[MUSIC] Hi, I'm Heidi Rader, here with Cooperative Extension. I'm in the Georgeson
Botanical Garden at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and today we're going to talk about transplanting.
We talked about getting started in your garden and
bed preparation last time and today we're going to follow up with some transplanting.
So you can start plants inside in your house or you can buy
them from a greenhouse but either way you're going to spend money on
your transplants so you're going to spend some time growing them so you want to be careful when you plant them outside.
One good thing to always do is to harden them off.
That's basically introducing them to the outdoor environment gradually.
An hour or two at first and then longer and longer bringing them
in at night when it's cold and exposing them to the wind and the sun gradually.
If you just buy your transplants from the greenhouse or you take them directly
outside from your house they're not going to be too happy because they're
not used to the outdoor environment so that's one thing to keep in mind with your transplants.
Another thing when you're buying transplants from your greenhouse
or when you're planting them yourself, you want to make sure that they don't get root bound.
This is nice, this this pot size is adequate for the size
of this plant you can see the roots are not going around and around when you
have very thick roots that's when it's called root bound. When they go around and around.
If the plant is way too big for the pot it's actually not going to
be healthier sometimes it's easy to want to play it to buy the plants that have
blooms on them already or maybe even growing fruit but they're not
necessarily going to be the healthiest transplant so that's one thing to keep in mind when you're buying transplants.
Um, then when you actually plant them in your garden you want to just dig.
You can dig a little hole with your hand or with
the trowel and usually you just kind of firm it down like that you can
press the soil in lightly and make a little well around the plant that will
help the the water stay where it needs to be. So these are basil I'm planting, so...
I'm planting them pretty close together. If you're planting something like squash
they're going to need about three feet of space so you'd plant them about like
this and you can even stagger them in your bed to give them.
To use your space a little more effectively but it's easy sometimes when you buy plants and
they're small to plant them too close together because it's hard to envision how big they're going to grow later.
So after you plant them you want to water
really thoroughly and then let the soil dry out a little bit you don't want
them to get to a wilting point and I like to add a little bit of fertilizer
high end phosphorous to the water when I plant too and that just helps the plants get established.
But what you want to do is water really thoroughly and then let
it dry out a little bit so that the plants are forced to develop a good root system.
if you don't let the soil dry out at all they're never going to be forced
to develop a healthy root system so that's really important when
you're planting transplants and also going to make sure that it's not going
to freeze so check the forecast and here in Fairbanks we usually wait until June 1st before planting outside.
But check your forecast and see when the last frost in the spring usually is where you live.
That's all for today hope to see you again next week here in the garden with Cooperative Extension Service I'm Heidi Rader.
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