About to transplant outside.. and it's 107 degrees.

So I got some RO water today and after looking at your tutorial VG, I think I am going to adapt it.

The soil I am going into will be pretty dry, hard, a bit on the clay side. My plan is this:

Take my leftover potting mix (33% MG organic potting mix, 33% perlite, 33% topsoil, amended with garden lime) and fill it with water until it's oatmealy.
Stir it well, add in a little epsom salt (I have no superthrive on hand, used it before and never felt it worth it). The new soil should have enough food for a couple of days at least.
Fill the hole with the mush and drop the plant in and let it wick up the moisture.
Check them tomorrow and see how dry it is and water if needed.

My only concern is how much water I will lose to the surrounding soil, being as dry as it is. I don't have any newspaper on hand to try and make a liner. Should I just pour and drop it in quickly and just rewater if needed?

I will be doing this at night as well, hopefully to reduce stress on the plants. I don't want to interrupt a healthy soaking of the sun with all that shock. My dream is that your adapted method will be gentle enough for them to continue solar activity in the morning in their new homes.

Got it done although I doubt I minimized the stress very well. Trapsing through briars and woods in pitch black is loud and scary.

Basically just lined the hole and got it soupy, dropped the plant in and filled in the rest with soil and watered well. Will have to wait until tomorrow to see what damage was done.

if u have lime in the soil already, i dont think u need the epsom salt. unless your lime only has calcium. but epsom also has sulfur, so watch out for that. and i dont think newspaper liners will work at all. they will just get soggy and break down. did u add enough perlite? if the soil is really thick, u may need more of it. its hard to explain though

I didn't use any newspaper actually.. and I used pulverized garden lime, which has less Mg I believe. My mix has always been 50/50 potting mix/perlite. I mixed in some topsoil though so the new soil is probably 33/33/33 once the roots grow into it. Oh, and there is a few scoops of hydroton in there as well. Drainage isn't an issue, and the natural soil is powder dry so it's going to wick away any excess water quickly.

Well, here is the result of my transplant:


2 mornings now I've checked them and an armadillo has apparently been digging at the edges of one of the plants... of course it's the one that was having problems so now I can't be sure what's causing what! I took about a cu. foot of top soil and put a 2-3" layer around all the plants and gave them all about a gallon each of water. A lot of the wilted leaves pulled off easily.. so I went ahead and plucked a lot of the worst looking leaves. The one with the previous severe problem doesn't seem to be showing the same problem, looking more like a general N deficiency. Hopefully this top soil that is loaded with humus and mycco will help make something available.

All the growth that was lime green the before transplanting is now dark green. The buds smell like something you would buy. I hope they make it!

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Oh, and it's been 105+ every day for weeks.. and they still seem to be trucking along despite living a sheltered life of 80 degrees. (101 when I took these pics this morning, heat index of 108..)