Planting
The following instructions are for transferring a plant from a container to your garden. When you get done, take a picture and send it to us at landscapealaska@gci.net. When we get a few submissions, we'll add them to a page on this Web site.
- Find the perfect location.
- Peel away the competing vegetation.
- Dig your hole twice as wide as the can, but no deeper. Pile the dirt tidily as you dig.
- Add lime, fertilizer, chicken manure and whatever compost you have to the piled-up dirt and mix well.
- Remove the plant from the can without breaking it; support the root ball with your hands.
Note: Never haul a plant around by its trunk. - Place the plant in the hole.
- Rotate the plant so you can see its prettiest face from the best vantage point. If you want to tilt it towards yourself so you see the top rather than the side, do so now.
- Shovel the mixed soil back around the root ball, pausing at the halfway point to add some water and pack it down, and then filling it to the level of the surrounding soil.
- Just before filling the hole to the top, add the time-release fertilizer packets. Add one pack for a plant in a 1-gallon can, 3 for a plant in a 3-gallon can, and so on. Place the packets one inch under the soil surface.
- Make a watering basin at the edge of the root ball, not the hole. The roots will not take up water from the surrounding soil until they grow out into it, so the original root ball will have to be watered, probably on a daily basis, all summer.
- Water the plant well, and keep it up.
