Sunday 17 April 2011

To cut or not to cut, that is the question?





I love simple unfussy flowers, so it was with a sense of dread that I had picked over the tangled brown remains of my Osteospermums that up to this year had survived everything that seven years of Lincolnshire weather could throw at them, but now seemed to have met their maker.

These plants have always delivered their bobbing pinkish daisy like flowers with the littlest effort on my part; simple therapeutic deadheading keeps them in flower till well into the autumn.

However, with this unusually balmy weather and a bit of love and care, in the form of compost and seaweed spray, lovely fresh green shoots are working their way through the dead looking nest of stems.

The plants are still a bit too big for their position but fear has gripped me so I think I’ll wait to see what happens before I do anything else. I did cut them back last year at the end of the season for the first time ever, which may have been why the winter weather got to them.

6 comments:

  1. Welcome to the blogging world. look forward to seeing more of the garden we've heard about from Dom. Glad your osteospermums survived. I'm no expert, but I've never cut mine back, just deadheaded them. They seem to have survived the winter fine, but they are in a tub.

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  2. Thank you for the warm welcome and the confirmation, I agree it was probably the over enthusiastic cutting that caused the osteospermums to retreat.

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  3. My mom always told me to cut back mums after they bloom and they wouldn't be so sparse. Mine always look ugly no matter what I do.

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  4. Welcome to the blogging world! I've never had very good luck with mums! I'd cut them back late Autumn and then I was told to cut the buds off on the 4th of July and they'd be beautiful for the Autumn . . . never happened, they always looked stringy!

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  5. Welcome to the blogging world. I have greatly enjoyed reading your first few posts and look forward to reading many more.

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  6. Hello everyone thank you for the warm welcome and advice. I'm in London this week so missing the cottage and garden madly, back on Friday so hopefully have lots to update then.

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