Planting a Clematis

Clematis is a great vine to put in your garden. One of the reasons is it's not one of those overpowering vines that can take over. They're pretty well behaved. And the other thing is the range of colors that you can get with these nice large blooms on them is wonderful. And what we're going to plant here today is actually a white clematis. It's Miss Bateman and it will show up very nicely in the back of this bed that we have here where we have a lot of color. The white will help set that color off. And when you plant a clematis it's very important to do your homework first. They like to have good drainage and they also like to be kept moist. So you're not going to want it in a place that is down in you know in the bottom. You want to have good drainage off of it. And you also want to make sure that your soil is well amended. Now we have some pretty well amended soil here but you can see we still as I dug down we still got quite a bit of clay here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take some compost and work that into the bottom of the hole that I dug. And also we're going to put some of it in with our backfill dirt and kind of mix that up as we go ahead and plant in. So I'm going to go ahead and dump that out here so we can mix that in later. And then the other thing about clematis that is different than most every other plant that you plant is you actually want to plant it about two inches deeper than it is in the pot. And this is actually very different because most plants you want them at level or slightly above. Clematis you want it about two inches deeper. And there are two reasons for this. One is that it helps the plant get more shoots because that's one of the things they can be kind of spindly but if you plant them deeper more shoots go ahead and develop. And looks like it has a good root system on it so that's good. And then we just go ahead and put that down in our hole. Now when we do that we're going to want to remove the foliage down here that is below soil level because we don't want that to rot. So we're going to go ahead and remove that. Now the other reason that you want to plant them a little bit deeper is that clematis are prone to a disease called clematis wilt. And if you have them planted a little deeper then they'll come back from under the ground for you if the whole top wilts. So that's why. Now I got all these leaves off so I'm going to put this down in the hole. Now while I am you know put the compost in here you can also add a little bit of bone meal in with this and that just helps give it a few nutrients. Bone meal is not a real strong fertilizer so it's not going to burn the roots but it just gives it a little boost as you plant. Then we go ahead and fill this in and you know kind of firm it down like you would with any other plant. Not super firm but you don't want any air holes down there. All right once I've got this planted I want to water it in and you want to spread a little bit of mulch here. Clematis actually like to have their foot in the shade and their head in the sun. And what's going to happen here is we have this border and so these plants are going to grow up and they're going to shade the roots. Right now they're not so I'm going to want to mulch this in. If you didn't have other plants around you could plant a small ground cover or you could put some rocks or stones around here to shade the roots because that is something that will make a clematis very fussy is to have sun shining on the root area. Now I've planted it here and I've actually if you've noticed planted it out from the fence a little bit. You want it to be out from your structure just a bit especially if it's something like this or if you're going to plant it on a wall so that it can actually get rain because if it's right up next to it it's not going to get as much rain down here as it is out here. The other thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to remove the post that it came with because they're kind of useless at this point. It works well while it's in the nursery to keep the vine from being tangled up but it's not going to help us out much once we've got it planted and you can also come in and cut back your vine a little bit. Now this one is actually really got quite a few shoots on it but if you cut it back it will help it get more shoots. So we're going to come and right here if you can see right here at a bud right above a bud I'm just going to cut it flat right above there and that will cause it to go ahead and branch below. So here we go right here I'm just going to come in right above that bud you can see where they come out and that will help and that also helps me get it loose from my post here. Now we have it trained up against this fence and clematis are in the twining group of vines and so they actually need something a little smaller than this fence to grab onto and these are kind of a cross between a twiner and something that has tendrils because these little leaf shoots actually kind of act like a tendril they'll grab around anything small but if you notice it's not going to grab around this so what would help with my vine training is to get something like some wire cages or cattle panels or something like this that my vines could twine around this would be very good to put back here along the fence and we could just attach it to the fence. Now you could use something like one of those fan trellises the important thing to remember is make sure your trellis is planted firmly in the ground so that after your vine grows it isn't going to pull your trellis over with the weight but basically then we can take and start training our vine onto our trellis and another thing is to kind of if you can as you go train them kind of horizontally to begin with right here we'll tie it on kind of horizontally and that way you can space these out this really does have a lot of shoots it's going to be good to work with and come in and just tie them on I have a tie here that's the thing about a clematis is that if you pay a little attention to it right at the beginning and get it trained right they become pretty maintenance free and they provide a lot of enjoyment for the garden.