Time to transplant D. Formosa

 Hello all,

Long time no see!  We recently moved into a new house and I have a
very large dicentra formosa in a side garden that gets full sun all
day, and is in very poor soil.  It bloomed beautifully in spring and
continues to bloom now, and the foliage is lovely.  However, I read
that it really should be in partial shade and in decent soil.  I plan
to transplant it as soon as possible, I guess when it goes dormant
(sometime in fall?).  Does anyone have experience with this?  I have
never had one before.  I'm in Central Virginia, zone 7a.

Thanks in advance,
Callen in VA

 In article
 callenmolenda@yahoo.com wrote:


 If it is not broken don't fix it comes to mind.

Bill

--
Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA
Neat place .. http://www.petersvalley.org/

 If it's large, healthy, and blooming beautifully (as your post seems to
imply), I would say it hasn't read the same article you have, and will be
happy where it is (shhhh). Transplanting a large plant is a much larger
shock to it than if it was small. You could end up doing more harm than
good. If the purpose of transplanting it is to make sure it stays healthy,
yet it is already healthy and beautiful where it is, then I don't see the
point of trying to move it.

I've found it's essentially impossible to get a straight story about nearly
any plant. We got a street tree a few years ago. I found different articles
online claiming it will get anywhere from 15' tall to 70' tall, that it is a
slow grower and a very fast grower, that it is a hardwood and that it is a
softwood, that it will live 50 years or 700 years. In the nursery recently
my wife and I were looking at a plant in the native section. The label
dangling from a branch said part to full shade. The lable stuck on the pot
(which agreed with the other label as to the species of plant this actually
was), said full sun. Same nursery has a shade house with a dim translucent
ceiling that is really quite shady inside. In said shade house we found a
whole rack of plants labeled "full sun." We have planted plants labeled
"full shade" in the shade, only to have them suffer until we moved them into
the sun, and vice versa.

My philosophy is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The plant will tell you
if it is unhappy. This one isn't doing so.

Utopia in Decay -- The future is coming to get you.
http://home.comcast.net/~kevin.cherkauer/site/

Kevin Cherkauer