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| This is just ridiculous... |
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| ...and it was after I had removed all of this. |
Most vegetable gardening books will recommend sweet potatoes as an easy crop, provided you have the growing season to allow them to reach maturity (that's 4-6 months). Even with a shorter growing season, many people like to use them in mixed container plantings as an annual ornamental. They are easy to start and propagate (my planter box monster was started from a few stem cuttings stuck in the ground) and they tolerate a wide range of soil conditions and a fair amount of neglect once established. But once they get going, the books rightfully warn, you have to practice some tough love or they will take over the garden. And how.
My sweet potato vine (okinawan purple potatoes, a local delight) has escaped the boundaries of the planter and made its way into the adjacent bushes, through the rock garden and almost out to the street. Each weekend I go out there and vow to do a severe pruning, then when the time comes for action, I can't help but admire the way it fills in the blank spaces, and really it isn't bothering the peppers so much, and I don't cook with sage that much anyway...it seems like every week I take less and less.
To add insult to injury, despite their greedy use of space and sun, they don't seem to be, well, producing any food. I decided to dig up just one of the plants a week or so ago, since we're at about the four month mark. It had an impressive tap root, extending at least eighteen inches into the soil, but no tuber. I suppose they just need more time, but in the meantime I'm so weak-willed that my rock garden is going to be one big sweet potato doing battle with the only formidable opponents, the unkillable vincas and my giant man-size non-blooming marigold.
Aside from maintenance, such as it is, I've dialed down the gardening activity for the time being for a number of reasons. I've been working my tail off at my day job and remembering why I don't work outside the home 40 hours a week anymore. It's been a struggle just to get dinner on the table and keep the house in some kind of order when all I want to do is go to sleep on the couch when I get home at night. If I didn't have a family, I'd totally be living on chips and salsa and spending the evenings watching old Scrubs episodes and making up names for the dust bunnies multiplying on the floor. Aside from that, we are about to head to the mainland for 2 1/2 weeks, so I've had to restrain myself from planting anything that will need daily attention in the short term. Chris has been busy relieving some of this maintenance burden with a combination of PEX tubing, soaker hoses and drip irrigation (an investment of time and money worthwhile to any serious gardener). There have also been a few distractions. One is the large pile of rocks we had dumped in the yard last Saturday. The last couple of evenings, instead of lying zombie-like on the couch, I've been plodding back and forth across the front yard, moving rocks from the pile to my borders. Oh, I have a wagon, but I prefer to take them one by one, slowly carrying a rock over to the flower bed, placing it in its new home, then staring for a minute, contemplating. Then I wander back over to the pile to look for just the right rock to use next. This ritual is strangely soothing.
I've also been turning my sights to the interior of the house, thinking about finally remodeling / kid-proofing the bathroom that has already seen a fair bit of abuse, which has led to an interest in laying tile, which of course meant how-to books, which then spurred an interest in resurfacing the lanai to get practice before tackling the bathroom, and then I heard a piece on NPR about pervious concrete and...well, you get the idea. It's just how I roll, baby.
But my REAL obsession the last few days has been finding a way to add pharmaceutical caffeine to baked goods. Let's just say I'm tired of going to the bathroom all the time, and we have a long flight ahead of us next week. It turns out caffeine pills break down really well with a mortar and pestle. But I digress. The point is I've been distracted and I'm trying to restrain myself from planting anything new for now.
However, addiction is addiction, and when the neighbor offered me her potted patio plants when she moved away, I accepted them sight unseen, figuring (ha ha) I can easily freecycle whatever I don't keep. My inheritance, it turns out, has played out more like a rescue mission than a gift. "They all need repotted," she warned, "and some of them are seriously root bound." What I got was a motley assortment of brown plants with more roots in their pots than soil. Mind you, when we moved here from the mainland, we had to give up all our plants, save a few cuttings that Chris managed to import and propagate. The oldest and most important plants went to friends of the family at my insistence, and the rest went to a very nice lady who sounded like she would treat them with the same love that we (mostly) had. My point being that I get attached, and I understand the desire to make sure the babies go to good homes. But some of these....even I would have composted.
Still, they all had a spark of life and by virtue of surviving the obvious neglect at all, I figured they must be pretty tough. At first I just stuck the pots here and there, based on my best guess at the necessary conditions, but the wind kept blowing the top-heavy planters over. This morning I decided to transplant a few into our back garden, which needed some tall plants to fill a bit of space behind the lower growing taro. This area is blessed with a soaker hose and a recent reworking of the soil, so I think they will have a chance even in our absence.
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| Already looking better. |
Oh, and I broke just about every rule of transplanting in the process. Just because I have a gardening blog doesn't mean I'm not a nitwit, I'm just a nitwit with a blog. Anyway, here are some guidelines for transplanting/repotting success:
- Choose your location carefully. One of my new charges is a bone dry anthurium that had been kept in full sun. I only recognized it because it had a few shriveled blooms. The sad part was, when I pulled it out of the pot, it still had the tag that said "shade, keep soil moist". Many plants at garden centers will come with these helpful, if minimal, instructions. Heed them. If you are not so lucky, go home and do your research about the growing requirements of a particular plant before you buy. And be realistic about how much maintenance you have time for or care to do. The internet is a rich resource for plant care information, and you can find help for just about anything you want to grow with a quick google search. Use it!
- Potted plants need lots and lots of water because they can't tap into the groundwater, and pots dry out quickly in hot weather, especially in direct sun. The smaller the container, the more quickly it dries. The healthy looking six packs of marigolds at the store are probably being watered more than once a day; if you don't have time for that, and who does, wait to buy until a day you will have time for planting.
- Try to do your planting in the early morning or evening, and not in the heat of day, especially if you will be working in direct sun.
- Gather your supplies: shovel, hand trowel, compost, potting soil if applicable, water, the new pot if repotting, and pruners.
- Pre-dig your hole or prepare the recipient pot. For transplants into the ground, follow the guidelines (which you researched, right?) for this particular plant. Sometimes you will luck out and it will be on the tag. Generally speaking, you want as a bare minimum a hole at least equal in diameter and depth of the root ball. For some applications, notably fruit trees, you need an even bigger hole, and some plants, such as tomatoes, appreciate being planted deeply, even covering one or two sets of leaves (they respond to this treatment by putting out extra roots, a big asset to thirsty tomatoes) while others need to be planted with the root ball level with the ground. For repotting, put enough potting soil in the bottom to have the top of the root ball at the appropriate level. Keep in mind that you will want to leave some space at the top - in other words, the soil level should not be even with the lip of the pot unless you want to make a mess every time you water. Do not put gravel in the bottom of a planter. Conventional wisdom dictates that adding some sort of permeable layer like gravel will improve drainage; however, evidence-based research has shown that this actually discourages drainage by creating a pot that is shallower and wider instead of deep and narrow. I don't care what mom told you, don't do it. Work in some compost, unless you are planting a tree.
- Please note that we have made it all the way to step six and you have not so much as touched your plant yet. Transplanting is all about the preparation. The actual transfer is, and should be, very quick. Roots hate to be out in the hot, dry air. With adequate preparation you can give your plants the least transplant shock possible and therefore the best chance at survival. Now that you have your destination prepared and plenty of water on hand, I give you permission to remove your plant from its pot. Try to be gentle - sometimes plants are so root bound that the container will need to be destroyed so as not to disturb the roots - avoid this by not purchasing root bound plants or letting your own get that way before repotting (unless its a species that likes that sort of thing).
- Once removed, correct any root problems. Root bound plants will often have roots winding around the edge of the pot, forming a circle. This can lead to eventual strangulation, especially in trees, and should be corrected. Try to gently pull the roots loose and straighten them out. Cut if necessary. Go ahead and spread the roots out a little to encourage healthy development in the ground. Some authors recommend immersing the roots in a bucket of water to work with them, and certainly this should be done of problems are severe and will need several minutes to correct, but I rarely bother.
- Now get that plant into its hole. Back fill with the native soil or potting mix. Water thoroughly. This will cause the dirt to settle, and you will likely need to add more soil. Water thoroughly again.
- Mulch. A few inches deep is very good, but don't mulch trees within a few inches of the trunk.
- Watering is critical to recently disturbed roots, even with so-called drought tolerant plants (with the exception of portulaca, I don't think its possible to kill that stuff). You will discover that most authors are reluctant to recommend a specific schedule for watering, because the answer is...it depends. That said, I give a good dose of water daily (sometimes more frequently for containers) for at least the first ten days. If your substrate has halfway decent drainage, this won't cause problems, and under watering is probably the leading cause of transplant failure. This will give the roots a chance to get established, then you can back off a bit. Drought-tolerant perennials generally do not become truly so for a year or two; until then they will need regular watering. Over-watering, however, is harmful in the long term and can cause root rot in some plants, especially in poor draining substrate. So there you go, my own vague recommendation for how much to water.
