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Payne’s North Hours
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Rand Lee
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Rand Lee
Payne's Nurseries
and Greenhouses
Hardy trees can be planted most of the year, as long as the ground is unfrozen. Get your hardy shrubs and perennials into the ground by the end of September for best results. In all cases, the success of your planting will depend on the success of the hole you dig.
How to Dig a Hole
Prepare your hole BEFORE you bring your plant home. The longer the plant sits out on your porch, the weaker it will get, so you want to get it in the ground ASAP. Rule of thumb: make your hole 2 times the width of the tree, shrub, or perennial rootball and 2 inches deeper. (That's because, in Santa Fe, where hardpan lurks a couple of feet under the surface in some places, plant roots tend to go sideways as much as they do downwards.) Take all the dirt out of the hole. Using a spading fork, loosen the bottom 1 foot of the dirt in the hole. Then mix the soil you took out of the hole with soil amendments, make a little mound of soil inside the bigger hole, spread the roots of the plant over the little mound, and backfill with the amended soil. Do NOT tamp down with your feet. Water the plant in, allowing the water to settle the soil. Otherwise, your tromping will force the oxygen out of the soil, and plants, like us, need oxygen to thrive. Watering in with a solution of SuperThrive™ vitamin-hormone supplement will greatly reduce transplant shock.
What Kind of Soil Do You Have?
The amendments you mix with your soil depend on the kind of soil you have. In Santa Fe, we have mostly heavy clay soils; in some places, we have sandy soils. Here's how to tell what kind of soil you have. Water a patch of your soil. When the water's drained away, scoop up a handful of the soil and squeeze it tight in your fist. Then open your palm and observe the squeezed lump. Does it just sit there in a little ball? Your soil is probably heavy clay. Does it collapse the moment your fingers release their pressure on it? Your soil is probably sandy. Does it crumble around the edges but stay reasonably coherent? Then you have that most precious of treasures, sandy loam. (Will you marry me?)
Soil Amendments
For heavy clay soils, mix the soil you take out of your planting hole with 1/2 the same volume of crushed lava rock, crusher fines, or fine gravel. Do NOT use sand. Sand plus clay plus Santa Fe summer sun equals bricks. For sandy soils, mix 1 part soil with 1 part compost, like our Payne's Soil Conditioner cotton burr compost.
Fertilizers
This late in the year, you don't want to add quick-release fertilizer to your soil. It will encourage your transplants to put out new soft growth that the frost, which will be on its way very soon, will cut down. Instead, add a slow-release organic food like Yum-Yum™ Mix or Peace of Mind™ to the planting hole. This will give the plants a nutrient boost during the winter, when they are busy underground building new root systems.
Winter Watering
For the first month after planting your tree, shrub, or perennial, water it deeply 3 times a week. After the first hard frost, reduce watering to 1 time a week. Most plants die in the winter here NOT because of frost but because of lack of watering. Even if we're lucky, and have a wet winter, you'll need to water your plants, particularly the first year after planting, when they are still putting down roots.
Mulch
Mulching will help conserve moisture around your newly planted treasure. Peat moss is a lousy mulch; it blows away and adds no nutrients to the soil. Bark mulches are OK, but they rob the soil of nitrogen as they rot, so sprinkle some bone meal under your bark mulch before you lay it down. (I like to use Payne's Soil Conditioner as a mulch.) Put at least 2 inches of mulch down; 4 inches is better (it will rot down over the winter). Don't put mulch right up against a tree trunk; it will encourage disease and insect pests. Put it about six inches away and as far out as the drip line (the imaginary line drawn from the outer canopy of the tree down to the ground).
