How to Transplant Shrubs
with
Charlie Siegchrist
Having second thoughts about the way your shrubs look in your yard? Moving them to a new location might do the trick. Learn how to transplant your shrubs so they'll stay healthy and abundant.
Transcript: How to Transplant Shrubs
Hi, I'm Charlie Siegchrist for About.com Home and Garden, and today we are going to be transplanting a lilac shrub.Dig Around the Shrub
The procedure is similar for any shrub you undertake to remove. The tool we use is a nursery spade - not the square bottom. And the space, we insert not straight up and down but at a slight angle. And we will aim our spade in such a way that it is heading for the bottom of the plant and the center of the plant. We want this root ball to be entirely intact as one unit.So we take the spade and thrust it in, move to the next spot where it overlaps the previous slice by half an inch or so, and you make a single thrust down toward the center as we go.
Method for Removing Larger Shrubs
This is a small plant and at this point it would be possible to lift it, like this, and pop it out of the ground. For sake of instruction, though, let's pretend it's not such a small plant. Our next move would be to cut a trench all the way around the plant. If this were a big guy, this is what we would have to do. This we can wiggle, because this soil we are going to remove and basically expose the root ball that we just cut. We want to expose the sides of the root ball, and what we do then is essentially diaper the plant.Wrap the Plant in Burlap
This is a burlap square, and any of you local garden centers should be able to furnish the burlap square. Take the square and fold it up like this, halfway across, and we would tip the plant back, like this, onto the fulcrum of the cone that we cut at the bottom.Fold the Burlap Around the Shrub
And we slide this burlap in to the point where our folded section is a little better than half way through, and then we tip the plant the other way and unfurl the burlap ,and then the root ball of the lilac is resting in the middle of the square, and we thread one corner and the opposite corner through and we raise the plant, we snug it up, and we make a square knot.A square knot, the first side goes over and under, and we pull that tights, and then we go with the same end under and over and we have a square knot. So that gets tied off. And then we take the two remaining corners and have them join up, and again, this corner over and under and tighten it up, and then under and over and tighten that, and then we have a package in which we can transport this plant, without damaging the roots at all.
Replanting the Shrub
When it is time to set the plant in its new hole, simply place it and one of the glories of the square knot is, you take one of the ears of it and snap it back, and release it so that you can take it apart easily. And the burlap gets rolled down, the burlap can stay in the hole after the transplanting. Just curl it out of the way. Make sure the new roots are not going to get involved in it. It will simply rot over a period of a few years in the soil. And then it is a matter of bringing in new soil up around the plant.Thanks for watching. To learn more, visit us at homegarden.about.com on the Web. See you there.