Transplanting tips: TIME OF DAY MATTERS!

Yesterday during a visit to take some photos Arlene pointed out to me that some of our amaranth seedlings weren't doing so well. (See photo below.)

The amaranth was originally planted in one bed, but needed to move to another. Some Arlene transplanted mid-day when it was very sunny day and warm out. Those seedlings, as you can see from the photo above, are distressed and wilted. On the other hand, the seedlings which she transplanted on a cool and cloudy day are thriving. (See photo below.)

When I asked her why this was she explained that in her experience strong sun and wind can be very hard on new transplants, and, despite her careful and plentiful watering, they could not recover from the stress. However, those amaranth plants that she had re-planted during a cooler, cloudier day were looking much healthier.


I tried to find some information online and there wasn’t much about this the best times of day to perform your garden transplants, though there were plenty of resources on how to reduce transplant shock in general.

For an article courtesy of the University of California division of Agriculture and Natural Resources titled, 'Using Transplants in Vegetable Production,' click here.

What do you think? Post a comment to let us know about your preferred planting weather!

Lemon Tree UPDATE!

Remember last week when I told you about our poor, little lemon tree? (If not, here is the link.) Well, unbeknown to me, the problem of our weak and unhealthy tree had already been solved by garden supervisor Ed Nordstrom! (That's what happens when I don't run blog entries by him first!)

Last year sometime this lemon tree was transplanted from a different location in the garden. Transplanting is always tricky, because what ends up happening usually is that a lot of the root mass gets left behind which makes it difficult for the tree to support its former self. That's what happened here.


The way you can combat this difficulty is to prune it back HARD after transplanting! That way the tree doesn't have to support the size that it once was. Makes sense, right? Well, since we didn't prune it hard right of the bat, and the tree was obviously struggling, Ed decided to make one last ditch effort to save the tree. This last February he pruned it back HARD! (See how much smaller the tree is?)


The good news is that the pruning seems to have done the job! Doesn't our eureka lemon tree look so much happier now? It's pushing out dark green leaves and I bet the little guy gives us more than one lemon this year!