A tale of 2 transplants, part 1: Purple-leaf plum

Winter can be a good time to transplant around these parts...rainy, overcast and cool, but no frozen ground. In mid-December I transplanted a purple-leaf plum for a client. He wanted it out of the backyard and in the sidewalk in front. We had a good chance of survival - the tree was young and dormant and this winter was especially cool and rainy.




The tree had been transplanted twice before in its short life, the second time next to a vegetable garden. I dug around and found a shallow (about 6 in.) but wide (2-3 ft.) root system, as I had hoped. We didn't want to carry a large heavy root ball up a flight of stairs, around a hairpin turn, and through the house.

While the guys from Caffrey Landscaping valiantly broke concrete and dug the new hole, I exposed roots by hand like archeological excavation. Because the cutout in the sidewalk was generous, we could retain most of the root length, so I made only small root cuts. We were able to remove most of the soil and easily lift the tree over the stair railing, avoiding the hairpin turn. We brought buckets of the soil it had been growing in to the front and mixed it in with the soil under the concrete.

In January it bloomed its little heart out and it is now in full leaf!