Plant Transplanting Tips

Early spring is the time for transplanting trees and shrubs, but you must do so while they are still dormant—transplanting a plant is a very traumatic experience for the plant if it is not dormant. Dormancy starts in the fall as soon as you experience a good hard freeze, and the plants remain dormant until the weather warms up in the spring.

You can transplant in the spring up until the plants leaf out. When the buds are green and swollen you are usually safe to still transplant, but once the leaf develops, you should wait until fall. When transplanting you can dig the shrubs out bare root, just make sure they are out of the ground for as short a time as possible, and keep the roots damp while out of the ground.

Make sure there are no air pockets around the roots when you replant them. When possible, it is always better to dig a ball of earth with the plants when you transplant them. The rule of thumb is 12” of root ball for every 1” of stem caliper. If the diameter of the stem of a tree is 2”, then you should dig a root ball 24” in diameter.

Don’t be afraid of cutting a few roots when you transplant—just try not to cut them any shorter than the above guidelines suggest. Cutting the roots will actually help to reinvigorate the plant—a process known as root pruning. When the roots are severed, the plant then develops lateral roots to make up for what it has lost. These lateral roots are more fibrous in nature and have greater ability to absorb water and nutrients.

The old timers root-pruned by hand by forcing a spade in the ground around their plants. If you have a plant in a container or your landscape that is doing poorly, a little root pruning while the plant is dormant could bring it around.