Transplanting Plants - Without Killing Them

 

 

My Grandmother had the most beautiful flower and vegetable garden.  I would come home with a huge bouquet from her garden.  She had peonies, iris, and any other flower you could think of in her garden. 

            She would ask me if I wanted a start for my own garden and of course the answer was an excited yes.  If was then that I first learned how to transplant without killing my new plants.

            The first thing she would do would be to have me get some newspaper, lay it out in layers and then wet them down with the hose.  I would have a few piles of wet newspaper around the lawn when she would dig around the plants she was going to give me.  She would dig down around the plant on all four sides before trying to uproot the plant.  The least amount of root disturbance the better. 

            She would then dig around the plant again until it came up easily and bring it over to the newspaper and put it in the middle of the wet paper.  I would wrap the newspaper around my newly dug plants then wet it down again with the hose. 

            When I transport the plants home I didn’t always get them in the ground right away so I would keep the newspaper wet until I was able to transplant them.