Dividing Hellebores

Holy cannoli, check out the size of this Hellebore! It's been in the garden about 5 years now. Although the books say that Hellebores will grow fine in bare or average soil, I planted this one in a spot that had just been amended with composted manure. It quickly grew into a monster sized plant.

Here's a side shot, you can see that it is in a full sized wheelbarrow. I have to tell you that I almost flipped myself upside down when I tried to lift it out of the ground. Note to self, trying to lift something the same size as myself is not a good idea.

I really had no idea how to divide this thing but when it comes to perennials I've become quite adventurous. So I simply grabbed my super-de-duper unbelievably sharp, root knife and started sawing away. You can see the center line where I simply when down between the emerging leaves.

I didn't cut them down too small because I really don't know how Hellebores react to being divided. All the pieces were replanted in well amended soil.

One division though was saved and I potted this one up in a big fat pot. I plan on leaving it in the pot all winter to see what happens.

So far it's been 24 hours since I cut this clump into pieces and the foliage hasn't wilted. I've got my fingers crossed that I didn't kill this beautiful plant. Tomorrow I need to remember to water all the divisions well since the ground here is bone dry and there's no rain in the weekly forecast.

Wish me luck!
Melanie

Hosta roots

In the spring of 2006 a local nursery received a number of birdbaths that had broken tops. They had an employee with a great idea, she put those bases upside down in the sales yard and planted them. I was the first person to ask if they had more of these bases and would they sell them to me. The price was a ridiculous $5 a piece and I got all 5 that they had available.

One base went in my shade garden and was planted with Hosta 'Halcyon', Hosta 'Green Lance' and Oxalis atropurpurea (the purple clover) which I adore but is not hardy here on Long Island.

For three years these containers all were fine, they even survived winter heave and an occasional fall. Sadly, the one container in the shade did not survive having a tree limb fall on it and knock it over. The broken pieces are two large pieces though and I hope to be able to glue them back together.

We've just had a heat wave here and I could not dig and divide perennials so yesterday I decided to address the problem of the broken container. Even though it had been broken for months and laying on it's side, the Hosta were still growing. Imagine my surprise when I tried to pull them out of the container and the roots just kept coming out.

Those roots were so long that my arm wasn't long enough to hold them for the camera and take a photo at the same time. In fact, those roots went all the way down to the base of the container. I had originally filled the container with compost, not potting soil and it was still nice and rich looking.
Once I had the massive root system on my work table I had to chop off those beautiful roots to make them more manageable.

Finally, the Hosta have been potted up and are ready for their next adventure. I do want to use a piece of both and recreate the planting that I had before.

Melanie

Radio-Flyer-ectomy

Yesterday I spent all day outside but just felt like I didn't accomplish very much. The weather hasn't been very cooperative and all too often my fingers were so chilled that I had to come in and run them under warm water.

Today we are expecting perfect gardening weather, sunny with a high temperature of 61 (16 celsius). My first chore of the day will be to perform surgery on my radio flyer wagon. It's been filled with Sedum since the spring of 2005 and last year I noticed that they were a bit cramped.

When I first planted this wagon it also had several types of Sempervivum (Hens and Chicks) in it but they were quickly overrun by the two varieties of Sedum (Sedum 'Angelina' and Sedum
John Creech').
Here you can see what it looked like when it was first planted. Obviously the two Sedums listed above were the big winners in the "crowd-em-out" contest.

I look forward to starting all over again and will take a photo when I'm finished.

Then it's off to divide the hardy Geraniums and spend an hour in the compost area. For some reason, I just can't make myself spend more than an hour working on compost.

Hopefully I'll get to take some new photos also.

Have you ever divided a Hellebore?

Last year was the first that I had Hellebore seedlings bloom. It was so exciting to see their different faces. The bees had done the pollinating for me, I did not hybridize these.

As you can see here, they were a nice size last year. This year I expect to have them double in size as they were planted in a nice rich soil.

One Hellebore that I bought about 5 years ago has grown to enormous proportions. I've never read or seen anything that talks about dividing a Hellebore. The plants that are available for sale in pots are quite large and robust so I would guess that they do pot up well. I wonder if those are seedlings that are potted up or if they were divisions from larger plants.

Many years ago a garden friend gave me two plants of Hellebore foetidus. She warned me that they would sulk when planted in my garden. True to her advice, they never became robust but as they went to seed, their seedlings took over and became large healthy plants. I have moved very young seedlings and noticed that they don't mind this at all. But as for actually cutting into a large clump, well that's something I'd like more information on before actually trying.

Melanie

Time to split!

Hooray! Yesterday I finally got to dig in the dirt!!!

I've been growing Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) in my garden for many years.
After moving here 11 years ago, I bought a few in boxes from local garden centers in the early spring, planted them in the ground and didn't give them much thought after that. For some reason, I was under the impression that they were finicky to move, I guess I didn't think that out too carefully. If they were finicky, they sure wouldn't have survived being packaged in those little cardboard boxes and loaded on the shelves at the stores.

One bleeding heart had been planted in my driveway, lots of sun, lots of water and lots of composted horse manure. That plant grew to epic proportions! It was just amazing in the spring, more than 6 feet across (2 meters) during peak bloom. The one problem with a bleeding heart of that size is that by mid summer the foliage disappears leaving you with a big hole in that same spot.

Last year I decided to bite the bullet and divide this monster. I dug it up, didn't know what to do with all those carrot-like roots so I snapped them off. I chopped up the pieces with my garden knife until I had pieces that fit into pots and potted them up. Finally, the pots were put in the shade so the plants wouldn't go into total shock. A few weeks later every single pot was full of lush blooming bleeding hearts. I was thrilled!

In the past I had only dug young bleeding heart seedlings. Yes, bleeding hearts will self sow if you leave the seed pods alone. Nobody had told me this and I was so happy the first time I found those distinctive little seedlings.



Both red and white varieties of Dicentra grow here. The red seems to seed more easily but maybe that's because it was the clump in the most sun. I've only found 3 seedlings so far near the white bleeding heart. They've been moved around the garden over the past few years so hopefully more will volunteer to grow here.

Every spring I hold a one day plant sale and invariably people ask if I have any of the white Dicentra for sale. This year I decided to divide up that big clump so I could share it with a few folks.

The first photo shows a close up of the root system on the Dicentra. The second photo shows the emerging foliage on a red Dicentra that seeded next to a clump of daylilies. The third photo shows the foliage of the white Dicentra (the two small pieces I left after removing the large clump). As you can see, it's easy to tell what color the plants are going to be.

Since I still had a wheel barrow half filled with potting soil, I decided to bite the bullet and also try my hand at dividing up the Euphorbia polychroma (Cushion spurge). If you look through my post titles, you'll see that I did a feature on this fantastic perennial.



The photo here is not too exciting, as you can see, I tried to get this divided up before it puts on any growth. That seemed to be successful with the bleeding hearts so I wanted to use the same method.

This last photo shows the clump of Euphorbia on the edge of my work table. The roots were even easier to work with than the Dicentra. So far the plants all look fine in their pots, one reason to be thankful for our cold rainy day.

Hopefully tomorrow I can attempt another perennial and share that here too.

Gotta love that mud!