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Giving up on Some Perennials
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Posted by
mary_max 5 (
My Page) on
Thu, Sep 26, 13 at 20:08
| I spent the entire day cleaning out beds and will continue to do this until the weather does not allow it . I find myself wondering if it is really worth all the work to do my irises. I also wonder about the purple coneflowers and black eyed Susans that seem to find a way to take over the beds. I even questions my day lilies. Yikes whats wrong with me. Are there plants that you have given up on? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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- Posted by mxk3 z5b/6 MI (My Page) on
Thu, Sep 26, 13 at 21:11
| Why don't you just thin them instead of tossing them, if overall you do enjoy them. Iris are super-easy to cull, they're such a shallow-rooted plant - just take a shovel and slice and lift off pieces of rhizomes you don't want, you can see them right through the soil. The coneflowers and such will be more work, of course - but then, pretty much anything in the garden is work in some form or another. Dividing something every so often isn't deal-breaker for me. Now, if I don't like a plant, that's an entirely different story... There's lots of plants I have given up on for various other reasons, but not because of dividing. Sometimes all the chores in the fall seem overwhelming, that's for sure. |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| Feel your pain and also agree that some plants are ho-hum after awhile....why not chuck the boring iris and daylilies and replant some exciting new cultivars.....something that you can't wait to bloom or head out to the garden first thing in the morning to see......so give the plants you are tired of to friends or neighbours and revamp your garden for next season.....this is the best time, with all the clearance sales at your local nurseries...... |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| I've decided to get much more ruthless with my echinacea this year. I used to leave up the seed heads for birds, then the last few years cut back most of them and left a few, and this year I am taking them all down. It's just too much work in the spring and I can't seem to toss a single seedling, lol, so I end up transplanting them (which of course only spreads the work all over the garden in the long run!). So this year they're all getting cut back. I'm also taking out my monarda. I've tried it several times and it just never looks good. So it's gone. Dee |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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All my iris are gone. I really didn't have enough sun for them and they needed to be divided. The rhizomes I dug up were gross!
Three kinds of monarda are now out and a new one is on trial.
Two phlox and several daylilies are now history. I hated that pepto bismol colored phlox!
And I don't really like 'fragrant angel' echinacea...the butterflies don't seem to like it either. |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| I gave up on Black Eyed Susans - Goldstrum variety - some years ago when a four inch pot took over several square yards of space in a couple of years. I don't grow any of the regular purple cone flowers any more either, since they self seed like crazy. I like to leave flower heads for the gold finches, but with the regular, not newer multi colored ones, coneflowers such as Magnus or Bright Star, it seemed like almost every seed that touched the ground germinated and I was pulling out tons and tons of unwanted seedlings every year. I don't have that problem with the newer varieties. I get a few seedlings that I sometime give away or that I compost. And yes, we do mulch the beds. Ah, the problem with irises. I too am looking closely at all my irises that have had leaf issues for a few years and wonder if they are worth the clean up work. I will keep a few, mostly rebloomers, but would like to downsize their numbers drastically. Linda |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| Of course. Anyone who has been gardening for a long time has arranged and tossed plants. Through the years I have weeded out and tossed out many varieties and there are others I wouldn't be without. Just be sure you really don't want them or keep just a small clump until you decide. My flower beds are vastly different than they were 30 years ago. Plants that like to take over live a short life in my garden as it is with those that drop multitudes of seeds. There are always new varieties that I want to try so getting rid of bothersome plants gives me room to try new things. If I get too pull happy I fill in with annuals--that I grow from seed--until I find that perennial that I want to try |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| I gave up on irises several years ago. Dug them up, put them in 5 gallon buckets, and gave them away. Once grass gets to growing in your irises, you're sunk. WAY too much trouble to keep them cleaned out for only about 2 weeks of blooms. The rest of the year they are just blah. |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| I'm thinking of digging up and pitching all my irises. I hate cleaning them up. In fact, I still haven't cut them all back, and I'm sure I'll never get around to dividing them. As for Goldsturms, ugh. When we moved to KS from Chicago, I noticed every garden that had them looked AWFUL after they bloomed. The entire plant went black and crispy. I had a degree of that problem up north, but nothing like the severity in Kansas, so I have never had them here. Even our local arboretum ripped out their mass plantings of Rudbeckias at their entrance. Garden phlox also don't do well in my Kansas garden. That's a pity because I love them so much. I'm over 60 now, and I have two young dogs (8 mo. and 18 mo.) and we garden on two of our three acres. If it isn't reliable and easy, we don't grow it! |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| This year's casualties include a patch of Stella De Oro daylily which I've had for over ten years (in a moment of insanity I had transported three of the plants in a move from Texas), all but one of my Sedum "Autumn Joy", a terminal Caryopteris and (about to be shovel-pruned) several underperforming roses. I've definitely reached the point where adding anything new means subtracting something. |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| Just this past week I dug out a stand of "Prairie Sunset" (or was it "Summer Nights") Heliopsis. It looked fine only if there was enough moisture but its somewhat remote location made it problematic to supplement with my water. |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| I'm giving up on any perennials that really need to have some scidity in the soil or they yellow badly. This past year was really wet and rainy until recently, and I have sort of quick draining soil so lots of things were yellow earlier. Things are better now that it has dried out some, but I won't be planting feverfew or pyrethrum unless I can do some real amending first. There is probably a whole list of things I won't plant because I don't have the time to keep them watered or work hard on the soil. I had a butterfly bush just die because I didn't water it enough in the very sandy soil it is in. Over time I think the soil will improve itself as I keep planting and mulching, and maybe my palette pf plants will get larger, but for now I am trying to stick with somewhat xeric plants that can do well without a lot of care. I look at the native Phlox that did so well this year with the abundant rains and think "yes!" |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| I joined the 'out they go' club this morning. I was really unhappy with my echinaceas this year. They had suddenly filled in too much of the bed and they just were not good cultivars. The flowers were just not as nice as many I've seen. Plus the foliage had issues this year with the weather. I left one white one that looked pretty good for this time of year and was filling out. Left a couple of small seedlings, just in case I change my mind in the spring. (g) Dug out a Heliopsis 'Midwest Dreams' and I'm done with that. I'm not a big fan of a harsh yellow, I like soft yellows. The foliage was awful after it bloomed. I think I've grown the echinacea for a long time and it's time for a change anyway. I needed to move some lilies into the place they were sitting too. So, happy to get those out of there and now I have a head start on spring. Took the opportunity to loosen up the soil and throw a thick layer of half finished compost to sit over the winter. Now I have some empty spots to fill in the spring :-) |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| I have been ripping out and pitching most of my Boltonia asteroides 'Snowbank'. Enough is enough. Up north, they never reseeded and germinated. Here in Kansas, they are as invasive as any weed I've ever seen. I will keep a half dozen plants, but I've pitched at least a dozen already. The ones I'm keeping were cut back a week ago and won't have a chance to set seed. They only bloomed for a week this year. That was the last straw. |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| I'm going to yank up by the roots a good number of Rudbeckia and Echinaecias instead of digging. Hope that will work. Then in the spring, I will thin as they come up. Those two are taking over one of my gardens. I don't even remember half of what I had planted in that one. I used to have a nice patch of Lupin which have disappeared and Veronica --- I will have plenty of space in the spring for my jugs full of winter-sown seedlings. |
RE: Giving up on Some Perennials
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| I don't bother with much of anything very short or that spreads, like ground covers, stuff that needs staking, and plain green lumps and bumps of foliage that make flowers for a very short time. More into shrubs, nectar plants, and having a lot of blank area after frost for adding tons of leaves/compost, where annuals/edibles go again in spring. |
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