Hmm, California poppies are also reluctant, sunflowers don't go for it in a big way...

It probably would be easier if you just asked specifically.

Janet's Garden

I can't help but wonder why the need to move plants around? ESPECIALLY annuals?

Well, the reason I can think of is if you are thinning out and don't want to just throw out a perfectly good seedling. It could do it's duty somewhere else in the garden :-) I have been following this thread and hoping for more input. I have some calendula that needs thinning as well as come verbena bonariensis and zinnias. I guess I don't loose anything by trying to move them, right?

Marianne

Ooooh....THINNING! Wasn't thinking of seed sowing, duh! The problem comes with damaging the root system of the plants you are removing as well as the ones that are to stay put. So if they are toooooo close and intertwined, people usually just clip out the stems of the plants to be thinned so that the remaining plants can thrive. However, if the plants are not all that close together, I'd say it would be worth a shot. Stressful, perhaps, but worthy of an attempt.

I sow my annual and perennial seeds into little seed flats heavily. Once they grow a set of true leaves, I separate them and transplant them into individual cell packs. If they get too big, those roots are impossible to untangle so my success rate goes down from 100% to much lower, depending on the size.

Very few of my annuals are grown from seed, since I seem to lack whatever gene is responsible for having success with that, and so I hate to risk moving them and killing them. The main reason I want to move annuals is that, here in Minnesota, if you follow the planting distances on the labels you often end up with individual annuals surrounded by mulch all summer, so I plant them more closely and sometimes they get overcrowded -- I'm still learning how big the different ones get. So I want to move them into a bare area where I have taken out a big perennial or into gaps where I have OVERestimated how big the annuals there will get. Or sometimes I just think they will look better in a different place!

The annuals I would like to move right now are the annual butterfly weed (Asclepias curassavica,) and Verbena bonariensis, and Cleome, and Emilia, and an ornamental pepper. They have all been in the ground since the end of May.

crocosmia,

I was so inspired by a photo you posted a while back of your Asclepias c. that I had to have it in my garden. I found a source for seeds and promptly sowed them directly in situ. The problem was that I had no idea what the seedling was going to look like so I fortunately found an actual plant in a local nursery - but at a steep price $9 for one plant!!! I find that steep for an annual. Where do you purchase yours from - I seem to recall that you said in your post that your growing season is too short for sowing directly in the ground. Just wondering.

Marianne

Well, I moved two 2-foot-tall Cleomes yesterday and they were EXTREMELY whiney about it. I thought I'd probably croaked them. Especially since instead of digging them up nicely I had to just pull them out because they were right next to a canna and a dahlia. But today they are both fine. So now I know about Cleome!

The Asclepias curassavica are in six-packs in many of the nurseries here, but I ususally buy mine at an enormous and wonderful school plant sale we have here every spring -- about two bucks, I believe, for six plants. The seedlings look just like weeds.

Verbena should be OK. I got some last year from a friend's garden, and it sat in a cooler for about a week with some dirt in it; all I did was kept it watered until I could get them into the ground. They did great -- and they even came back for me this year. I am about to move some again this year -- they have turned into really big stands!

I've had some success with cleome, but the younger they are, the better. My success rate decreases as they get larger. Apparently they can get a fairly deep root system? I have discovered that even if they look dead or very droopy for a week or so, if you keep them well-watered, a good percentage of them will come back.

Milkweed -- I am not sure about the curvassica, since mine all go from seedling pots into the ground, but I know that common and swamp milkweed are really hard to transplant -- the taproot can get several feet long. I'd imagine curvassica is the same way. So they could be moved if you dug down fairly deep -- but since they're young, probably not that deep.

:-) Mel

croc- I'm going to put in a shameless plug for Winter-Sowing...only because I, too, lack that gene. But you should SEE my gardens this year! Woo-hoo! I'm hooked! I don't have the time to babysit an indoor setup, but love the idea of just tossing them in a milk-jug of soil, and tossing that outside to let Ma Nature do the babysitting. After all, she's been doing this a lot longer than I have!

Anyway, I've found that the taller the annual, and the shallower the roots, the less it likes to be moved...try moving a small stand of 6-8" cosmos, and you'll see what I mean. They'll survive, but they don't LIKE it.

Hope to see you on the WS forum this season! Try it if you really would like to grow from seed.