Fall is a great time for dividing plants in the landscape. Maybe you’ve never thought about dividing plants, but we’re hoping this blog will give you some great reasons to think about trying it. Make dividing your plants a priority gardening task this fall.
Rainbow Gardens’ 5 Favorite Reasons to Divide Plants
Dividing plants makes unruly plants remember to respect personal space. You know the ones, the show offs that keep growing and growing, pushing their way into your other plants. The creepers who jump boundaries and don’t know their limits. Dividing up these plants gets them back to their earlier versions when they were just the right size for what you wanted in your garden. (Bonus tip: ALWAYS research your plants before buying them to know their true, mature size and growing habit if you don’t want to have to divide them.)
Dividing plants keeps them healthier. When certain plants grow and multiple in clumps don’t get divided, they compete with others for nutrients and moisture in the soil, and prevent proper airflow among plants. Good air circulation is needed throughout your landscape to help prevent fungal disease like powdery mildew. Bacterial disease is also less encountered, or at least more easily contained, if plants have more space between them. Plants in close quarters touch and easily pass disease to each other. (Think a household flu epidemic!)
Crowded plants are more likely to get fungal diseases.
Dividing plants makes them more beautiful. When plants get crowded and are competing for their basic heath necessities, many don’t bloom as much as they should or even stop blooming completely. Divide your plants and allow them to stretch their legs (roots) so they can perform to their full potential.
Dividing plants helps save money. Maybe you have a plant that you have just fallen in love with over the years and you wish to have more of it. If it’s a plant that can be divided, you have just gotten your wish! You can divvy up your favorite plant and place it in new areas around your landscape until your heart is content. No purchase necessary! The plant in the pic to the right is a Mexican Mint Marigold that was so crowded in a pot, it was difficult to adequately water it. I divided it up into 4 sections and potted each section up for four new beautiful, healthier plants.
Why settle for one plant when you can divide it and have four?
Dividing your plants can help you get more friends! Ok, not sure if this one is true, but if someone divided up a plant and was passing parts of it out, I’d make a new gardening friend so I could get a piece of it. Everyone loves free plants, right? Share your plants with someone and make their day! If you can’t find someone to take a section of your plant, recycle it and enrich your compost pile.
Take advantage of the cooler fall weather and do a little digging and dividing.
~The Happy Gardener, Lisa Mulroy
I bought a large with mums. Once the little heads turn brown. Do I just cut them off and get new flowers
Once the flowers are spent, pinch or prune them off (called deadheading) to encourage new blooms. Some mums continue to bloom while some have used up all their energy producing the fall flowers and will not bloom until spring. Regardless, the deadheading is important to encourage new blooms at some point.