How To Plant Perennials
First Things First
The first is that there is little point trying to put a ten dollar plant in a two dollar hole. When you plant perennials, make the hole big. A rough rule of thumb is to make the hole at least three times as wide as the pot.
This allows the young developing roots to go out into well-aerated soil and find their way easily. If you have heavy clay soils, then you have to make the hole even larger because heavy clay is hard for new roots to penetrate.
Peat Moss?
When you plant perennials, do you add lots of peat moss to the planting hole?
In a word, No.
Adding peat moss to planting holes for any plant – tree, shrub or perennial – only creates a small basket of super-soil around the plant roots. The plants do indeed grow well in this super soil for the first year but after that, the roots do not want to go out into the harder ground so they turn around inside the super-soil. In effect, you are creating a root bound plant in your planting hole. They will eventually send roots out in this harder soil but the plant won’t grow much (after the first wonderful season) until it does. It is better to create an aerated soil as in the point above by digging a bigger hole.
What Do You Add
Do you add anything to the soil when you plant perennials? Absolutely. I always add one shovel of compost to the soil that I’m going to use to fill against the plant roots. (In other words, I dig the hole and make a pile of soil. To that pile of soil I mix in one shovel of compost. Then when I fill the hole again, the compost and soil go into the hole together.) I don’t add bonemeal but you can if you like.
I never add fertilizer to the planting soil. I don’t want to plant perennials and then give them too much to eat -forcing big top growth. I want them to develop strong roots first so they will then produce good tops and flowers afterwards (perhaps only in their second year).
Watering
I water the plants. Heavily. I muddify them in and ensure there are no bare roots that are not covered in watery mud. This soaking is one of the greatest tips to plant perennials that you’ll get. Ensuring the roots are well covered and damp gives them a much better chance to become established and grow quickly.
I maintain my plants by watering at least once a week for the first month This weekly watering is a heavy soaking, designed to get water right to the bottom of the roots.
Pots
Note that when you plant perennials, you usually start out with one of several kinds of pots and soils.
If the plant is in a plastic pot and the soil looks kind of peaty and the pot is rather light –you have an artificial soil (most container grown perennials are in artificial soil). These plants will take more water after planting than other plants. You can not let the newly planted perennial dry out. This might mean you have to water every second day for the first two weeks and then twice a week for the next two weeks and then weekly for a month to ensure the soil and roots do not dry out.
If the perennial is bare root from a catalog supplier, it is vitally important that you do not allow those roots to dry out. Get them into the ground as soon as you receive them. Muddify them in and repeat every few days.
If the plant perennial was in a fibre pot, it was likely spring dug and then potted up for sale. If you buy it in the spring, it will not likely have a good root system in that pot and if you disturb the roots – they will be unhappy. Generally, with this kind of pot I dig a big hole first. Then I plant perennials by cutting off the bottom of the pot with a very sharp knife. Carefully sitting the perennial on the bottom of the hole so as not to disturb the soil or roots, I slit the sides of the pot. I do not remove the pot but backfill against the sides. I do remove the rim by breaking it so none of it shows above the soil line to act as a wick and dry out the rest of the pot.
As long as the bottom of the pot is gone and the sides are slit, the pot will disappear in a few years and the perennial roots will grow down or through the sides of the pot.
It is important not to let the pot dry out until this plant is fully established. If the pot dries out, it can kill the roots trying to grow through it. Note that if you purchase a spring potted plant in the fall, all of these instructions are irrelevant as the roots should be well-established and you can plant perennials with ease. Check with the garden centre to find when the fibre pots were planted.
And those are the simple rules that will let you plant perennials with the best of gardeners. Dig big holes, add compost, water well and enjoy the process.
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