Well, I’m not going to do enough planting to attempt a controlled experiment, but you make me feel a lot better about the flowers i planted today.
It rained yesterday. So the soil is nicely damp. Being lazy, i watered the plants (little potted plants herbaceous plants, not bare root woody plants) that he’d been shipped to me. But didn’t bother to water the planting sites. Then i grafted a rabbit-girdled apple tree
See The great winter girdling of 2026. Do I have any hope of recovery? - #109 by Ginda
Then i planted my little potted things, and then i got permission from the backyard neighbor to dig up a sprout near the property line (i tried first thing, but she wasn’t home) and then i went to do it, and while exploring the state of the roots, i pulled out a lot of other plant material, some of which is probably poison ivy. (I only saw one little red shoot. It could have been some other vine.) So i decided my priority was to go indoors and wash. I left everything outside, even my hammer and ball of kitchen twine I’d been using to graft. Anyway, it got late enough that i didn’t water in the new plants, something i normally do. But i did tamp them in firmly.
I have been thinking that they’ll probably be okay, because the soil was nicely damp, as far down as i dug. I think I’ll trust your experience, Alan, and just leave them alone, unless it’s dry for several days, in which case I’ll water them, of course.