There was no root ball. Did I mention that? I did, I think. There was just this ancient tuberous tap root, probably 18 inches long that comes off the bottom of the rose, goes down about three inches and then turns 45 degrees and heads that way 15 inches. It now has a nick from where the Butcher hit it with the shovel. It had almost no roots coming off it, just the occasional little hairy clump, like you might see on a carrot. Except for up at the surface, where it had an umbrella of roots.
When we tried to take a “large root ball” as we’d been advised to do, there weren’t enough roots to clump a root ball together. We, for all practical purposes, ended up doing a bare root move. And, since I didn’t expect to be planting a rose bare-rooted, I had no idea if there were special things I should have considered.
Sunday, Monday, and today, I stared at it as hard as I could, to try to discern if it was going to live or die, but it’s just not clear. In the rain, it definitely got a good soaking. And it’ll get some nice sun today. So, I guess we’ll see.
I don’t know if the root situation is because it wasn’t getting enough light in the old spot and thus couldn’t leaf out and do the plant shit it needed to do in order to thrive, so it couldn’t sustain a healthy root system or if it didn’t have a healthy root systems so it couldn’t leaf out and get into the paltry sunlight that was there. Or if it was some mixture of both.
Anyway, I’m fretting. I hope it pulls through.
Tiny Cat Pants 