Progressive Plants

The Best Time to Plant Trees, Shrubs, and Perennials is NOW!

By Progressive Plants

People often ask us, “When is the best time to plant?” It’s a great question with a threepart answer. We’ll touch on all three answers in this article.

Part One: Plant when plants are available.

Truthfully, plants can be planted almost any time of year, as long as the ground isn’t too frozen for digging. Often, the best time to plant something is whenever you can find it. You certainly can’t plant something you can’t buy. Typically, garden centers prefer to sell plants when they’re at their peak, so there are many plants that won’t be in stock until later in the season. It always pays to check your favorite garden center many times throughout the season to see what’s new. When you find that amazing plant, no matter the season, it’s best to get it planted as soon as possible. Plants are always happier in the ground than they are in a pot. Be sure to watch your new plants closely after they’re in the ground, especially during the first few weeks. Watch for signs of stress and water them accordingly. That said, there truly is a best time for planting your trees, shrubs, grasses, and perennial plants.

Part Two: Plant in the spring.

The most common time for planting in Utah is in the spring, when our world emerges from the cold of winter. As the snow starts to melt, garden centers bring in plants from out of state to capitalize on the demand, and we eagerly rush to find the perfect specimen for our yards. It’s therapeutic gardening. After sitting cooped up in our houses for months, most of us literally need to get outside in the sunlight and drive our hands into the dirt! It makes sense to plant new plants that will grow alongside the new sprouts of spring, but is it the best time to plant? Not technically.

It’s impossible to plant early enough in the spring to take advantage of the most important growth opportunities for plants. By the time we wait for the snow to melt and the ground to dry out enough for digging, we’ve missed it. After sitting dormant beneath the snow in frozen ground all winter, plants are eager to awake in the spring. In fact, at the earliest sign that winter is giving way to spring, plants experience a spurt of root growth. To our eye, nothing has changed. The plant still appears to be dormant, but beneath the melting snow and soil, the plant is already waking up and preparing for a burst of growth by sending out new feeder roots.

By the time we start planting in April and May, that burst of root growth has already slowed down significantly. So we rush to the garden centers and enthusiastically plant beautiful little plants in our landscapes just a few short weeks before the hottest season of the year. That heat creates a huge demand on young plants as they try to draw up enough water with their unestablished root systems.

When we see that our plants are struggling, we give them extra water. Normally that’s fine, but we need to be careful not to give them more water than their roots can absorb, because when roots sit in standing water for too long they can rot. Rotted roots are unable to draw up water, so the plant dies. The symptoms of too much water look very much like the symptoms of inadequate water, so it’s easy to misdiagnose a plant and give it even more water, when what it really needs is time for the soil to dry. It’s a crazy balance!

Part Three: Plant in the fall whenever possible.

Spring is a decent time to plant, but ideally, we would mimic nature. Mother Nature plants almost everything in the fall, starting right about now. For trees, shrubs, grasses, and perennials, August through November are the ideal months for planting.

The plants in your vegetable garden are annuals, so we need to wait until April and May for those, but everything else will benefit from being planted now, in late summer and fall.

Temperatures begin to drop around the middle of August, so today is an ideal time to start planting. Although the outside temperatures will drop from now through November, the temperature of your soil will remain warm enough for roots to grow. These are ideal conditions for establishing new plantings. They aren't actively growing at this time of year, they're settling in. Your plants won’t struggle against the heat, and their roots will begin to grow in their new location because the ground is still warm.

In fact, 80% of a plant's root growth occurs in the late summer and fall months. While you won't see as much stem and leaf growth in the fall, the plants are busy growing new roots. With the arrival of spring, fall-planted perennials are ready to burst forth with vigorous new growth and a profusion of flowers.

Growers take advantage of this concept all the time. We have heated floors in some of our greenhouses to encourage new plantings to grow roots during the winter months.

As plants settle in for the upcoming winter, they draw nutrients from their leaves and store that energy in their roots. This strengthens roots and promotes root growth in the fall. Then, in the very early spring, plants have one more essential growth spurt with a burst of new feeder roots just prior to sprouting leaves and flowers. Plants that are established in the fall will have a huge advantage over anything you’ll plant next spring because your plants will have had fall and winter to get established in their new surroundings. Healthy root stock will allow your trees, shrubs, and perennials to better weather the heat of summer with far less shock.

Fall and Winter Watering

Another critical element to a thriving, healthy landscape is to water well in the fall and winter months. That may sound weird. After all, we typically receive quite a bit of rain and snow during the colder months. But it’s all about establishing healthy root systems for your plants. We have an entire blog dedicated to the subject on our Progressive Plants website (https://www.progressiveplants.com/ blog.html). Feel free to read it for more information about when and how to water in the cold.

So, if you want your yard to wake up quickly in the spring and grow vigorously from the very beginning, be sure to plant now. Fall planting and watering during the cold season are the two biggest secrets to a healthy, hearty, spring landscape that can withstand the stress of summer. If you have questions, call or chat with us any time. We’ re open year round and are excited to share our knowledge with you.