Yes, I noticed this afterward, Jackie. Look, I went through something like this with a yellow banksia. My R. banksia lutea was a gift from an older lady who was moving from her home of many decades. Her banksia had been a gift from an older lady, long before, and she wanted to take it with her, so they dug the thing out of the ground. She gave us half of it. When they gave it to us, it was an enormous STUMP with truncated roots, bundled into a trash bag. We planted it with some misgivings, and it sat there as a stump with a few green leaves for almost three years. It was alive, so we kept watering it, and waited. When it had grown enough roots, it took off like a rocket ship, jumped a 7-ft fence, leaped into a nearby tree, roared up to the top of the tree, and began to wave its spring bloom around, 6 ft. above the tree. We just had to be patient. The rose knew what it was doing. But I don't think it's going to need spraying. I think it's pretty disease-free, everywhere I've seen it in TX.

Years ago, I had terrible clay. I dug all my beds, it was back breaking. This was before the gardenweb and "lasagne" bed forming (which is basically a version of creating the garden above the soil.) I threw out solid junks of clay and amended with loads and loads of compost/humus, mostly in cheap bags from Walmart. Because of the clay, many poorly chosen plants did not do well, so each time I replanted an area, I double-dug and turned in more compost. Cost me a lot of money and sweat. Today, my soil is SWEET to work in. Fluffy, easy. A real joy. People comment on it when they see me dig. I often hated gardening when I had the clay and I hated weeding..because it was so difficult. Now, weeding is fun. The stuff just pops out for the most part. So, it can be done, you just have to want to do it. My philosophy was this: never ignore an opportunity to amend...if I was digging for any reason, I amended. I usually bought the humus bags on clearance, too, so I'd have them on hand whenever I was gardening. I also used some pricy soil conditioners now and then, as well as gypsum. Just depended on my budget/mood and level of frustration. Lately, I've seen quite a few bags at nurseries that say "soil conditioner". Nice thing is, the hostas always did just fine in the clay. Those were the beds that took me the longest to get fluffy because I didn't have to replant them often, so they got amended less. However, even years of mulching helped those beds and they are nice now, too. If I were you, I'd do the largest area you have time and budget for. Maybe instead of "one hosta hole", you dig and amend 1 square yard each time you plant a hosta. Before you know it, you'll have beautiful fluff. Some free opportunities do exist that will help: coffee grounds from coffee places, autumn leaves on curbs...bring them home, run the mower over them a few times and spread them on your beds, your own produce waste for composting, your community may offer free compost. When you get free stuff, you often introduce a lot of weed seeds. I found that applying PREEN really helped with that.

Hi Jennifer, Are you absolutely, positively certain they knew you were just an Ordinary Person who was bringing a few of your Ordinary Plants with you---rather than a nursery or some sort of a commercial operation who was planning to "import" plants into the state? I've done several searches and I can't find anything at all regulating INDIVIDUALS who are bringing plants into the state for their own personal use! All that stuff you posted above sounds VERY much to me like something we would have been dealing with when I was still in the Green Industry! Maybe I'm wrong, but I kinda suspect if you call the Colorado Dept. Of Agriculture and tell them you want them to "inspect" the plants you dug up in your yard they might--well--have you locked up! ;-) Go to the site I'm linking and look at the Oregon Word document. That's ALL about commercial operations. I did find info about not bringing pot (not potS, POT!) into the state---guess you're gonna have to start all over again with seed! :-) And there's information about Noxious Weeds--which are included on that document. And while WAY back when, there used to actually be "guards" stationed where you went "into" California to check for Illegal Contraband, even CA doesn't do that anymore, so to whom are you supposed to show your Colorado DOA inspection certificate? I'm not sure how you'd go about checking further! Maybe you should call the Colorado DOA and try to explain to them what you were told to see what they say---and be sure you tell them you're just an Ordinary Person who's planning to dig a "few" plants up in your yard--and will be potting them in a soilless mix, and taking them with you when you move to Oregon. Be sure they know you have NO intentions to either propagate or sell them. And, whatever you decide to do to check further, PLEASE come back and let us/ME know what you find out. With all the people moving here, there, and everywhere these days, I just can't imagine that either the Oregon DOA OR the Colorado DOA is running around people's yards inspecting a few plants here and there. Now, having said all that! The plants you got from me at the swaps were all grown in Sunshine #1. I'm guessing you're gonna use a fair amount of soil to pot the things you're digging up, so I recommend getting a bale of it (30-some dollars) at Paulino's and use that. Bales are by far the cheapest way to buy soilless mixes since it's compressed and you're getting a lot more than it "looks like." Sunshine mix is also what ALL of Paulino's plants are started and grown in (they sometimes use a different # mix for propagation). I'll repeat this one more time! DON'T buy Hyponex---if you want them to still be alive when you get there! And I don't recommend Miraclegro--WAY overpriced, and extremely inconsistent quality. For the perennials, as soon as your soil is workable, I'd dig up small divisions (they'll get big again!), knock/wash the soil off of the roots and pot them in the mix, keeping them in the appropriate light conditions till you leave (say it ain't so!!!). You can probably plant many of them in pots that are smaller than a gallon to save space. I can't imagine you're going to be successful getting a rose that's been growing in the ground into a one gallon pot! Even the roses that are planted up at Paulino's, which all come in bare root and which have the roots pruned significantly before being potted, are put into two gallon pots. If you're wrong about the regulations, you could put them into bigger pots. And you CAN prune the roots when you do them, but I'd definitely recommend doing it while they're still dormant--a/k/a, as soon as possible, and I'd cut the canes down pretty short too. The other thing you could try--and I've never done this--is to take cuttings and root them. I can't tell you how, but there have been a couple threads around here over the years telling how to do it. Now! About the 'Cherry bells'!!! You know I warned you about growing that--even in Nederland! If you really want to take a chunk of it with you, I'd recommend potting it up just like everything else--and then putting it in a BIG POT in it's new home! I very very, veryveryvery strongly recommend you don't plant it in the ground out there. If you plant that stuff in the ground in Oregon it will probably wind up being added to their Noxious Weed List---and it could very well get YOU banned from the state! ;-) You mentioned on another thread that we should get together before you leave! Darn right, girl! Your place or my place, doesn't matter to me, but I definitely want to get together with you sometime over the summer before you leave! Skybird Here is a link that might be useful: State summaries of plant protection laws and regulations

I'm selling some seedlings online check them out: http://www.ebay.it/sch/nearestheaven/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=