October, 1918 
25 
IS FALL PLANTING UNIVERSALLY POSSIBLE? 
A Brief Discussion of the Climatic and Other Conditions which Affect Its Success 
GRACE TABOR 
W ITHOUT delay I may say at once that 
successful fall planting is not universally 
possible. There are many places where it may 
perhaps prove only fifty per cent disastrous, 
but there are other places where it will result 
in failure so invariably that it is doubtful if 
anything can ever be done to insure its success 
—just as there are places where it will show 
a favorable balance and still others where it 
will invariably succeed, providing it is properly 
done and the material used is not itself in¬ 
tolerant of fall handling. 
There are a great many things that enter 
into the conditions which we designate by the 
word “climate.” Some of them are of broad¬ 
est origin, arising from worldwide or even pos¬ 
sibly interplanetary causes which affect large 
sections of the earth’s surface—whole zones, 
indeed. But some others are astonishingly 
local; and not infrequently these latter run ab¬ 
solutely counter to the first—as witness the 
wonderfully cool and invigorating atmosphere 
of certain South American cities lying prac¬ 
tically under the equator, yet at a great altitude. 
Geographical position therefore is not the 
determining factor, although it enters into the 
consideration largely, of course. Actually it 
may have less to do with determining whether 
or not fall planting is expedient than some 
purely local circumstance—for a number of 
local circumstances may so modify the normal 
conditions imposed by latitude that these will 
be practically nullified. Altitude, as we have 
just seen, is one of these; atmospheric peculi¬ 
arities caused by the direction of prevailing 
winds, and what these may blow over as they 
approach- -t' sea, possibly, or a large body of 
water, or drily mountain ranges—furnish an¬ 
other; the degree of surrounding forestation 
still another. Proximity to any body of water, 
even a small pond, not infrequently upsets 
things completely—and nothing is a more 
treacherous frost-trap, very often, than a seem¬ 
ingly sheltered hollow. 
Being so largely affected by local conditions, 
fall planting of necessity falls into that class of 
gardening operations which must be decided 
locally and independently for each problem. 
Hence, only generalities are of really practical 
value; and so to generalities we must give par¬ 
ticular attention. This does not mean that a 
casual examination of the problem will suffice, 
but rather the contrary—for in order to make 
particular application of the principles which 
generalities express, very careful study of 
everything pertaining to the subject is neces¬ 
sary. So it is not an easy, cut-and-dried propo¬ 
sition by any means, but one demanding real 
and concentrated effort. 
1 ET us consider first what actually happens 
when a plant is taken from one place and 
planted in another. Whether it is transported 
a hundred feet or a hundred miles in the inter¬ 
val is, of course, immaterial, so far as the oper¬ 
ation itself is concerned. Why do plants die 
when transplanted? 
Above all else the root system of a plant is 
disturbed and a great deal of it destroyed, no 
matter how skilfully the work is done. And 
the root system is the vital system upon which 
all the processes of nutrition and growth de¬ 
pend. This is not to say that other parts of a 
plant do not have their share in promoting its 
growth and life; but it is the roots that supply 
the food which is built up into the living or¬ 
ganism. The one thing that saves the plant is 
the fact that a multiplicity of roots is supplied 
it. If it had but one, transplanting would be 
quite impossible. 
As a matter of fact, transplanting is always 
attended with the gravest danger, considering 
it as an operation involving the welfare of the 
single specimen subjected to it. We do it con¬ 
stantly and with a high degree of success; but 
it is the experience of everyone who has han¬ 
dled any considerable amount of material that 
a certain degree of mortality is to be expected— 
and if we could look at it from the plants’ point 
of view I have no doubt it would appear a 
frightful ordeal from which even the hardiest 
would shrink. Consider that it involves com¬ 
plete detachment from everything that furnishes 
the means of life, in addition to the physical 
shock of lost members and the depletion that 
follows shock invariably, and it appears in a 
truer light than we commonly turn upon it. 
T HE one measure that we are able to resort 
to, to balance the damage we do by taking 
a thing out of the ground, is pruning. Every¬ 
thing maintains itself in equilibrium as to roots 
and top, and loss of either must be met by 
sacrifice of the other. Plants attend to this for 
themselves in a state of nature—not always, 
however, with a high degree of success as far as 
appearances go—but we must attend to it with 
great care when we interfere with their natural 
growth. Whatever proportion of roots may be 
injured or destroyed in getting a plant out of 
the ground must be compensated by a corre¬ 
sponding proportion of top removed. For ex¬ 
ample, if a third of the roots are sacrificed— 
and this proportion at least is likely to be the 
loss—a third of the top should be pruned 
away, in order to re-establish a balance between 
top and roots, and insure sufficient nourishment 
for the growth above ground. 
Plants die when transplanted usually be¬ 
cause this balance has not been restored—and 
it is wise to overprune tops rather than take 
any chances of leaving too much. The great 
essential to success is the re-establishment of 
root activity just as soon as possible; and, of 
course, the less top there is to carry on tran¬ 
spiration, the sooner the roots will be able to 
catch up with the demands which are always 
made upon them by the top. 
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THE DAWN 
There is a pool for every star 
To shine upon -—- 
But all the waters of the world 
Await the dawn. 
—Harry Kemp. 
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r I ' HERE is bound to be an interval, however, 
X no matter how carefully the settling of 
roots into the new soil may be done, during 
which there is no root activity—for the roots 
must themselves take active hold upon the soil 
before they will begin to draw in the juices 
which are the basis of plant diet. It is one of 
the inexplicable phenomena of life, this differ¬ 
ence between taking hold and not taking hold, 
between the positive and the negative, between 
activity and passivity, especially when it is re¬ 
duced to so seemingly inert a thing as a plant; 
but plant roots are like the horse of the proverb 
-—one man can set them in the earth, but ten 
cannot make them drink of the waters of the 
earth which contain their food in solution. So 
until the plant itself recovers from the shock 
and its rootlets begin actively to reach for 
nourishment and in the reaching, to grow, there 
is a period of suspended animation which is the 
critical stage of the entire operation. 
If planting is not undertaken until a plant 
is absolutely dormant in the fall, this period 
will, of course, extend over the entire winter; 
which means that the plant remains in very 
much the state it would be in if it were not 
planted at all, except that its roots do not dry 
out —unless conditions of soil and weather are 
such that the earth in which they rest does not 
protect them from doing so. This brings us to 
the kernel of the whole matter. Fall planting 
would meet all the requirements, theoretically, 
for successful operations providing these condi¬ 
tions could be controlled. But they cannot be, 
beyond a certain point. Protection may be given 
a plant by mulching the ground above its roots 
and by covering the plant itself, and yet frost 
action in the ground and the degree of aeration 
and the detachment of the plant itself—the 
negative state—will all act, singly or together, 
to overcome the precautions taken. 
O N the other hand, if fall planting is done 
so early that vegetation is still active, the 
resumption of root activity will not be suffi¬ 
ciently vigorous to establish the plant in its new 
location before winter puts an end to growth; 
and the tenderness of such growth as may have 
taken place makes it utterly inadequate to sus¬ 
tain the rigors of winter. 
Roots must, of course, freeze under normal 
circumstances, as the ground freezes; and freez¬ 
ing is not in itself a menace to ordinary plant 
material native to a latitude where frost is the 
rule. But rootlets that are in this detached state 
which I have endeavored to describe are af¬ 
fected by it differently than they would be if 
their hold upon the soil were not so interrupted; 
and the freezing which they undergo during the 
depth of winter seems to act upon them more 
as it would act upon succulent vegetation above 
ground. That is, it actually freezes the life out 
of them, and they dry out and wither instead 
of thawing into plump and vigorous little 
feeders. 
This may very possibly be owing to the lack 
of sufficient moisture. When rootlets are in 
active contact with the soil, they absorb mois¬ 
ture from it continually through their delicate 
tissues; and when the soil freezes they freeze 
as one with it, and thaw as one with it when 
it thaws. But when they are only passively 
reposing in it, they freeze separately—as alien 
(Continued on page 56) 
