In spite of our best intentions, many of us still have way too many potted plants waiting along the driveway—or wherever we stash our acquisitions.

Excuses?We don’t have the beds ready, we’re waiting for help or we have just had no time. We have only a short time left to plant perennials with good odds of survival. (We have at least a month more for successful tree and shrub planting, and bulb planting continues until the ground is too hard.)

It’s time to plant. In fall we should do it a little differently than we might in April. Every step of plant care now should focus on how we can prevent root desiccation (drying out during the treacherous winter).

To plant or to hold?

Ideally you can build proper landscape or flower beds still, with great soil/compost mix. You can mark or fence beds, and nothing will damage the plants. But what if you can’t get to it, or your plants are going into a high-risk situation where the snowplow pushes its load night after night or you won’t be able to water all month?

Then consider a holding bed. It’s a wide trench, loaded with compost, chopped leaves or straw, where you sink the entire pots at normal planting level. They’re much safer than above ground, where the pots are exposed to temperature extremes.

Or you might cluster your plants above ground against the house, where they are sheltered. After freezing, mulch around them.

T. L. C. planting

Now plant perennials or woody plants extra carefully:

Dig wide holes—don’t be lazy— and have lots of compost standing by to mix in with your soil for backfill. No skimping. Compost greatly increases the moisture-holding capacity of the soil. If it hasn’t been raining, fill the hole with water and let it drain.

Now pull or cut off the pots and look at the roots. If they are totally bound up, unravel what you can. Make a couple of slits, and very gently pull some of the root mass outward. The trick is to free up some roots without damaging most of them. A torn-apart root ball dries out quickly, so go easy.

Complete planting as usual, with the crown no more than an inch above the soil level. The lazy planting jobs with little mounds above-ground have very poor odds. Water thoroughly. In dry times fill the hole up again when just half the backfill is in.

Pat the soil over the root ball firmly. Air pockets are destructive. But this doesn’t mean stomping on the poor roots full force.

Stash mulch nearby, but don’t put it on yet so rain can reach the roots and mice won’t nest under the warm mulch. When the ground freezes, then mulch.

Keep the hose out to water until the ground freezes and plants are dormant.

If you have active animal populations, consider fencing, wrapping trunks or Shrub Coats.

Whew, they’re in!

Sally Cunningham is a garden writer, lecturer and consultant.