I often read and very rarely post as my gardening knowledge is very limited. I recently purchased several plants from a native nursery near West Linn. I bought Showy Fleabane and something I think is called Clarkis (sp). I came back and proudly planted all of them in the bed at the front of our home. It is a very hot (reflection from white house, south facing) spot which the saleswoman said would be fine as the plants tolerate heat and sun as long as they get water and the soil has OK drainage. Now, after 4 days, only 1 plant looks to be thriving. One plant has leaves so brittle they are starting to crumble, there is discoloration around the leaves and one plant has basically just... drooped to the ground. Any ideas? I'm most disappointed.

My thought too is the heat has not been a friend to transplants. Also its always a good idea to make sure before you transplant that your plants are well watered. If you know a heat wave is coming it is a good idea to wait until it cools down again and then transplant. In the meantime keep your pots watered. This weekend with the cool temperatures will be a good time to transplant.

The other culprit that can happen is if the plants have been in a shaded or greenhouse they may need to be acclimated to full sun. The leaves can be sunburned much like our skin. I just pulled banana plants out of the greenhouse and I started out with a half hour full sun exposure and increasing each day so that the leaves will not get burned.

Hope your little plants pull through for you, JD.

Thanks for the advice. I went out tonight and watered them again even though my hunch is that they don't need it. I should have been more specific and said that these are 1 gallon size plantings.

JD, I moved your question to its own thread in the Rainy Side Gardening forum. See Plant failures/nursery refunds question- Lisa A

Edited by Lisa A

I thought of posting a discussion like this on the "Too Hot" thread but maybe this is a better thread for the advice below. For many years I have been transplanting my seedlings using the advice of Steve Solomon:

How to Transplant

If you follow these directions, you’ll almost never have a seedling wilt.

•     With a shovel or hand trowel, scoop out a small hole about 4 inches deep. Pour ½ cup of complete organic fertilizer on the bottom, and mix it with your hand, a shovel, or trowel into about a gallon of soil directly below where the seedling will go.

•     Fill the hole back in with loose soil.

•     Restore capillarity by gently compressing the soil with your fist or by pressing a pint mason jar into the earth so that there is a pint-jar-sized hole.

•     Shake out the seedling while supporting the soil with your fingers on either side of the seedling’s stem. Set it gently into the hole, atop the compressed soil. The bottom leaves of the seedling should be at about the level the soil will be at when the hole is refilled.

•     From a bucket of tepid water, using an old tin can or jar, scoop out a quart of water gently fill the hole to the top. Do not allow the force of the water to wash soil away from the seedling’s roots.

•     Immediately, before the water is absorbed by the surrounding soil, begin pushing soil back into the hole, forming a muddy slurry that coast the soil ball and all the exposed rootlets. Keep pushing in small amounts of soil until the seedling is entirely “mudded in.”

•     If you want that seedling to really leap up and grow, make the bucket of transplanting water a half-strength solution of liquid fertilizer. This is especially helpful for commercial seedlings that have become accustomed to high levels of soluble chemicals. I get slightly better results using Rapid-Gro or Miracle-Gro with liquid fish emulsion.

Page 195
Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades
5th Edition, 2000, Steve Solomon

Steve is talking about 2 ¼”x2 ¼” seedlings as he did most of his growing in 32 cell trays. This gives some measure of volumes to apply to other plants. Let’s say that his almost 1-cup root ball (x) is going into a one pint hole (2 xs) and getting 1 quart of water (4 xs) and one gallon of soil/fertilizer mixing (16 xs). (Remember those folks you told, “I’ll never use algebra!”)

Using these ratios then, a one gallon potted plant would be fitted into a two gallon hole, get 4 gallons of water, and be within 16 gallons of mixed soil which is about 2 cubic feet. That is a 19” diameter hole 12-inches deep or a 15’ diameter hole 18-inches deep.

Fern brought another thing about potted plants, the condition of the root ball. If a seedling/plant is root bound, we need to do something about that. Chris Smith gave his “Tough Love” solution in Thursday’s Kitsap Sun:

Q: We bought several plastic packs of marigolds and other annuals for summer color. When we popped them out of their cells, we discovered solid snarls of roots. What are you supposed to do with roots like that?

A: Give ’em tough love. If your hands and fingers are strong, use them to tear a solid, inter-grown root mass part way up the middle. Spread out the wings of your now ‘butterflied’ start and plant it.

If the mass is too snarled and tough for fingers, use a knife. The process sounds rough but it gives the plant a much better chance of healthy growth.

"Tough Love for Transplants and Other Advice"

Potted plants have roots that are more fibrous that seedlings but we’ll still need to ‘rough up” the root systems if the pot was root bound.

Regardless of how much water you put into the soil at planting time, you still need to mindful of how damp the soil of your bed is. Filling your planting hole to (water holding) capacity will not last long if the water you added moves to the drier areas of the bed by capillary action. In the 2+ months since March 15th, I have had 4.25” this year. Last year I had more than 15” in the same period. I didn’t water a veggie bed until May 31st last year. This last week I have been putting 0.25” of water on each day. In other words, you need to water lots more of the bed than the plant hole this spring.

If you start with hardened seedlings, Steve’s guarantee is correct. My tomatoes have been planted on the hottest May days of the last two years without any visible wilting or slowing of growth. With more tender, leafy plants like lettuce, I plant in the evenings and they don’t wilt the next day either.

As I was transferring this to the thread from Word, I noticed that I had forgotten to comment on Steve’s fertilizers. Rapid-Gro left with the Ortho division of Chevron in the early 1990’s, passed through Monsanto, and on to Scott’s where it joined Miracle-Gro, and then died. So your non-organic liquid choices are Peter’s and Miracle-Gro.

I now use hydrolyzed fish fertilizer such as Down to Earth’s Liquid Fish and Kelp. These hydrolyzed products are much more balanced than the old Alaska Fish emulsions; 3-2-2 vs. 6-1-1 NPK ratios. I add Maxicrop Kelp powder to products that don’t have the kelp already.

Steve Solomon's book has been on the Rainyside recommended list for quite awhile. Chris Smith summarized many of our opinions below in his Sea PI column on Steve's newest book Thursday.

"I'd argue that even halfway serious Northwest food gardeners should have a Solomon book in their libraries. The 1998 or 2000 edition of "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades" or "Gardening When It Counts" are excellent choices."

"Steve Solomons' Newest Book"