Gardening on demand

There is nothing like a broken sewer line to force you into a bit of gardening.

While gardens are a wonder,however, large trees in close proximity to aged sewer lines are not a happy thing. The clay tile pipe from 1942/43 finally succumbed to age and roots and left us with major problems. Time to call in the plumbers!

We now have several large holes in the garden (6' long x 3' wide x 6' deep). So far, we have only had to sacrifice one azalea bush, but we were already planning on refurbishing that particular bed, anyway. We also got lucky, in that there had been a rose bush directly where this large hole is situated, but it died a few years ago. Finally, a lot of the digging is taking place in the alley, which only has plantings directly against the cement block wall.

New technology usually allows the plumber to pull new PVC piping along the path of the existing clay pipe with an interesting hydraulic machine. While this worked for a portion of the job, the plumbers found out that the original builders had placed the sewer line and gas line in the same trench. So, a large portion, aboutharms 20 feet will need to be completely trenched out and replaced by hand.

This change means that I have to move 5 rose bushes out of harms way. Of course, transplanting fully-grown rose bushes is a cumbersome task, so I looked for a few ways to make it easier. First, since it is pruning time here in Southern California, I decided to do the hard pruning before we dug them up. This will allow us to move them around more easily. Since I was doing these roses, I figured I might as well do the rest of the front yard (12+ roses) I was almost finished when a friend stopped by to chat, so tomorrow I will need to do the transplanting and finish up the pruning as well. I have some large trash bags that I will wrap around each root ball to prevent them from drying out. A quiet resting place in the shade should get them through the day without too much trauma.

I don't anticipate too many problems with the transplanting. Since the entire bed will be ripped up, I plan on taking very large root balls for each plant. This will allow me to easily reset them on top of the refilled trench once the job is complete. This will also cause as little root damage as possible. It will also give me a chance to redistribute the roses throughout the bed. The eastern end has been falling into heavier and heavier shade beneath a pine tree, so this should help. It will also help to disguise the hole that was left when the one plant died. By tomorrow night, they should all be happily re-installed in their new/old bed.

More later!

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