I did some gardening after work today, moving some of my just-sprouting hostas from an undesirable spot beside my house air conditioner to a few other spots. It was quite a tiring and long procedure.
Most of the soil just a few inches down was solid clay, so digging was hard, with that and trying to avoid cutting roots. I dug around the sides of the group I wanted to move, and then attempted to dig underneath without much luck. So I soaked them, then pried from the sides and beneath until I broke the hunk of dirt and hostas free from the ground beneath.
The hunk was too big and now muddy for a single person to lift. I pried it upwards with two shovels, but there was no way I could lift it from there. I eventually settled maneuvering it onto a sifting screen with a sturdy box I have for sifting compost. I then was able to slide that out of the hole, but couldn’t get it much farther than that. So I grabbed a wheeled stand I have for a potted plant and rested one end on the stand and lifted the other to move it.
After all that, I determined there wasn’t enough space where I wanted to move it to put it in one big hunk, so I split it into two big hunks plus a couple small pieces that fell off. I then had to dig up four more holes, put in some fertilizer and then the hunks, level them, and put back the dirt. I followed up with some more water to help them get going.
Normally, I would’ve put some better soil and some compost around them as I planted, but it was getting dark fast and I was getting tired. I’ll probably stick some compost in nearby sometime later.
Hopefully these will survive the transplant. There are a lot of plants in this bunch, so they’d be expensive to replace. Now I have better access to my air conditioner though. I will probably put some stone or something around it to ensure I have access to it.