I ave my dozen trees planted in big pots and I make holes in the pots and plant it in a raised bed in the garden. In winter I dig the pots out and take them inside the 3 car garage. Frankly this was a fun job when I had two trees but with dozen trees it became a daunting job.I have a roof over the raised bed and the house covering the west side, I am planning to make a home made green house nothing fancy by closing the north, south and east sides by by greenhouse fabric. The house provide some heat and may be I can provide some heat too. The temperature has to stay under 30 in order for the trees to stay dormant. I have another ambitious idea comes February I will raise the temperature to 45-50for the trees to start blooming in March and have little figs in April. This will extend my figy season by two months I will have no worry about ripening. Off course wife thinks I crazy but that is Ok she will change her mind when she dips her teeth in sweet figs as early as June.

Hi, You should leave the foliage on for as long as you reasonably can (you didn't say when you were moving). This is more important the later blooming your lily. I.e., Asiatics could probably be dug up now with no ill effects at all but your orientals might lose some size next year. What you should NOT do is "dry them out"! Lilies don't ever go fully dormant (like some bulbs) and while they often survive drying (they're a pretty tough plant) it should definately be avoided. You should think of this more as you would "transplanting" a non-bulb plant. That said, I don't know that you need to go to the trouble of potting them up and moving all the pots. Potting would probably be best for the lilies since it would allow you to keep the foliage longer, but if you have a lot of lilies it may not be practical, especially since you'd need to dig them up carefully so as to keep the foliage intact and then move them, again, without damaging the foliage If you choose to dig them up and bag them, cut back the stalks (as late in the season as you can afford to wait) dig them up trying to preserve as many of the roots as possible and store in bags of just moist NOT soggy (!) peat moss. Vegetable bags tied with a loose half knot work well (you don't want an airtight seal if they will be stored for any length of time). If you can't get them back in the ground this Fall (which I very much recommend) you can refrigerate them over the winter. You can plant lilies any time during Fall-Spring - it's just that if you wait until winter (especially in a lower zone) you just might need a jack hammer to dig up the ground! :) Good Luck. -Helen

If the situation for planting is as shown in the photo, then you are good to go!! Actually, the presence of small rocks in the soil is often an indication of good drainage. And can help with drainage when well-incorporated. I am dealing with something very similar in my current garden....a layer of red lava rock laid in as a mulch. It is really the layer of plastic under the rock that is causing the most difficulty!! (who does that??) Much of it gets intermixed with the soil when I rip out the plastic and I just work around/through it :-) The reddish brown rock blends with the soil better than your white rock does but once planted and mulched, neither will be obvious.

I really miss having enough leaves to cover my cultivated areas. The difference is HUGE! I'm about to have to buy some mulch or give up on some of the areas. I just can't water often enough, or spend enough time pulling the incredible number of weeds out of the uncovered areas. The past few years is the first time I've ever tried to garden any areas w/o periodically covering with & replenishing leaves because our yard just does not produce what is needed. What a shocking hardship it has been.