Transplanting False Indigo (Baptisia)

I have found that transplanting is easy here in the Pacific Northwest and I would say that 95% of the plants I've moved have made the transition successfully. And some of that was accomplished in the middle of summer! That said, I was extremely wary of moving Baptisia 'Purple Smoke'. I knew this was a perennial with tap roots and that is usually not an easy thing to disrupt.

 

 

Planted right off the deck, it got too much shade to produce a lot of blooms although at the time, there wasn't much shade there. The seedling Japanese maples planted on each side of the deck steps have grown. The above photo was taken last year. This year, there were even less blooms. I love the foliage though as much as the flowers and pondered leaving it in its spot for that sole reason. However, I decided to move it on July 4th weekend. I know, I am crazy but decided if it didn't make it, I could always buy another one.

 

I wanted to move it to the front border. The first thing I did was dig the hole for its new home. I added a bit of alfafa meal and compost for good measure -

Next, I cut back that beautiful foliage -

This particular plant was planted four years ago (April 12, 2016 to be exact) so you would think that there would be a massive root system on such a plant. However, this is what the root system looked like when I dug it out -

Honestly, I didn't have much hope for it and felt terrible for removing it. Still, I moved it to the new hole and watered well -

And watered and watered. Every day until then, we have watered faithfully. I noticed a few blackened areas around the upper stems where the cuts had been made and figured it was dying.

However, about three weeks later, I began to notice leaves developing. This photo was taken on July 28th (about 3 weeks later) -

 

 Today, August 9 marks a little over one month and here it is -

 

 

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy