Mowing, chopping back, and Darling hots up!
Hello friends!
It's been a bit of a bonkers week, and so there's no special project this week, just a super-simple 101 on cutting back your perennials (starting with what a perennial actually IS) seeing as this is what I've been mostly up to this week.
Once again thank you for your lovely messages..they mean an awful lot to me!
My five minute forays this week:
Monday. I mow. That is all. #therapy
Tuesday. I sow the rest of my green manure into the second of the beds I cleared last week. If you have a patch of earth you are unsure about what to do with, you could do much worse than get hold of some field beans and sow them as soon as possible. The beans will fix nitrogen into the soil, improving its nutrient content, and the roots they send out will add to the structure as well. They are perfectly winter hardy and a rather good alternative to bare earth which will just get populated by weeds. I finally get around to giving my Hotbin its first meal: grass clippings mixed with torn up cardboard, and our veg peelings from the weekend. I am a bit worried about how to compost in this new bin (having never really given it much thought before). When I had a regular heap, I would just chuck stuff on willy nilly and hope for the best, turning it perhaps twice a year. I would get compost after about 18 months. This bin promises black gold much more speedily, and so I'm being all perfectionist about it. I call it Darling, and I dream about it every night. This is not right. Something in me will, no doubt, rebel soon.
Wednesday. The asters are now on their last legs, and although they still look rather gorgeous, in a gone-over-but-still-got-it kind of a way, I've come over all November-ish and am itching to get some bulbs in the ground, for which I need space. I'm also thinking of planting my standard hydrangeas directly into the flower beds in order that they may, one day, reach their full potential. This is the reason I'm cutting back; I would most probably just leave everything be otherwise. The asters yield with one or two firm chops with my shears and I pile them into my wheelbarrow, thinking about how much joy they have given us. If you have Aster x frikartii 'Monch' and live in a very cold area I would postpone chopping until the spring, as it is technically a tender perennial. Otherwise, chop to the ground. If you're worried you could always root some cuttings for insurance. I give Darling a meal of chopped up asters. I'm not really down with all the chopping, but rules are rules.
Thursday. More chopping and finally all the beds are cut back and I'm ready to plant bulbs! *excited face*. Also NEWSFLASH! Darling is hotting up! The dial has definitely moved! I feel a mixture of pride and smugness (and a small amount of anxiety because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to follow The Rules for much longer).
Friday. I chop off all the delicious tarragon which has gone unused this year and throw it into boiling water for 10 seconds, before plunging it into same, but this time icy. Once dried, I then portion the leaves into little 'balls' and wrap them in cling before freezing. I think if you are lucky enough to have a glut then it's a bit sad to let it all go to waste. Tarragon is good with chicken and rabbit and (of course) béarnaise, but you only need a little, which is why I always end up with so much. Blanching keeps the flavour better but it's really all about keeping the colour bright...(you can of COURSE just chuck it all in the freezer without doing the blanching bit).
Cutting back perennials 101
What is a perennial? NOT a silly question - I didn't know this until I started getting seriously into plants.
A perennial is a plant which comes up in the spring, flowers and dies back in the autumn, and then spends winter under ground, ready to begin the cycle again. It's important to distinguish that perennials come back again from THE SAME PLANT, as opposed to annuals, which only last a year, so the identical plants you see coming back the following year are their children.
Some examples of perennial plants:
Geranium
Echinacea
Irises
Lychnis (rose campion)
Malva (mallow)
Nepeta (catmint)
Phlox
Rudbeckia (black-eyed susan)
scabious (pincushion flower)
Verbascum (mullein)
Not all perennial plants need cutting back...in fact, NONE of them do (mother nature doesn't go around with secateurs, fussing over things does she?), but as gardeners, we do it, primarily to keep things tidy, or because we want to move things about...gardening is, after all, really about keeping nature within bounds. Cutting back can make room for bulb-planting, and allows us to introduce winter bedding if we're into that sort of thing, so that we can enjoy our gardens over the cold months without looking at a mass of brown. Lastly, removing dead material allows air and moisture to get to other plants in our borders, and prevents them getting squashed. But seriously, if you don't need or want to cut back then DON'T! - you can leave it all until spring and the birds and overwintering animals will have valuable nutrients and hiding places. The beauty of frosty seedheads is hard to beat (and hugely instagrammable!)
When I was just getting interested in perennials, I searched long and hard for two things. Firstly, I wanted a hard and fast rule for cutting back - what to cut back and when to do it, and how much etc. There isn't one.
Secondly, I wanted a complete list of every single perennial on the planet, and an explanation of exactly what I should do with it. Sorry, there isn't one of those either. The reason is that there are just so many plants to consider, and what you do with them in the autumn very much depends on where you are, and timings can change from year to year depending on temperatures. So annoying as it may seem, you have to get to know your plants just a little bit before you go a-hacking away. You need to identify the plant in question and then go to the Google and ask what to do with it. There are though, some common sense questions that you can ask yourself which will normally get you through.
1. Has the plant gone all brown and floppy and dead-looking? If it has, then remove those dead-looking bits. If it is brown but still standing and gorgeous looking, usually with the remnants of a flower at the tip, then that's a seed-head, and it's nice to leave those for the birds.
2. Is the plant still green but all the flowers have gone over and it's looking past its best? If it is, then it's probably a good candidate for cutting back but DO try and identify it first to make sure it's a perennial rather than a shrub!
3. Is the plant green in some places and brown in others? This happens quite a bit with perennials, and if the brown bothers you, or it's squashing its neighbours, then go ahead and remove just these bits. You can do this by gently pulling at the stems or leaves; the brown ones should come away easily.
I do have a beloved tome that I go back to again and again, not only for autumn pruning info, but also for pruning at every other time of year. It's called 'The Well-Tended Perennial Garden' by Tracy Di-Sabato-Aust.
Have the loveliest of weekends
All the good things, always
x Laetitia
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