I know they say not to move peonies until September.

I already did my daylillies. Last month in fact. Pretty much I moved a whole hedge of them from my moms house to my house. I dug hole for the new plants, filled the holes with water, and then planted the day lilles when the water had soaked into the ground. I just cut off most of the green leaves - left about 4-6" per plant.

I've been meaning to divide up my Shasta daisies. Just haven't gotten around to it yet. My daughter is in camp this week, so I should get to it this week. I'll do the same as with daylillies - dig holes, fill the holes with water, plant and cut greenery back to 6-8"

Isn't rudbeckia a biennial? Not sure how dividing would work. I just take seed heads from mine and sprinkle where I want additional plants.

I'm planning on doing some dividing. I think that the plants may be stressed from drought this year, at least some of them. I think I may wait awhile longer to see if we might get more rain before I try to divide and transplant.

my opinion is wait until the first week in September.
Marie

I would wait awhile longer. With the exception of the last two days, it has been so hot and dry that I think the plants would be too stressed if you moved them now.

I suppose if you wanted to get a head-start you could maybe do the daylilies. Seems you can't kill those things if you tried! But if you have the time to wait, I would.

Actually, now that I think of it, I'd say do it the week before the CT swap (wink, wink, nudge, nudge!)

:)
Dee

I agree, go for it, starting with the daylilies (I just did some of mine) but only if you are in an area that hasn't ikmposed a water restriction. I also divided up the Montauks as well, and I also did some of the hostas and anemones.

Heat doesn't seem to be the main problem for us on Cape Ann - it's lack of water. If you can keep your plants moist, they will have plenty of time to get established, develop a root system, and store food for winter and early spring.

I don't know about anyone else but I find that hostas and anemones always appear wilty for days to weeks after I transplant. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I'm not quite sure, but they always do seem to bounce back and thrive.

Despite the several weeks of vintense heat and little rain, and despite a modest watering ban, our garden did very well this year. We used SoilMoist to give us some leeway with the drought and it's been very, very effective. The thing to do is to get it down by the roots. I use a stray and herb funnel to do it. We went back and put some by all of our roses, shrubs, and perennials (about half of them so far) and when I plant anything now, we automatically use it. Between that and capturing water when it has rained, our gardens are looking pretty dandy, and although the top layer of garden soil is bone dry and hard, the roots are getting enough moisture from with the SoilMoist to sustain the plants.

kathyannd - I don't think it is possible to kill hosta! When we bought this house, there was a hedge of hosta growing along my garage. I tore them all out and gave them to my neighbor. Then I sprayed round-up along that garden bed once a month for the rest of the summer - to kill off any hosta I missed. The next spring I had 10 more hosta plants to dig up.

We don't know what variety hosta it is. My neighbor calls them "Round Up Resistant Hosta".

Your garden is really looking good, Kathy! The roses are blooming their heads off. What varieties are they?

I am still trying to establish a way to capture more water. I have three downspouts that are able to drain directly into the ground with no run off. I have two more that I am still working on. One I am planning on using a rain barrel for, and I would really like to sculpt a berm and a depression to catch the water from the other one. Just more work than I can do right now. Still, we have only had 10 inches of rain here, since April. I also have 15 mature trees surrounding our yard, in neighboring yards. They are just sucking the moisture out of the ground. The trees look pretty good, [g] but I have two Viburnum that have dropped half their leaves and the remainder are brown edged. I've been watering watering to no avail with those.

I do have a couple of beds with drought tolerant plants that are doing okay. They are out of the tree root zone too, which makes a big difference.

How are you capturing your water, Kathy?

I haven't moved a hosta in awhile so I don't remember. I do have to divide and move a couple soon though. I'm getting interested in collecting seed and winter sowing them. I did that once and it was a big success. Easy too.

Kathyannd what a great photo of your garden! The SoilMoist people should contact you to use your garden in their advertizements.

Advice from Cornell for drought stressed shrubs and trees.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rx for landscape woes: water trees & shrubs nt the lawn

Thanks all for your helpful suggestions!
I am glad for the rain and hope it will have provided much needed relief to the plants!
Summer is going too fast for me and I don't know if I will get around to dividing before schools start. Maybe that will be a better time with the kids away at school, and as diggerdee suggested, closer to the CT swap! :-)
greenbug

Prairiemoon2, thanks for the link to Cornell. We have watering restricted to 3 hours in the evening on odd/even days. Most of the perennial beds are well-established, so are doing all right, but we have a number of big specimen trees that I worry about. At least the DH has finally stopped using the 6-foot high sprinklers on the blankity-blank lawn.

Betsy

Betsy, I was glad to read that article too. I stopped watering the lawn, not that it has gotten much all season. I have a couple of Viburnum that have dropped leaves and the rest are crispy, even with watering, so now I am doing what they suggested by leaving the hose at the base to drizzle the water. I like that idea of filling up plastic water jugs with holes in the bottom and letting it drip out. I suppose you could do that for your trees. A LOT of work!! If this keeps up, I'm going to start collecting the water in the shower, while I'm waiting for it to turn hot. [g]