With the exception of those of us whose gardens were damaged by hail recently, May was uncommonly kind to gardeners this year. Moisture was plentiful and, for the most part, we’ve been spared the roller-coaster temperature swings that too often typify spring along the Front Range.
Consequently, transplant casualties have been mercifully rare. But of course, our luck could still change. Generally, the first two weeks in June are mild. By the end of the month we experience some of the most scorching temperatures of the entire summer. A weather chart might indicate otherwise, but it’s not how hot it gets but how long it stays hot that affects new plants. The latter half of June is often virtually cloudless. Mornings heat up quickly and it stays hot until the sun sets. Transplants fry.
In many respects, it’s easier to deal with heat when the entire garden is brand new. If you have sensibly grouped together plants with like needs you can water the whole gang as a unit. In an established garden like mine, however, where plants go in higgledy-piggledy, their initial watering needs may differ dramatically from their companions.
Seedlings, no matter how xeric, may need a drink once or twice a day. Since you can’t set out a sprinkler that often without risking drowning everything else in the garden, you have no choice but to monitor and care for the new plants individually.
I buy plants during the Mother’s Day push, harden them off for a week or two, and then get them in the ground just as the hot weather arrives. My solution is to walk around the garden twice a day checking on transplants, watering can in hand. And this works – to a point.
When you’re on your hands and knees hacking holes in the ground for a four-pack of chocolate flowers you think it’s impossible that you would forget where you planted them. Two flats of other treasures later, though, and the chocolate flowers are completely forgotten. If I don’t discover them again when I make my twice-daily round, it’s goodbye chocolate flowers.
As a reminder, I’m using those orange flags that come 100 to a pack from home improvement stores – the ones used for marking sprinkler system installations and underground utilities. Each new transplant, from pansies to 3-foot tall shrubs and head-high trees, gets its own flag. The flags stay in place until the plant is established and growing well, occasionally up to a year.
The flags have been a lifesaver, decreasing my annual kill rate dramatically. In my crowded garden it’s nigh on impossible to remember where I’ve put every one of the hundreds of transplants I add each spring. The flags take away the guesswork.
Marcia Tatroe is author of the forthcoming “Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West,” $29.95, Johnson Books.
