Native Plants
Q. Who is Mr. Smarty Plants?
A: There are those who suspect Wildflower Center volunteers are the culpable and capable culprits. Yet, others think staff members play some, albeit small, role. You can torture us with your plant questions, but we will never reveal the Green Guru's secret identity.
Did you know you can access the Native Plant Information Network with your web-enabled smartphone?
Ask Mr. Smarty Plants
Ask Mr. Smarty Plants is a free service provided by the staff and volunteers at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
rate this answer
Wednesday - March 10, 2010
From: Floresville, TX
Region: Southwest
Topic: Propagation, Transplants
Title: How to transplant agarita in Floresville, TX.
Answered by: Joe Marcus
QUESTION:
How is the best way to propagate Agarita? I have acres of them in the pasture but want some for the house landscape and to grow. I was told they go dormant for a year if you dig them up to transplant.ANSWER:
We're tempted to advise you to put in a section of barbed wire fence where you want the agarita to grow and let the birds do their thing. But we won't. Besides being inconvenient, you'd have to pull out a lot of privet and hackberry seedlings if you did that.
Mahonia trifoliolata (agarita) is usually difficult to transplant; large plants are especially difficult. A big part of the problem is that they are often growing in such rocky soil that it is very hard to get the plant out without severely damaging the roots of the plant. The smaller the root ball, the slower the plant will recover from the stress of transplantation.
If possible, dig around the shrub you wish to transplant in the spring to cut some of the roots. By fall, the plant will have made new roots within the area that you'll be digging up to transplant. Dig and translplant the agarita in mid to late fall. Remove about 1/3 of the top growth of the plant when you transplant. Water it in well and water again from time to time through the winter if it's a dry year. Even with all of that, your plant is likely to sit and do nothing much for a year or two. Good luck!
More Propagation Questions
Planting yucca seeds in Illinois
August 17, 2008 - My neighbor gave me a few pods (5) off of her Yucca plant which have lost its bloom for the year, how do I transplant them, in the ground or root them in water first?
view the full question and answer
Transplanting of yucca plants
May 26, 2006 - We have several Arkansas Yucca plants in our yard that we want to transplant to a plant bed. How do we do that?
view the full question and answer
Transplanting adventitious shoots of a mountain laurel in San Antonio
August 20, 2009 - Is it possible to transplant branches (shoots) growing from a mountain laurel that was chopped down? Some are two years old and several feet tall (but not yet blooming) and some as small as a foot. ...
view the full question and answer
Problems with a Hackberry tree in San Antonio.
September 23, 2010 - Our old hackberry tree fell over last year. Now we have dozens of new ones popping up in the same area. We want to transplant a few to another area of the yard, but they aren't surviving. It appears ...
view the full question and answer
Native flowers from bulbs from Denton TX
March 26, 2014 - I am slowly converting my landscaping to as much native regional plants as possible. Are there any flowers from bulbs that you could recommend?
view the full question and answer
| Support the Wildflower Center by Donating Online or Becoming a Member today. |