saving the garden

I have posted before in the brugs and canna forums about building swamps to keep plants looking lush and saving water. I thought that I would show you the rescue that I did tonight when I got home, the brugs are just getting far to stressed with the relentless heat , that they spend all their vigour flopping and reciving after I water them, so I have dug trenches, lined them with black heavy duty plastic and then refilled them with the local dirt and added water. Here are cannas and brugs 1 week after transporting to the swamp, revived and lush , taken at 5.pm today.

Here are the brugs at the same time about 10' away under the trees and i had watered them last night.

and another, now way at this rate are they going to flower any time soon

and here is the new swamp that I finished tonight with the sad collection of exhausted brugs. Have run out of dirt to fill it right up so I made heaped mounds for each plant and added the water, should do for tonight. I will post tomorow on the progress of the rescue mission.

Good idea Rita

The second and third pics are the ones not in the new trench?
I have a soaker hose on mine and let it run about 6 hours twice a week.
We are now on water rationing....I can't even remember when the last time it rained.

Of note in the 3 shot of the brugs the plants that are looking OK are the Daturas, tough old birds.

The first shot is of an established bog/ trench, and the last is of the bog/ trench that I dug tonight. The ones in between are what I came home tonight and decided I had to do something or loose them

So you have basically made a bog plant out of your brugs! Good idea. I only have a couple but they are repeatly looking sad and loosing leaves. May have to do the same, thanks for sharing your results.

Rita, were the plants that you moved bareroot or were they potted.
Josephine.

All bare rooted some were so dry that the soil just crumbled as I forked them out of the ground . The plan was to get a nice root ball but that didnt happen. The large one up against the house didn't have much at all almost just bare root. Moving them when all the sap is in their feet and not their leaves, makes the recovery easier and quicker. I will start to feed them next week with alfalfa and sea weed and then they should start to power on. Every time that they got a flush of flower buds they shrivelled and dropped of.

Can you mix some compost and manure in the soil, it sounds like it needs some ammending to help retain water.

I must say you were a brave lady, moving those plants bareroot in the worst of the heat.
I hope it all works out great for you and the plants, will you have to move them again when the weather changes? or do you plan to leave them there permanently.

Will the brugs be happy in a bog situation in Houston where we get the really heavy rains quite often? I thought they would drown. I have mine next to a fountain and it get frequest water from the garden hose, plus the wind often blows extra water from the fountain on it's root system. It's still wilted a bit during the hottest afternoon sun. I've only had one flush of about 6 blooms on it this year and then nothing, so there's something I'm not doing right. I've applied osmocote, water and miralce grow frequently, but no blooms.

Another scorcher today and here the are at the same time as yester days pics. I sit the root ball above the waterline and cover the rest of the plant up with soil. The plants roots can then travel down into the moist soil. I don't bring the plastic all the way to the top of the bed, I just want to provide a moist resevour ounder their feet so that they can draw on it as needed. To avoid over flooding I raise the beds above the plastic line and line the beds with logs bricks etc.

Well that sounds like a good plan to me, although quite a bit of work, but,
what will gardeners not do to save our beloved plants?

Rita, you're a genius ! I learned a lot here. Thanks.

I water my Brugs every day and feed them too. Still no blooms on mine either. Mine have faired well in this hot weather. Much better than I expected. Mine get some shade in the evening when it's the hottest. But I still don't have any blooms. :(
Lin

my daturas are even wilting. I water stuff but I just can't get enough. My poor garden looks so dry.

Trouble with watering in this temp even if its at night, the surounding trees are so thirsty that they take most of what you water. I was watering as well and when I dug mine up they were dry and dusty no evidence of my watering and the roots were pretty superficial.

Adding a bit of dishwashing lotion to the water helps
to break up the tension of the soil, and will allow the
soil around your plants to absorb more moisture.

Yep know that one but my brugs and cannas got beyond that and i wanted lush on one water a week, the bog will do that.

I'm about to build some new beds....and I think I'll build a
"bog bed" and give it a try! Pretty neat idea Rita! Our brugs & Datura have been wilting in the afternoons....just like everyone else seems to be....
and this happens in spite of a couple of waterings a day...same thing with the cannas....as long as we are
consistent with our watering on the blistering days...they rebound by evening and look great in the mornin'. We were blessed to get 3" of rain yesterday...all in about an hour & half's time. Thought I heard an earthly sigh of relief!

Go make mud its fun.

Hello,

as to Josephine's comment about moving plants in the heat of summer, I would like to share a tip from a very knowledgeable bonsai person. He said that the best time to dig plants in Texas is in the hottest part of summer, because the plants are dormant. Personally, I agree with him. I notice that once temperature reaches 90 and above, my plants are just not doing anything. I can water all I want, nothing grows. These last few days when the weather cools down to about 85, new leaves are sprouting and plants are looking a lot better. Just the weather and rain doing their magic, with no help from me.....:)

Well, I didn't know that, I allways thought that if you dug up plants when they are stressed, it would be additional stress, but who knows?

Hmmmm,...I've transplanted during the summer with varied success..probably 50-50..but the successful transplants were small plants (so the roots were minimally disturbed) and they were kept from direct exposure to the sun and required special pampering (water, superthrive, sessions of coaxing,....pleading).

I've considered watering during the hottest parts of summer as mostly "stress relief" for those plants that need it...just to survive with no expectations of growth.

Don't plants adjust their metabolism - growth cycles according to their environment-climate, etc.
Makes sense that,....like during the winter when so many plants become dormant to survive the extremes....
during the extremes of summer....plants would go into a "dormancy"...or cessation of growth activity to survive.
I'm no expert by any means....but I've always had the understanding that summer heat is so detrimental to a successful transplant....that it's best avoided.Yes,...I've had minimal success doing it....but, if there is
information about transplanting in this heat,....so that a successful move is accomplished....I'd like to know those details....for sure! Interesting!

an update on the plants, one lost some of its leaves, that one is nearly 4' and to date i didn't loose any in the shift. My impression when I shifted them was that they were so dry including the root ball that no shock was evident, I think a plant needs to be pretty hydrated to go into much of a shock. Theses plants were not in an active growing phase, they were shut down, it is nearly 2 weeks now and there is new growth, I have covered the beds with hay as well, here are some recent picks

some more picks

Hello,

the way it was explained to me was like this. Digging up plants in the hot summer is exactly like digging plants in late winter or early spring. Most bonsai people prefer to do it in Febr/ March. The difference is that, esp. in Texas, after the long summer, we get a rather long period of warm weather usually lasting into late Nov/early Dec. So, plants have longer period of time to recover and "grow". Plants dug up in spring have shorter "ideal" growing condition because our hot summer lasts very long.

It goes without saying that tranplanted plants need to be "pampered" (superthrive), put in shade etc., but it had to be done anyway, whether you do it in summer or winter.

WillisTXGarden, don't know what kind of plants you were transplanting, but bonsai people work most of the time with hardy evergreen or deciduous plants. When the plant is dug up, many branches are removed, so that the part above the ground "matches" the size of the root ball. This is done so that the roots feed only a smaller size of plant.

I am not so good at explaining, but I hope this helps a bit.

Thanks SitaB.....very interesting, indeed! This is why I've enjoyed DG so much! So much to learn!

I'll be trying more transplanting in summer!

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Rita - I'd say they're lookin' pretty good!

I think the key to transplanting in the heat of ths summer is the size of the plant, and the pruning you are willing to do on it. As sita said, "When the plant is dug up, many branches are removed, so that the part above the ground "matches" the size of the root ball. This is done so that the roots feed only a smaller size of plant." In transplanting larger things, much of the rootball is lost, and the plant is further stressed. I've had almost instant death from transplanting in the summer - done only because it had to be done. All things being equal, fall is the best time. Unless it is a tropical, of course. That has been my experience, anyway.

Ceejaytown,

when you lost a lot of the rootball,basically you have to remove equal amount of branches to compensate for the lost of roots. Whether the procedure is successful or not also depends on the care and expertise given the plants afterwards, not to mention a bit of luck....:)

I agree with you that for tropicals it would be a lot easier. What I mentioned above was procedure followed by some bonsaiist. I know a member of the Bonsai Society of Dallas who cut down a 24' trident maple to 4', transplanted it to his backyard, nursed it for 4 long years, put it in a bonsai pot. Last time I heard he donated the bonsai to the National Arboretum in Washington.

Didn't mean to hijack the thread, just want to mention what some people will and can do with trees.

Sita

BTW, just curious what kind of tree did you have to transplant?