The Basics of Planting

How do you plant a plant?  I thought, before this internship, that you just dug a hole in the ground, stuck the plant in there,  patted the dirt back in around it, and sprinkled some fertilizer on top, if you wanted to.  But, it turns out I was wrong!

Turns out planting has technique, just like everything else.  I learned how to plant small plants from Pam, who takes care of the herb garden.

Oh, and one note:  gardeners do not call the brown stuff in the ground "dirt": they call it "soil."  "Dirt" is the stuff you find in the corners of your house.  So, I'm trying to be a real gardener here and say "soil."

Pam Says:
When planting, start by loosening the soil in a dinner plate-sized area around where you want to plant your plant.  Your plant may only be in a pot that's a four or five inches across, but dig up an area with a diameter of ten or twelve inches.  Why?  Well, if you don't do this, the plant will have a hard time putting roots out into the soil.  Think about it:  If you were a root, would you want to push through tough, packed clay-like soil?  Or would you opt to grow in the soft, fluffy soil that came in the plant's pot?

One day, my friend and fellow intern Dani and I planted basil in the Pounder Heritage Garden.  It was fun to plant this basil with Dani:

Here's how I loosened the soil.  You can see that the darker soil in the shadow of my head is loosened, and the lighter soil is not.  Compare the diameter of the loosened soil to the diameter of my pot.  The orange handle is the handle of my trowel sticking out of the ground.

Once the soil is loosened, add your fertilizer to the loosened soil and mix it together.  Only then may you dig a hole and plant your plant. 

A note about peat pots:  when you're planting from a peat pot, a lot of people think you can just stick the peat pot in the ground.  This is not how we do it at the Plantations.  Here, we peel away the peat pot and plant the bare soil in the ground.  I think this way is far superior.  I've tried planting peat pots directly in the ground before, and the plant's roots never seemed to penetrate the peat pot.  Here's me peeling away the basil's peat pot to expose the little roots:

Those are my tips for today.  Now, I'll just let you enjoy some of the big, beautiful irises and other flowers that are blooming at the plantations now.  (Well, not now, really.  These were taken about a week ago.)