all times. I fill the hole halfway with the dirt from the hole, and water thoroughly. I fill the rest of the hole with the native soil. Then I top dress with manure or compost, and water once again. Food for the plant will leach down.
For the first days after I set out new plants, I always water morning and night, and if it's really hot, I'll water during the day as well. Despite conventional wisdom, it's fine to water plants during the heat of the day. Especially on new plants, I'll often give them a little bit of a bath to give them a break from the heat. I do want to make sure that the plant itself is dry when the sun goes down, to prevent fungus.
The plants I'd chosen were double-tough; agastache, catmint, lavender, sedums, gaura, and groundcover veronicas and snow-in-summer, and some snapdragons. But most of these plants had major surgery on their roots-and the thermometer was hitting the hundreds.
Fortunately, I'd been to Poke-and-Peek the week before, and I'd cleaned them out of flat sheets. So I gathered up lawn chairs, buckets, sawhorses, and whatever else I could find to hold the sheets up off the plants. I draped sheets over the supports. The sheets allowed some filtered light in, and when it got hot, I sprayed them down with water.
The air under the wet sheets was twenty or thirty degrees cooler than the outside air. I know - I checked. I checked for at least thirty minutes.
I kept waiting for someone to ask why I had sheets in the yard. I planned to lift one eyebrow, cool-like, and say drily, "Well, it is a flowerbed." But nobody asked. I hate when I waste a good joke.
All the plants survived, except one snapdragon that my nephew Bobby backed over. But then, you have to expect a little death loss when you set out plants in the middle of July.
Especially if you set them out in what used to be the driveway.
When Teresa Howell isn't hitting the sheets, she teaches English at Great Basin College in Winnemucca.[[In-content Ad]]
