This is a repeat of helpful tutorials for those who rescue native plants to share with friends and neighbors or for those donating to native plant projects and for our South Texas Border Chapter members who want to contribute to our native plant sale at the annual Rio Grande Valley Home and Garden Show at the McAllen Convention Center, April 11 – 13.
It’s Texas; it’s cold; it’s windy; it’s February. Pleasant weather will be with us again by Sunday. In spite of this second round of low temps, new little plant leaves are pushing up all over. If the rain has come as advertised the soil, by Sunday afternoon will be kinder, allowing easier digging as we liberate those little native upstarts.
My first observation when I became a Texas Master Naturalist was that there was always an expert willing to impart expertise. All my life, if something was in the soil that didn’t need to be there, I’d grab my trusty shovel, shove it in the soil by standing on it and extract whatever needed to be removed.
As you may have guessed, a willing expert showed me differently. First, a shovel known as a sharpshooter is a good tool to have. With a shovel, dig around the plant at four sides which is a better way to preserve the roots of a plant you want to move or pot up.
Potting native upstarts:
One-gallon plastic pots are the right size for this project. Your local nursery may have a pile of used one-gallon plant pots they are willing to give away or sell cheaply or sell new ones inexpensively. Check out estate, garage and yard sales for the plastic pots. Shopping online may be a cheap option, too.
These pots have drainage holes in the bottom. For plant sales, it’s good to put something in the bottom of the pot so the soil doesn’t fall out (and mess up the sales table or prospective buyers). Useful ideas are coffee filters no longer needed in the kitchen (and inexpensive to purchase), a square of newspaper, rubbery banana flower petals that have fallen to the ground, live oak tree leaves.
For soil, this may be an expense. Many people buy good potting soil. Others may compost throughout the year and then buy lesser expensive bags of soil and mix their own like so: purchased bagged soil, homemade compost and yard soil – perhaps bagged manure, if you want to throw this into the mix, too. I scoop various amounts of each into a five-gallon bucket and then pour it into another one and back and forth several times to get it all mixed up.
Step 1, cover the holes in the bottom of the pot;
Step 2, scoop some soil in – you’ll have to judge how much by the length of the roots of the plants you dig up; tamp the soil down, you may even wet the soil at this point.
Step 3, gently dig up the new plant, put it in the pot and scoop more soil around the roots; fill it to about one to two inches from the top rim. Press the soil down firmly to get out air pockets.
Step 4, water the pot – only water can carry nutrients from soil to the plant’s roots.
I recommend digging up one plant at a time and putting it in a pot. The longer the roots are exposed, the harder it is for the plant to recover.
Once you have plants potted up, make a little temporary nursery for ease in caring for your young plants. Select a relatively shaded area protected somewhat from the wind. The plants will need to be checked frequently and watered, especially during the first two weeks, while they establish.
Best sellersÂ
The following photos depict early leaf stages of ten of our best sellers. They are all prolific re-seeders, which is helpful. Sunflowers aren’t easy to transplant, and most yards already have enough. Plants and shrubs are more popular than big trees like mesquite, hackberry and anacua. Don't stop at the top ten. The easiest way to identify plants is to download the free iNaturalist app to your phone.
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