Moving Plants on a Warm Autumn Day

The warm fall temperatures aren't destined to be here much longer. The days grow shorter and shorter and this weekend is threatening to be a much colder climate than we've had previously. With the day time temps predicted to be in the 50's it is a far cry from the nearly 80 degree temperatures we had today. I took advantage of our warm weather and went outside to move plants.

Moving day began with a bearded iris that was just too crowded in the birdbath garden. The purple bearded iris got moved roots and all to a new location in our deck garden. After observing the root tubers I noticed that it had three distinct sections, a smaller one and two regular sized tubers. I split the sections carefully using my trowel and ended up with three irises.

I also moved a salvia that was getting crowded and divided it into two new plants. One of which I put back in place and the other division went to the deck garden. I bought 3 'Longwood Blue' caryopteris plants earlier in the year for $1.99 each and put them in the ground where I thought I wanted them. In my mind I thought a nice caryopteris lined pathway would be cool. Well, my mind was wrong so I had to change it! In the end two wound up in the deck garden and one into the patio garden.

I moved two rosemary plants into the patio garden. Rosemary is great as an herb and as a landscape planting in Tennessee. I extricated a rudbeckia that had grown into a clump of feather reed grass. Fortunately I was able to get most of the rudbeckia's root without damaging the ornamental grass. It was replanted in the rain garden.

I also spent some time propagating various achilleas. They are very easy to propagate through division without even lifting the plant. I used my trowel and placed the tip between an outer stem and the main plant then pushed into the plant until the outer stem was loose enough to remove. I ended up with two more paprika yarrow and six more white flowering achillea plants. If you add in a daylily division and the planting of about 40-50 daffodil bulbs to the list of chores accomplished it was a pretty full afternoon!