Perennials: Help with Lavenders, 1 by PrissyJo

PrissyJo wrote:
Hi. I wanted some lavender when I moved to Roswell NM four years ago because I couldn't grow it back east because of the humidity so I planted all kinds of different seeds:

Munstead English
lavender lady
Lavender French Long
Lavender Hidcote Blue
Lavender English
Lavender Rosea
Lavender Sancho Panza
Vincenza Blue Lavender
White Ice
Lavender Lady
Munstead

I was very surprised that they all came up so I planted them out in my 24 x 24 herb garden with parsley, sage, borage, rosemary, celery, nepeta, yarrow, thyme, oregano and some marigolds. I have rocks and clay and amended it with a small amount of peat, a little bone meal and a tiny bit of blood meal. My soil test came back with alkaline at 11 and no nutrients! The herb garden is on the east side and a girl here said to plant all herbs here in a place no other plants will grow, the poorest soil you can find. So, I tried it. Since I have a low roof line, only some of the garden gets a little shade in the afternoon, the rest of it is full sun. The sun is VERY hot here, between 0 and 15% humidity, temps range from 100 to 117 in the summer and high winds. Makes me miserable but the lavender seems to love it. I set up irrigation but it quit working after about three weeks because the water quality is so bad, it blocked it up and it was too hot for me to get out and fix it so I started watering with an overhead sprinkler. We are supposed to get 10" of rainfall a year here per year but the last two years have been severe drought. We only got 2" last year. My neighbor complained that my overhead sprinkler was blowing onto her car so I quit watering and assumed everything would die and got depressed and was just going to let it go back to grass. But, everything surprised me.

I lost all of my labels with either the sun or the wind so now I don't which plants are which variety :(, except of course the white ice!

Here's a picture after three years from seed and very harsh conditions. The marigolds actually reseeded everywhere but you can see how dry and yucky the soil is. This was taken at the end of sept last year.

I want to move some of the lavender plants to another part of my yard for landscaping plants because they've taken up most of the herb garden but I'm not sure if I can get a shovel in this hard ground. Has anyone had any experience in transplanting lavender? Do you know how far down the roots go?