Digging up an outdoor plant because of impending frost?

[jokerlola]

Lifting a morning cup of coffee to you and your outdoor grow while I've been sitting here planning out how to do a similar transplant and move for a plant in flower if I wanted to do the same sort of thing. In the end, covering the plant is probably best and easiest. Plus the least amount of stress on you as the gardener.

So, I am sitting here figuring out how to pull it off and I realize that part of the stress would be on our heart when we try to lift that pot of soil. Then our blood pressure goes up some more since it will seem like the plant is swaying every which direction each time we take a step or two as we move it from one spot to another.

I have done a similar transplant moving a plant just starting to go into flowering but about 1/2 the size of yours. Went from in the ground and into a large container. It can be done but it takes planning. Yes, it was fun planning it out, doing the prep and then the actual transplant. Took about a month to pull it all off what with pruning the branches to bring it down to a size I wanted it and then the occasional root pruning. The actual transplanting from the garden to the new container took about an hour.

Is there a container large to put it in? The plant is about 3 foot wide so the drip line is a circle 3 foot across. Since it is in the soil there are roots growing out past the drip line and those will have to be cut (root pruned) but the question is just where to cut. Is the drip line circle going to be 3 feet which means a pot about 3 foot wide?

Right now the plant is about 4 foot high. Gotta figure that after the plant is put into a new container it will be the original 4 foot above the soil line plus now the 18 inches up to 24 inches of the pot itself which means a new height of 5 1/2 to 6 foot.

Digging up the plant would be an extreme measure and only if we get some kind of weather that would be too harsh for just covering. In the past, I've probably brought plants inside for the night when I really didn't have to. I tended to do it if temps got down past 40 degrees, into the high 30's. I'm learning that the plants ill probably be fine even if temps dip down near freezing for a couple of hours as long as temps go back up during the day. But since my plants are in Smart Pots and not too big to move, it wasn't that much of a hassle to bring them inside on cold nights and put them back out in the morning.

Here in Colorado we can still have incredibly mild weather into November but we do have cold fronts that tart coming through from now until then.

My first real grow, my plants weren't ready for harvest until mid November and I wound up bringing plants inside and putting them outside everyday for their last 10 days. That got a little bit too much and like I said, it was probably not entirely necessary except for a couple of nights/days when we had snow.