Greetings, healthy plant seekers! For sure it may have been raining for the past 2 days. Don't be fooled. This is not enough rain. After so many days and weeks without any moisture, the stress on your plants remains HIGH. This article is dedicated to helping you understand how to help your plants through stressful periods like this one. Drought stress, wind stress, cold stress, heat stress, disease stress, stress from being eaten by animals, including stress from being transplanted ALL take their toll on trees and shrubs. And you thought that your life was stressful!!! "Give 'em water!" Remember the general rule of thumb is an inch of water per day? ESPECIALLY for new transplants for up to a year. It hadn't rained for about two weeks or more. Has it rained 14 inches this past weekend? An inch of water is about 5/8 of a gallon of water per square foot of area. In other words, it is as if you spilled MORE than a half-gallon container, MORE than a two-liter soda pop bottle, of water volume on EVERY SINGLE 12-inch by 12-inch square ALL AROUND YOUR PROPERTY to equal ONE INCH of water!!!! You need MORE than 25,000 gallons per acre. Allow me to emphasize that by writing it out; TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND GALLONS PER ACRE IS NOT QUITE AN INCH OF WATER. Wow. Plants need moisture. The past few weeks have "thirst-stressed," or "drought-stressed" your plants. Our goal is for you to make sure your trees and shrubs receive just the right amount of water. The plants do not need to be drowned, just kept moist, but it takes massive amounts of water to achieve that, doesn't it? I like to use the finger-touch test: Just touch the soil around the base of a particular plant with your finger. If the soil feels moist the plant probably has enough moisture. If the soil is dry and hard, especially if it's dusty, watering is desperately needed. Remember though, the soil should not be waterlogged. Soggy, slushy, mushy, muddy, soil which allows puddles, now that is soil that is too wet for sure. Such long-term waterlogged soil will drown ANY plant except ones from the Okeefenokee Swamp and will kill the root zone. It DEFINITELY IS pretty difficult to overwater most trees and shrubs. Underwatering occurs far more often. Here's the proof of why it was so critical NOT to plant the tree or shrub even an inch too low when you transplanted it in your landscape. New plants are most susceptible to transplant shock when exposed to extreme dry or wet conditions. Is transplant shock unavoidable? Not really! It is very common. Yet, like Ben Franklin's quote about death and taxes, there will ALWAYS be some transplant shock. Like taxes, transplant shock can be minimized, and like death, it can be postponed... Transplant shock can actually continue for YEARS. Trees that have had their roots cut during the transplanting must reestablish an adequate root system before the entire plant can begin normal growth. This can take years, a period in which some "shock" is normal and you may observe stress symptoms. Typically, field-grown trees that are B & B (balled and burlap-wrapped, nope, not bed and breakfasted), or machine harvested, retain ONLY 10%, ONLY ONE TENTH, of their original root system in the soil of the root ball. Ouch. As a rule, the transplant shock period lasts one year for every one inch of stem caliper, the tree trunk diameter. That's why you will very likely get better performance with smaller trees over time than transplanting large caliper trees. Even trees that have been container-grown and could retain 100% of their root system when you pull the base out and do the transplanting WILL suffer some transplant shock. These container-grown trees are susceptible to "root girdling." The roots grow around in strangulating circles. The roots don't venture out into the surrounding ground. Potted, liner trees and shrubs were grown in soft "friendly" container's potting soil and when removed and put into the harsher environment of a new landscape suffer from the huge change. In contrast to B & B or container grown plants, bare-root harvested trees usually have a higher percentage of their roots dug out along with the plant. Bare-root transplants often experience milder transplant shock. However, bare-root transplants can have roots that are twice as long as the height of the seedling out of the ground and therefore, they require root pruning. Bare-rooted trees can dry out faster also and thus can have transplanting problems of their own. *Causes of Transplant Shock* a.) Improper Handling (as in dropping root balls, rolling balls around for long distances instead of using a cart, etc.) b.) Allowing the Roots to Dry c.) Transplanting the Plants to a Poor Quality Site (rocky soil, clay soil, polluted soil, sand soil, no sun, lots of weeds, high ground with no water, etc.) d.) Excess Removal of Roots in Harvesting (which hampers the plant from taking in water and nutrients) What You May See: 1) Overall Stunted Growth 2) Wilting of Leaves 3) Leaf Dropping too Early (even deciduous trees, hardwoods, shouldn't have leaves falling off in June or July...) 4) Leaf Color Changes too Early (in summer, your forsythia shouldn't have brown leaves, your hollies shouldn't have yellow leaves...) 5) Marginal Flowering (for example, if AVERAGE flowers are supposed to be an inch-plus long for your tree, it's an indicator of trouble when you find half-inch flowers...) 6) Twig Die-Back (green twigs should be growing out and up, up and out...) Finally, consider that the factors which have effects on plants in transplanting at the new location may be very different from where the plant was first growing. The sunlight direction and intensity, the wind direction and intensity, the temperatures, the sound level, the trees and shrubs around, etc., all these environmental variables may be in stark contrast. If the plant came right out of a greenhouse and is transplanted in your landscape it will now have environmental variables which are ESPECIALLY DIFFERENT. Always try to buy plants that appear to come from surroundings SIMILAR to your location. That is why I always prefer "field grown" nursery stock, regardless of the root loss in the B & B process. I feel that these plants have a better survival rate because the environmental variable extremes are kept lowest. Visit Our Website Lets hope we continue to receive more timely rains. Sincerely, Bill and Marge Hirst
About the Author
Bill and Marge haqve a large tree and nursery located in Milan Pa. You can visit there web site at http://www.seedlingsrus.com/MilanHirst or call and ask to speak to Keith 570 561 8016
