gorgeous! has a lot of wow! factor.

happy gardening!

It is beautiful. I've been looking for one. No luck at lows.
Any idea where I can find one.How long does it take to get one to bloom?

I also have a Red Hot Poker. It has produced flowers for the past 5 years with more and more spikes each year. At one point in late June, it was loaded with 31 separate spikes of dazzling orange and yellow.
Does anyone know if it is possible to separate this plant in order to transplant part of it to another area in my garden? If so, can you give me any specific tips on how I should go about moving the plant and what time of the year to transplant.
Or, am I better off to just wait until spring and purchase a new plant?
Do you know of any reference where I can gather further information on this particular plant?

thanks for any help ............. hollyjanis

This is a great question for the Perennial forum, and I suggest that cause I really want to know what advice they give you so I'll find an answer, too!

hollyjanis I can answer you. you an separate the pups from the larger plant. I do it all the time. i seem to have best success if i do this in the fall.

I'm glad I came across this, because I recently read in a book of mine that spring is the best time to divide these. Maybe it depends on your zone. I kind of want to do it now, but I'm in a group that has a spring plant sale, so I guess I'll wait until spring so I can pot some up for the sale.

Sue

yep. zones sure make a difference. I'm in northern california. if I were you, i'd wait til spring.

I grew them from seeds I got at Lowes/Home Depot last year. This year one of them bloomed and all of them split. I am very much looking forward to the show we'll get next year. Good luck all!

I had 4 big tall pokers that came up. They started with yellow on top and than the rest of it died and dropped off the buds? It is a huge plant but I don't want 1/2 a poker each year. What do you think happened?

Does this plant belong in the cactus/succulent family? jxa44, can you tell us what is the best garden tool to dig this up with? Shovel or digging fork? How deep are their roots? Gosh, maybe we should have a photo enhanced tuitorial forum on Garden Web. Wouldn't that be neat?

sorry, i've been away for a while ;-)

i use a spading fork. my roots are fairly shallow. you can acutally see the divisions if you look carefully and can take a shovel and separate the pups from the mother plant. or you can dig up the whole plant, wash off the soil from the roots and then you'll clearly see where the pups are.

e-mail me offline if you still have questions. again, sorry about the late response, but i don't post here (or visit the forum) very much anymore . . .

joyce

Aren't these plants great? So cool. So dramatic. So different. LOVE them! I got my original plants from BluestonePerennials.com years ago and I really do enjoy them. I find they're very easy to divide, but I recently found a trick in dividing them that makes a huge difference in the health of the divisions as well as the original plant.

I use a Reciprocating Saw. It's really easy to use and it really makes a huge difference in dividing plants that tend to grow into a large, thick clump like ornamental grasses and hostas and Kniphofia because it cuts through the clump like buttah. ;)

And, it allows you to cut the plant into nice, neat, un-butchered sections without having to dig the whole plant out of the ground. I usually cut the plant into pie sections and then dig out each division separately. The whole process is SOOOOO much easier than using a shovel and/or knife. It's actually kind of fun.

If you're borrowing a saw, be sure to have the owner give you an old blade to use that they won't mind cutting through dirt and possibly hitting a few stones along the way.

I've divided Red Hot Pokers in both Spring and Fall and I've found that the less damage you do to the division and/or original planting, the more likely you are to have flowers in the Spring/Early Summer. Therefore, this technique really makes a HUGE difference. But, either season has worked great for me.

Since the plants are so tough and quick to recover in general, I'm going to go ahead and divide one of my monster clumps this weekend, since it just finished it's bloom. We'll see how it goes.

I'm especially interested in trying some of the smaller statured Kniphofias that I've been reading about lately. Digging Dog Nursery and Lazy SS Farm both have a good variety of Knophofias.

Best of luck!

I found the Flamenco RH Poker recently. 2 plants to start and I've gotta say they're bold and beautiful. I never was an orange fan of anything perennial. Now a few yards away are the May Night Salvia -- I say bingo: -nice companions. With the purple in front of the Red Hots. I'll move them beside each other.
One author writes that the RH Poker is very sensitive to cold winter temps so we all need to cover them up with leaves.