Banksia Oblongifolia
Banksia Oblongifolia, native to Queensland and New South Wales, is another Banksia that isn’t often seen in cultivation and home gardens. I first came across it about 10 years ago and planted it in my mother’s garden where it grew into a narrow spindly shrub about 1.5 m tall that probably only ever had about 6 flowers on it in all its life.
A few months ago I was at was at my parent’s house and noticed they’d dug it out. My mother told me it had never really been much of a plant and only had a few branches on it. So I suppose I could understand her reasoning but I was a bit disappointed as Banksia Oblongifolia was one of the few Banksia that had a lignotuber. You see I really like plants with lignotubers as they are so easy to regenerate when they get old and spindly. All you have to do is prune them back to the lignotuber and then let them grow back again and in many cases they do look better the second time around. Therefore as I said, I was disappointed that this Banksia had been dug out.
Lucky for me though, my mother quickly advised me that she’d transplanted it into a small plastic pot and here it is……….
March 11
Doesn’t really look much does it? You can see from the photo it had about 10 original branches which were all vertical and now obviously cut off. It had one remaining juvenile branch but the lignotuber and remaining branches were all covered in buds.
Being dug up after nearly 10 years in the ground and placed in a pot hadn’t really affected it at all much. Plus, from memory, it was dug up in January or February, during summer, while it was growing. So this was a tough little Banksia indeed.
Banksia Oblongifolia Lignotuber. You may be able to see the new buds forming.
Therefore for the last few months it’s been growing quite happily in this pot.
By April 26 it had quite a nice canopy.
By May 15 it had thickened up even more.
So now I’m just waiting for it flower. Winter is it’s normal season but I don’t think there will be any flowers this winter so I’ll just have to wait till next year. So as you can see, you don’t have to dig out old Australian natives and throw them away. You can either prune them back according to how they grow or you can simply transplant them, as with this Banksia.
At the end of the day I think Banksia Oblongifolia looks ok just growing in a pot. I could either prune it back to expose the lignotuber more (like a bonsai) to make it a feature or I could just let it grow and wait for it to flower.
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Transplanting Plants
Transplanting Plants – How to do it Correctly.
A while ago I wrote an article about how I transplanted a Grevillea Caloundra Gem and despite doing nearly everything wrong, still got a successful outcome. Today though I thought it might be much better to write about transplanting plants the correct way.
Now before I start I need to say that plants such as Australian native plants and Proteas are in some circles considered to be difficult to transplant. All I have to say is this, if anyone tries to tell you this they are wrong.
I’ve always been of the opinion that anything is possible. You just have to find the right way to go about it.
Anyway todays subject is Protea cynaroides, aka the King Protea. Now this particular plant here has an interesting history. It was one of two plants propagated by my mother from two cuttings taken from a King Protea in another garden in 2001. It was my first introduction to my mothers method of propagating plants. I’d tried all sorts of elaborate methods to propagate Proteas beforehand with hardly any success at all. From two cuttings, using this method, two plants were produced. Both are still alive today, eight years later and one in the subject of this article today.
My mother has about 6 King Proteas growing in her garden. This one wasn't in an ideal position as it's growth rate over about 7 years suggests.
So to get back on track, here’s what you need to do. Water the plant late in the day before you transplant it, with Seasol and water so it is well hydrated. Now I must confess I didn’t in this instance as it was a bit of a spur of the moment decision but the weather was cool as it was the middle of winter. So, it is best to select a day that is cool and if possible a time of the year when the plant is dormant.
Next is to select your pot/container beforehand and place some potting mix in the bottom so it’s ready for the plant before you even start to dig. Also have a bucket or watering can ready with a Seasol and water solution.
This pot is selected to suit the size of the anticipated rootball. I'm hoping for a rootball around 30 cm so I've selected a 38 cm pot. It's best to select a pot size just larger than the rootball.
Another important point, is to make sure that you have a sharp spade to do the digging as you are going to have to cut through some roots. If it’s not sharp then get a file and sharpen it otherwise you may have some trouble cutting through those roots. The other thing to consider here is the size of the rootball. The more the better, but at the end of the day you are going to have to lift it into the pot so if it is too large some of the roots may break away. In this case I’ve tried to keep it to about 30 cm/12 inches in diameter.
Before you start to dig just scrape the mulch away from the base of the plant and then just dig a circle around the plant with your spade, cutting through the roots as you go. Once you’ve done this you then have to level the spade into a position so as to then cut the roots underneath the plant. The King Protea didn’t have a tap root but if your plant has got one a sharp spade will really come in handy.
Once you’ve cut through all the roots it’s then into the pot. I used the spade to lift it. It’s then just a matter of filling around it with potting mix. Make sure you fill in all the gaps with the potting mix. I used a narrow stick to just push it all in.
You can see the size of the rootball. You can also see how dry the soil was. It is best to water your plant the day before.
After you’ve done this it’s just a matter of watering it in with the Seasol and water solution and this is the important bit. I really saturate the rootball in the new potting mix so that you make sure that the potting mix fills all the gaps and also to ensure all the severed roots come in contact with the Seasol. I normally use about 30 litres/7 gallons/3 watering cans of the solution and place the pot in the garden so the excess drains into garden for the other plants. In this case I placed it in the old hole as there were other plants in close vicinity just in case I cut through some of their roots as well.
Water generously with a Seasol and water solution.
Over the next few days it’s important to keep the plant in a cool, shady area. Also make sure you keep it moist. I normally keep giving it the Seasol solution for another week and then just back off the watering to, as it needs it.
I’ve decided I’m going to grow this King Protea in a larger pot permanently because of the phosphorus toxicity in my soil. I’ll probably re pot it into a more attractive pot once the roots recover. Probably in next Autumn, in about 8 or 9 months. It’s probably also probably due for some low phosphorus Native plant fertilizer and I think that I will also start to introduce some Multicrop Plant Starter to help encourage some root growth.
Also at this stage I’m really hoping that it will flower this time next year, but we’ll wait and see about that.
My King Protea has now been recovering quite happily over the last 5 weeks in it's new Container.
Other things to consider when transplanting plants is that the more preparation you do beforehand the better your chances of success.
If I was transplanting a larger more established plant such as the Grevillea Caloundra Gem in my other article here’s what I might have done differently.
1. Cut a circle around the rootball with your spade, the size that you’ve decided on for your pot. Only do it so that you miss every second cut. Then water it well with a Seasol and water solution.
2. Then leave it for a month or so to recover and then cut the other areas around the roots that you missed the first time. Water it again with the Seasol and water solution.
3. Then a week before you are going to transplant it prune the plant back as hard as you can and then paint the cuts with a liquid adhesive to seal the wounds. The pruning will make it easier to lift the plant when lifting it out of the ground. This may or may not be necessary, just use your judgment here. Another reason you might want to prune your plant is if you are going to Bonsai it. In this case how much you prune it will depend on the type of plant. It may be best though to give it an intermediate prune at this time and then again after you have completed you Bonsai.
4. Instead of just placing it in it’s new hole in the ground. Plant it into a pot so that you keep it in the shade so that it doesn’t dehydrate.
5. Another important point I would like to make is to consider your soil. By this a mean heavy soils will bind together better than sandy soils. This is important when you lift the rootball out of the hole so it will stay in one piece and not have bits break away. If you have a sandy or crumbly soil though you may have a problem. If you read my other article about the Grevillea Caloundra Gem that I transplanted you will read how most of the rootball just broke away when it was lifted. You really need to avoid this and here’s how to do it. Just before the plant comes into it’s growing season sever the roots all around the plant as mentioned above and then water frequently with a Seasol and Multi Crop Plant Starter solution diluted in water. This will encourage a denser root growth within the circle you’ve severed with you spade. These roots will hopefully bind the soil together for when you lift it out of the hole. The other thing to test is if your soil binds together better when wet or dry. Test it. Remember a wet rootball will be heavier with a chance the extra weight may cause it crumble ever more. It’s just up to you to use your judgment here.
6. Finally the last point I would like to make probably goes without saying. The larger the plant you are trying to transplant the more difficult it will be. It will require more preparation and maybe even lifting equipment. So don’t bite of more than you can chew.
Some of these steps may seem like a bit of an overkill but it depends on how conservative you are or how desperate you are for the transplant to be a success. This is especially true if your plant is a favorite. If you want to experiment find a plant that is expendible and use it to hone your skills. After all if you’ve got a plant in your garden you don’t like, don’t put up with it. Dig it up, put it in a pot and give it away.
So there you have it. This is how I transplanted my King Protea. I’ll be writing another article about the King Protea soon. How to grow it and how to prune it into a nice shape. The King Proteas in my mothers garden are just coming into flower now. She’s got pink ones, a red one and a white one.
I’ve transplanted lots of plants over the years for a variety of reasons. There are lots of ways of doing it. The one thing that I would always recommend would be to use a high quality seaweed solution and make sure you don’t under use it. I use Seasol when transplanting plants but whichever one you use is up to you.
Here’s to your success!
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How NOT to Transplant your Plants
How close can you go to killing a plant without actually killing it?
Before I actually wrote this article I thought long and hard as to whether other gardeners would actually believe my story or if I should try to change some of the detail to make it sound more believable. In the end I decided to protect its integrity and just tell it as it happened.
It was a hot summer afternoon in the middle of December which had been preceded by a winter and spring with well below average rainfall. You’d have thought that transplanting a semi established shrub would be the last thing a gardener with any ounce of credibility would consider on a day like that.
Well in this case I’m not sure if I had a moment of madness or I was suffering from a bout of extreme optimism but I still look back today and find the story I’m about to tell quite amazing.
Caloundra Gem Flower
The shrub in question was a Grevillea Caloundra Gem (G. Banksii x ‘Coochin Hill or so the label said) that I’d planted right at the front of the garden bed just two years earlier. It had grown to a height of about 2 m and was doing quite well. The problem for me was that despite the lack of rainfall it was doing just a little bit too well and was starting to hide the slower growing plants behind it. So the only solution for me was to shift it to another place alongside a fence where it would serve much better as screening plant.
Now I’d transplanted a few Australian native plants before and had a fairly good success rate but I’d never tried to transplant one that was this well established. I’d also never tried this exercise before without any prior preparation and especially on a day that was so unsuitable it wasn’t funny. At the time though for some reason I didn’t even consider any of this and just launched straight into the task. The only preparation I’d done before hand was to dig a new hole for around the other side of the house and enlist the help of my father to help carry it to its new home.
Before I knew it I’d dug a ring around the shrub about 50 cm in diameter and managed to cut through some fairly sizable roots in the process. As a result when I looked up at the foliage it was all now drooping rather alarmingly at the ground. All of a sudden it hit me exactly what I was doing. I was killing a perfectly healthy plant and all because I didn’t like where I’d planted.
Anyway not one to give in easily and having decided that I’d passed the point of no return (which I probably hadn’t), I decided to continue. As I kept digging the circle around the plant it was becoming very obvious that the sandy loam that it was planted in was very dry and crumbly and the size of the rootball contained within the sandy loam was getting smaller and smaller. As I tried to lift the rootball out of the hole more and more of it kept breaking away. In the end I got to the stage where the size of the rootball was only about 30 cm in diameter and even this looked like it was ready to break off.
Despite this though, the only option was to continue. While all of this was happening my father had been standing back watching. He must have been wondering that if by the time I was finished there was going to be anything left to shift.
As I lifted it gingerly out of its hole my father supported the other end and we slowly carried it around to the other side of the house to its new home. Just as I was placing it into its new hole (grave?) another piece of the rootball broke off. I couldn’t believe it. Surely this was the final nail in its coffin.
What was left in the hole was a semi circle about 20 cm in diameter and looking back now as to why I just didn’t give up there and then and just throw it in the compost I’ll never know but for some reason I decided to continue with the original plan. I then got 3 large garden stakes and drove them into the ground around the plant, got some garden twine and tied it to each of the stakes for support. This held the plant into position quite nicely. The next step was to back fill what was left of the rootball and buildup a small bank around the top. I then mixed some concentrated seaweed solution into a bucket of water and then slowly poured it all around the rootball. This I kept doing until the soil was so sodden that it took quite a while for it to drain away. The idea was to saturate what was left of the rootball with the seaweed solution.
The job was now finished and standing back looking at the final result I couldn’t help but think of the 101 ways I could have done it better. The transplant was now complete and there was nothing left to do but to sit back and wait.
The next day the weather was a bit cooler and the Grevillea seemed to be holding its own. The foliage was still pointing at the ground but it didn’t seem to have gotten any worse. This to me was no consolation as I knew that when most native plants die (for whatever reason) the foliage won’t show any signs of distress until long after the roots have died, so for me I knew it was just a matter of time.
Despite this though, I continued to keep watering it with the diluted seaweed solution. The next couple of days the weather remained cooler and every day it appeared to be holding its own. Then a few days later I came out to water it and I thought that some of the foliage was actually starting to sit upright again. I wasn’t sure if it was my wishful thinking but it actually looked like it had recovered a little. The next couple of days though told the story. Slowly but surely it was starting to look well again. It was actually starting to recover. As summer turned into autumn it slowly started to put on some new growth and flower again. I left the stakes in to support it for about another year and now about 6 years later that Grevillea Caloundra Gem is still growing in that spot. It’s now about 4m tall, and flowers for nearly all of the year.
2009. About 4m tall and still going strong.
Why and how it managed to survive that shift I suppose I’ll never know. Over the years though I’ve heard many a gardening expert say that you can’t transplant Australian natives but I’ve successfully done it many times for one reason or another. On this particular occasion I did almost everything wrong but when you go about in the proper way most of the time you should have success. I’ll write about this in another article.
If you were to ask me as to why it survived, I can only say that it is testimony to the resilience that most Australian native plants have and the effectiveness of that seaweed solution.
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