Today... Part 2

As a follow up to this morning's post, Jess and I went out and tried digging up some lilacs for replanting. Turns out its not that bad a job... other than today is warmer than it has been and very sunny... luckily there is also a breeze or I think I'd be really hot and sad!

The trick to digging out lilacs is that they make new lilacs by sending out what I would call a sucker root and then the new shoot grows from this and makes its own roots... the new shoot stays attached to the sucker root, so the key is knowing that when you dig it out, you must also sever the sucker root to get it loose.

Usually, I could just sever the sucker root with the shovel, no problem. But I got greedy at one point and wanted to take a lilac that is about 2.5 - 3 feet tall with a LARGE sucker root that I could not chop with the shovel. Out came the handy box tool from Lee Valley that has a hatchet on one end. Chop, chop, chop and out it came.

All in all we dug 7 new holes to put the transplants in... In some holes we put more than one stem in though, especially with the smallest ones at the end. I dug one large hole and put like 7 little shoots in it.

Already the hill looks nicer.... and it was free, other than a bit of labour, most of which we would've had anyhow if we'd bought them at the nursery. A couple of the larger ones we put in are a similar size to lilac bushes I've bought in the past for $20 - $25 each!

We added new soil to the holes and we brought some water in buckets in the back of the lawn tractor cart (ya know, 'cause every job starts with getting out the tractor!) to give them a bit of water to get them started. Jess then gathered up some of the big heaps of grass clippings from where I cut that path along the top of the hill yesterday and we put them around each planting as mulch.

Other than our time and sweat, the only expense was the 3 bags of soil that we used that I got a while back at TSC for $.99 a bag. I think that's pretty neat :)

I think we'll do some more another day, after we cool off! Tonight we're going back to get more of the free kijiji sod, hopefully the last trip!
-- L