The above statement is just wrong, fungus gnats do cause harm. If there is root damage they will eat the rotting flesh much like any maggot. I don't know how many times I've had to completely remove a plant and wash it in a bleach solution to kill the little buggers because they have gotten into a small cut in the stem of a plant or root tips. First off do not use any organic stuff like peat, second use lots of chunky stuff like pumice or perlite, and pot it in a clay pot which is just large enough to take the root ball, no bigger. Do not let it sit in water ever. Invest in wooden bbq skewers. Use one to go into the soil about three inches, if it comes back wet or with soil on it, give it a couple of days before watering again. You can also tell by the color of the clay pot, if it's darker, it doesn't need water, if it lightens up and the soil is dry, water. Top dressing will be the death of your plant especially if you don't know the ups and downs of watering yet. It should only be used if you plan on showing your plant, or you really know what you're doing water wise. I'll tell you why, top dressing is used to keep the soil from caking, but also to retain moisture in the soil. Unless you live in a really dry hot area, I would not advise it for a Dief.

hi, I recently did the same ting. I just replaced and properly leveled my pond, before all my problems started i had decided to have a totally organic and natural pond and placed only a little leveling sand and a lot of river people along the bottom, and always had a crystal clear pond, but chose a couple of wrong plants that were very invasive, so I removed them, then some guy who claimed to have 20 yrs experience in raising fish said that it would be a bad set up for breeding fish due to all the bacteria that the people hold. so I removed all the pebbles and he came and emptied the pond and suggested that i pot my pot all my plants but use the same pebbles? I had fish breeding like crazy in there and they were happy and healthy! But i wanted to be able to sell some one day and figured it would be best to remove the stone and rinse them before repotting my plants in them. Meanwhile I had some other ongoing overflow issues with the pond and felt it was just better to start over with the new liner. And decided to go back to my pebble bottom, only I as in midst of a family crisis and it took the guys 5 days which i had agreed to n the contract, so lost track of what was going on with my fish that I had in 2 large round buckets and found a couple floating, so of course I did a quick water clean out and did not want to keep them in there for any longer even though my pond was still quite murky, the water tests all showed either perfect, (ammonia) and or normal values, so i went to put my pebbles and put the plants in there top soil and all and placed lots of more pebbles on top of the plants and soil, with the thought, that as I do with my spotted lotus that are not in the pond, whenever I rinsed the potted outdoor plants out with water, it would run clear and stay clear! but my pond has yet to do that. i added a clearing agent 2 x's and its only been 32 hours with the pump running continuously! Am I going to have to mt the pond yet again, or try vacuuming the top soil out, or give it a week to see if it clears on its own?

hi, not sure if this helps but my soil is also clay based and my peonies do fine add some organic compost to thin out the clay/dirt ratiodo not add sand as that will make a concrete type mixture, water maybe once a week depending on your weather (i think peonies are similar to iris's in that they don't like to be planted very tightly or deeply)also if you moved plants then it might take a year to get really solid blooms. not to sure if it applies to peonies but(1st yr it sleeps, 2nd year it creeps, and 3rd year it leaps, by year 4 if no progress trash heap!)

In my experience raspberries are pretty hard to kill around here. Depending on whether you have berries that bloom on first year or second year canes (or both, like mine) you may not get berries next year. You probably haven't killed off the plants entirely though, since you didn't dig them up.