Hello again. I'm in Victoria BC and it's still cool here. I have some perennials that have finished flowering and I'd like to move them. Is this still reasonable? I will not have time in the Fall for all of the transplanting I need to do, because I get busy 24/7 in September and October. Does anyone have any advise for me? As I said with 'Bad bug setting up house,' I'm new to all this.
Do your summers ever get really hot? Most areas I would never recommend transplanting in the summer, even if it's not warm yet it could get warm before the plants have a chance to get established. But in your area you'd have a better chance than pretty much anywhere else on being successful with summer transplanting since I don't think your summer temps usually get hot at all. If you want to play it safe though, you might move some now and then move the others early next spring, that way if you do get a heat wave or something that knocks out the ones you transplant now, you'll have more that you can move in the spring.
It's been a cool crappy year, present days included and our temperatures rarely go beyond 25 celcius (80) but I know what your saying--better not to risk it all. Your advise sounds good. I'll move some but leave others. I sent the wrong picture--that was last Fall. It was quite pretty then, but I didn't have a clue what I was looking at. We moved here in August!
If your temps rarely get above 80F you'll probably be OK. Every year I always ignore my own advice and plant/transplant things in the summer, and it's generally not that hard to nurse things through an occasional hot spell of 85-90, it's once it gets over 90F (which it does here quite often!) that it gets harder to nurse along new things that aren't established yet, and that's when I tend to lose things. So if you really hardly ever get over 80 then it's probably a fairly low risk.
I agree with Ecrane, in your area, you will more than likely get away with this task, if you go ahead, make sure you prepare the planting holes before you lift out the plants you want to transplant, that way, you wont have them sitting in the hot weather and their roots drying out while you dig new areas for the plants, you may find this a good time to split up the clumps of perennials into smaller clumps and add some organic matter to the new planting holes at the same time as this will give the plants some feeding and help retain some moisture into the roots, dont cut too much foliage away as you move the plants, but you may have to reduce it a bit so the plants get less stressed as they try to recover, you may also find they go a bit limp looking for a while as this could shock the plants a bit, just make sure you give them a good drink each day for the first week or so, end of season is the best time really to move plants or early spring when you see the new shoots come through the soil, but be watchful at this time of year. As Ecrane said, we all try to outwit our own advice and are lucky on more occasions than not, but it is a big chance if it is an expensive or favourite plant we are dealing with. Good luck. WeeNel.
