How To Divide Perennials In The Spring

Welcome to the Simple Garden Life podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the yard
of gardening simple, fun and always rewarding. Now Here are your hosts,
Jim and Mary Competti. Hello and welcome everybody to Simple Garden Life. I'm
your host, Jim Competti with my wife Mary Competti. And Mary, you're
here today to talk about one of the best ways to save money and stop
weeds in your flower beds all at the same time. Absolutely, we're talking
about how to divide perennials in the spring. Yeah, we'll get to a
second. We always talk about fall dividing, how great fall is for dividing
perennials, and it absolutely is, but it gets lost that you can still
do a lot of this in the springtime. It can be very easy to
do. And there's some things you can do in the spring that are easier
to divide, like ornamental grasses for instance, that can really make a big
change in your landscape for the upcoming summer. Absolutely, and you know,
sometimes in the fall when you divide perennials, you're dealing with all the leaves,
all the stems, and you know, sometimes in the spring it's actually
easier to divide. That's a great point. So we'll get into that in
a second. Let's talk about if you want to talk to us or have
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but what they do. So let's get into this right now. You
know, people always talk about we talked about dividing in the fall, and
we do a lot of that as well. Um, but springtime and you
said a great reason you know, there's no leaves on anything. You can
really get to the plants quickly, and you can add ornamental grasses in the
spring, you know, picking them up. We did a podcast on that
not too long ago about how to divide them. But you know, when
you do all this and you divide in the spring, you can really pack
your you know, your flower beds full of flowers. And we're going to
talk about why that's so fantastic, but let's talk right now by why it's
so great to have. You know, many of the great reasons to divide
your perennials on a regular basis, whether it's fall or spring. I mean,
right off the bat, Mary for me, you know, keep them
manageable. Right, Once perennials get really large, you know, they're hard,
hard to manage, hard to handle, and if you divide them,
they're much easier to manage. Yeah, on a regular basis. And so
what people always ask, like, what's a regular basis? Well, for
us, when we wanted to get more plants, a regular basis is almost
every year we would divide them in half and get another plant. But on
average every three to five years, if you're going out and dividing your plants
and keeping them in a normal, you know, normal pace. It's gonna
work to keep those those plants, you know, just healthy, strong and
not overgrown and falling over like we see so often when they just get too
big, right, And it all depends on where you live as well.
I mean, I know, you know, things grown Florida like crazy.
That's true, that's true. No, we're talking, you know, do
what is ever necessary in your area for growth. Yeah. I think a
great point is when they get too large or when you need more plants,
it's probably time to start dividing. I mean, not only does it keep
them manageable, but it keeps the roots healthier and strong. And we talk
about you know, being root bound or using nutrients. You know, daylilies
hostas these things. When they grow for three, four or five years,
they really start to the roots almost start to grow together and pack in.
When that happens, not only have they taken excuse me, a lot of
the nutrients out of the soil, they've also grown together and can't absorb nutrients
or water very well well. And the same goes holds true with ornamental grasses.
You know, when you're talking about keeping the plants strong. You know,
an ornamental grass is overgrown, the center of the grass does not grow
as well as it used to. But when you divide it, you have
strong grasses that can grow strong straight up and you don't have that gap in
the middle and they don't fall over. Yeah, and not just the grasses,
but when you get back to the perennials, you know, the last
thing that it really does is it gives you better blooming. People often say,
well, hey, I've had this, you know, corobell here for
seven years and it's always bloom great and it's not blooming as well. Or
daylilies, or you can go right down the line see them. It doesn't
matter. What happens is the longer those roots grow and the thicker they get
together, and the less nutrients turn the soil, there's not enough to power
strong blooms. And you might get a lot of green growth, but fewer
and fewer blooms. By dividing them and transplating them, you're going to regenerate
those plants. Well, let's get to the real reason how we started dividing
our perennials in the spring. That's true. I mean for us, I
look about this way back in the day when we had our first farm.
Mary will tell you, I think your parents will tell anybody that knows me,
will tell you that I have this affinity for creating more and more flower
beds. Yeah, you'd like to have them completely filled. With good reason
though, yeah, and everywhere. So here we were starting out, and
you know, transplanting and dividing is a great way to save a lot of
money. And back in those days we looked for every way possible still do
to try to cut corners and save a little bit. Growing kids. Yeah,
very hungry we did so. So you know it was for us dividing
in the spring or the fall was a great way to fill our flower beds
with tons and tons of flowers, and not just dividing our flowers, our
friends, our family. If I saw a nice flower somewhere, I'd be
like, hey, hey, this spring, I will come up and dig
that up for you because it looks a little overgrown. And by the way,
I'll take some of that with me if I can. That's a great
thing to do for people. We do that now. We give away tons
of plants every year because the more you have, you're you're dividing them up
and you can give them away. But for us, it was a way
to fill our beds. And let's let's kind of get into that for a
second. Out why that's so important, another way to save money. Obviously,
you're filling your beds without going to nurseries and buying a ton of plants.
For us, if we saw a plant we really loved, we might
purchase it, knowing that in a year or two that perennial could be three
to five perennials. So that's a great way to put plants into your landscape.
But more importantly, it can save you on mulch overall. Absolutely,
the more plants you have, the less mulch that you need. Yeah,
I mean people talk about mulching and I always say, you know, four
to six inch layer of mulch, you know, that's what you should have.
And they're like, oh, it's so much mulch. I'm like,
not, if you've planted correctly, if you've planted with divisions and you fill
your flower beds, that mulch is spread out over the beds. You're not
just filling these large, expansive areas with lots of mulch and no plants.
And you're right, it saves tremendously on the cost. But you know,
it also adds a tremendous amount of beauty to your flower beds when they're full.
You know, when you have a lot of plants and a lot of
flowers growing all at once, it looks really good. And then there's also
that fact that it helps stop weeds. Right, if you have more plants
in your flower beds, less malch, there's less weeds that can pop up.
Absolutely, and I always say this too. It's it's a little bit
of a trick, but it's true. People will come and look at our
beds, are like, how do you keep them so weed free? Well,
you know, we mulch, we film thick, but there are some
weeds sometimes. But when you have so many plants, you might not see
one little Strand when you have this big open thing of malch and six plants,
you're darn right you're going to see all those little weeds coming up,
right, and you have a nice layer of mulch around your plants. The
weeds are actually very easy to pull up because they are trying to get down
through the malch to embed into the soil. And all you do is walk
around and pick them up once in a while. It's absolutely true. And
then finally, and I think this gets lost in why you want to fill
your flower beds with plants and not malt. I always talk about that,
and malt should be the least amount that you see in a flower bed.
If you've done it, if you've done it right, you know, you
can put some rock formation somewhere. You can put lots of plants. You
can, but the malt should be an accent, not the focus. But
when you put a lot of plants into a flower bed and they're all manageable
sizes, they also help to regulate the soil temperature because that canopy of leaves
is really acting, you know, as a barrier to the sun. It's
keeping the moisture in the soil, it's not drying it out. And then
you have to water less less weed seeds can find a way in. It
is so beneficial to fill those flower beds. And you know, I think
people get hung up and I can't afford that. I can't afford to go
out and buy eighty plants. But you don't have to, you know,
you can keep dividing these in springtime, like I said, just a great
time to get out there, and you might have two big daylilies. I
will get into this in a second about our farm, but our old farm,
we would take those and maybe make sixteen plants out of each. Yeah,
it was crazy how many plants we got off of one day lily or
one plant. But you know, the whole point here is plant more plants,
less mulch. It is and division is the best way to do that.
So all right, we've talked a lot about why, and you know,
we're going to get into the house and we're gonna get into our question
of the week when we come back. But we got to take that ad
break. You know, we got to pay for this airtime. I guess
somehow we do enjoy it. But so we'll be back right after this and
we're going to talk about, you know, how to divide in the spring,
what you can divide in the spring. And also a little extra feature
that we've used to our benefit that really I think is a key secret is
creating a holding bed for extra plants. And we'll get into that when we
come back, and we'll talk more about transplanting perennials in the spring. And
we are back with Simple Garden Life talking about dividing perennials in the spring.
Let's get right to the question that really created this entire podcast because we get
this question a lot. I loved this question, and Mary, go ahead
with it, all right. We got this last week from Tina Dotson out
of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Kind of rymes. Actually, her was when
I divide perennials, how do I know how many plants to make from a
single plant? Is there a size that I should be looking to cut them
back to that is best? I have two huge day lilies and want to
get more plants from them this spring, but I want to make sure that
they survive. Great questions, question I get a lot. Yeah, and
Tina, you we're gonna give you the answer here. So let's first let's
just kind of take this question and divide it down. So how do I
know how many plants to make from a plant? Fantastic question, And the
answer is it really comes down to what do you want your plants to be
this year? So I'm going to use your day lilies, Tina as an
example. So let's say you have a day lily that when you dig it
out, it's eighteen inches around. That can happen. You know, you
put a daily in the ground for five six years. It's eighteen inches in
diameter. So you lift it from the ground in the spring. There's no
no leafing out, you know, it's just the root ball. You pop
it out. So to many people that are like, can I divide it
in half? Can I divide it in quarters? Cannot divide an eights?
You know what, the answer is that it all depends. Yeah, yes
you can. So what you're going to get is you're going to get a
plant that is based upon your root side. So if you're looking to fill
in more plants and you want them to not have to divide them in just
another year or two, I would take that plant and probably make eight to
sixteen plants, and I would divide it in you to two to three inch
sections, because what that gives you is a plant that's going to be smaller,
but it's going to be able to last three or four or five years.
It's going to bloom. A lot. Now you maybe you have some
planters. We do this a lot with hostas great way to add some decoration
to a shady area of your porch or deck or patio. We'll pot some
of our extra ones up right, We actually have an article on this about
how to use perennials to use them in pot of plants to add interest to
your patio spaces. Oh, it's so free, it's so easy. I
think we even have a podcast on it last year. So we'll put that
in the article and put it in the extra features at the end. But
what we're trying to say is you may want a bigger hosta for that pot.
If it's a big pot, so you may want to leave when you're
dividing that hosta or day lily up, whatever it may be. You might
want to leave it bigger that year, or you might want a bigger focal
point in the flower bed. The larger you leave the divisions, the bigger
your plants you're going to be. It's really simple, but it really is
up to you. But keep this in mind. Keep in mind that what
if you leave it large, you're probably going to be digging that up in
a year or two because it's going to get big again. Right. It
really just depends on how you want to use your divisions. If you have
one spot or a new flower bed and you just want to put a day
lily in there that's already a nice size, that has some good interest.
You know, you may want to divide it in half or in quarters.
However, if you have a brand new flower bed and you want to fill
it up, you may want to take your day lilies, Tina, and
divide it into eight or sixteen sections, and that way, in three years
you have a beautiful flower bed. But you know is full and vibrant.
Yeah, I've never been I'm going to show a little bit of mine.
I don't even know what you call this. I've never been a big fan
of dividing a plant in half, mainly in Mari Marita. When we first
met, She's like, why do you always plant in three, fives,
and eight? You know, odd numbers? I said, because it really
makes beds look good. You want odds, you to want even Well,
Mary's very number driven. She's very number driven. But you have come around
to understanding those. Yeah. So, so I don't like halves for another
reason, when you divide a circular most most plants grow in a circular way.
When you divide in half, you get a weird looking plant. When
you put half of a moon back into the to the ground. So I've
always been a big fan of dividing in threes, even quarters gives you four
plants, you can just gotta have that odd one somewhere. Uh So that's
one of the things we do. And I really like that because it gives
you a little bit more. I don't like the half plants because of kind
of what grows up from them. But I mean, Tina, answer your
question. You know, the sky really is a limit for what you want
to do. However, I would say, you know, look at your
space. How many plants do you really want to gain from it? And
then kind of divide that. So if your plants are twelve to eighteen inches
and you make you know, four plants out of a twelve inch round plant
that you're daily you're talking about, you're gonna get three nice or four nice
sized day lays for this year. Probably that can make it two or three
years for you have to do it. You make it eight, you can
probably get five years out of it. So that's really what it comes down
to and how you want to look at it. And one thing to remember
is don't go so small that you have one little, you know, leaf
popping above a ground. You really want to do three inch at least at
three inch rootball, you know, to be able to plant your flower beds.
This is so funny because that's coming from the lady that I will divide
a plant and there'll be one little fraction of a plant. She's like,
well, let's put that in the holding bed. Well we have the same
thing. Yeah, But she's right. When you're putting them in your landscape,
that's a great idea. When you just want to grow some extra plants,
you can throw those little divisions somewhere off and then they'll they'll grow to
be bigger. So that's a great question, Tina. I hope we answered
it well for you. So let's get into now quick and easy ways to
divide and what you can divide. So really the limit is I mean,
there's any perennials on the table here, Any leafing perennial is great. Whether
you're talking cone flour, black eyed Susan. You just go down the list,
coral bells, day lilies, hostas, ornamental grasses. Anything in the
spring can be done. And the quicker you do it, as soon as
the ground is workable, the better off you are. It does not have
to come out. Yet people always like, well, what am I going
to kill the plants? It's going to freeze still, they're perennials. They're
fine if the ground is workable. Don't do it when the ground's frozen,
because then you can have some trouble. The ground is workable, you can
dig them up. You can put them back in the ground that day,
you're going to be fine. So get out there. That's the big key,
and start looking at these plants, and you know where they're at.
And let's talk about mary now, like how to dig them up? I
mean, I think this is a little key we've learned that really makes it
easy. You go out, we dig them up. We have the root
ball, and what's the next thing? We do them over? That's right,
And why do we do that well, because you can see the group
ball. That's sorry, it's so easy. People are like, well,
I never know how to make divisions from the top, and how do I
do it? So let's just we'll use a hosta for example. We'll dig
a hosta up and we flip it over and you can see the root structure
so easily. I think we have to stop here and clarify what we're talking
about. Digging it up here Here's the key is that you need to actually
dig the whole entire thing up. You're not dividing it while still in the
ground. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, it's just easier
to see, you know where the roots are. You don't have these little
strays coming up that always annoys me. When I do that, I accidentally
miss some sometimes. But dig that whole plan up. There's no leafing out
yet, so flip it over. Then it becomes really easy. Our favorite
tool to use for this is a hoary hoary knife. It just it's a
garden knife with a serrated edge. We'll put a link to this on our
affiliate links on the article on Simple Garden Life. And you can just cut
right through most root balls. However, I've had some big grasses before that
a heck, I pull the axe out and start cutting them with an axe.
But upside down is the way to go because you can see where you
need to go right and you also sometimes use a spade shovel as well.
I do. I do, I really pretty much what's on hand. And
if I don't want to walk back to the barn or the garage, so
we so you want to do that early and you want to get out there.
So I know you have this question, maire, you've been wanting to
ask it or at least talk about it. And it's okay, Wait a
minute, I'm busy, I work, I came home. My hostess are
already up through the ground. My day lilies are already out. My coral
bell is already leaping out. Now do I have to wait till fall?
Right? I was actually at my mom and dad's house the other day and
their day lilies are way ahead of ours. And their day lilies are already
popping up out of the ground and nice and green. And you know the
question is can I still divide those if the greenery is already out? Yeah?
First of all, why is our final farm always behind everybody else?
But anyway, you're right, so great question. Listen. You can't harm
them, okay. These plants are really hard to kill in the spring.
Even if they have a little bit of of leafing out and they've come out,
you can still dig them up, flip them over. That that early
growth may die back, it may not, And it's okay. And it's
okay because you're going to get new growth right through the bottom. So and
grass is the same way. You just got to get them early. You
can't wait until you know, a month into the season and they're a foot
tall, and do this without expecting some some issues, but early on,
don't worry at all. You can get in there and you can do it.
So you know, you get out there, and we talked about,
you know what, how do you do it? How do you know?
Just go look at your bedspaces. You know you can see the plants there.
Now's the time to get them in and fill those beds with those plantings
of whatever you're dividing and get them in. And then when you're planting,
this is such a critical key. The easiest way to get better leafing and
better root growth in the first year is when you dig your plants up and
you get your divisions. Try to get them in the same day. It's
not critical to their to their life. It definitely helps. So oh,
it definitely helps. And then when you dig that planting hole where you're going
to put them. I live by the fifty fifty rule, So whenever we
dig something up, we're putting fifty percent composts and fifty percent ground soil back
in in the bottom and feed your plants. It does. It feed your
plants in more importantly than even that, and that's important. It allows the
root growth to be so easy and spread back out. There's not a lot
of time. You know, you put a transplant into hard claypan soil,
it's going to struggle. But you put it into a fifty fifty mix of
compost. Mary said it best that compost is going to feed the roots and
that's gonna let them go right exactly. And you know, if you are
dividing plants and you have a few extra, we have a great tip for
you to be able to use plants later when you need them. Yeah,
we lived on this ten years ago when we build our first farm, and
crazily we decided to build a second farm and now we live by this too.
So we create a holding bed and it's nothing more than little area of
a garden for us. Now it's a little spot back in an open soil
part of the field and we just create some dirt. We open it up.
It's I think ours is now like six by ten or maybe twelve by
twelve. I don't even know what it is. And I go around and
it's just basically a flower bed out of sight, out of mind. And
when we have all these extra transplants and we don't know what to do with
them right away, or if we're going to be building something and we know
we're going to need them in July or September or even June, we plant
them now and there and we put them in this holding bed, and we
don't we don't space them like far apart, like a landscaping. We put
them back to back to back. Right. Original holding bed was actually in
our first garden that we built at our first farm. And you know,
it doesn't matter whether it's actually in your garden or if it's actually in a
corner of your backyard. Just creating a holding bed is a great way to
have plants on hand whenever you need them. Yeah, so whether it's a
grass, you're not dividing these when you dig them up later. So I'll
give you a great example. Last year we built some extra buildings here and
as we were doing that, we had to landscape them. Well, you
know, to go out and buy those plants would have been a fortune in
the middle of June, July, August. And so what we did is
we created a holding bed from all of our extra plants that we had divided,
whether it was the fall or the spring, and then when it came
time and the building was done, we could go out. We could dig
them up just as a whole root ball and set them in place. There's
no damage, you're not dividing anything, there's no stress to the plant.
A little bit of stressed the plant, but they can handle it, and
we would put them in. I mean, I think last year, at
one point I probably had seventy to eighty plants in a holding bed right,
And I think it's a great way to be able to give plants away to
family and friends or someone that's moving or someone that needs to flower bed.
If you have plants and you don't have any space for them, this is
a great way to keep them until they're needed. Yeah. I can't tell
you how many times that people were walking through, whether it was our old
farm or this farm, they're like, wow, I really like that.
That's you know that purple coral bell is beautiful or this type of day lily
is beautiful. And I'm like, hey, you know what some in the
holding bed you want one? And they're like, well, do you have
to wait till fall or spring? Like no, we'll go out, we'll
pop one up, putting in a pot, and they're on their way,
and it really is. I'm telling you. Holding beds are fantastic and I
can't tell you enough. Don't don't space this. We plant them like garden
plants, like they're two three inches apart, because we know they're not going
to grow together. We're going to dig those up within the next year at
the most and put them where they need to be. So holding beds are
the key if you if you have a plants you need to divide, don't
think you'll never need them. Don't throw them away, don't kill them,
go put them in a holding bed, cut them down to the size you
know that they're going to be when you're playing them. Put them in there
and you're going to really be happy about it. And if you don't have
the room to do a holding bed, you can also put them in pots.
You know there's going to need a little extra care with some watering,
you know, throughout the season. But holding bed, if you have the
room, it's a way to go. All right, So let's just kind
of cover what we talked about today because we've kind of been all over it.
So The first thing is that filling your beds makes sense and sense.
I love that. So it makes sense because you're keeping your plants healthy,
you're letting them blue the more. And it makes sense as in ce nts
because you're going to save a lot of money to come up with it.
I did. Isn't that pretty impressing? I know Mary doesn't always know when
I write these podcasts what's gonna come pretty much making fun of me right now,
but I'm all right with it. So it does. It makes sense
and sense. And then second of all, Mary is try to divide why
the ground is workable but before the leaves come out. But it's not necessary,
right, You definitely want to do it as soon as possible. But
if you know you have a little green that's popping up through the ground,
you still can do it. Yep. So flip those plants over dig them
out, pop them out of the ground, flip them over sea and see
the root structure and then you can make easy divisions. Whether it's with a
shovel, hory hory garden knife or you know, an axe. If it's
something something large, it's real important to replant them as soon as you can.
I mean obviously the same day as the best, but always know when
you put them in the ground. Use composts to help. Yeah, great,
on the same day. If you can't make the same day, make
sure you keep the roots watered a little bit, keep them in a shady
part of your outside. You know I've done too, Okay, I've gone
a week before with grasses and I have them somewhere and I notice them.
But it's so much better to get them in that same day. Right.
It could be done, you know, a few days later, but it's
best for the same day. Just gonna help them get you know, their
roots started that much easier. And then again the final tip, use those
holding beds. Such a great idea, it is, and you can have
plans for later. You can share plants for family and friends. It's just
a great idea, not to waste anything. All right. That's probably twenty
four minutes more than anyone wanted to hear us talk Mary. So I guess
it's time and remember whatever you do, find the fun and gardening and grows
something beautiful. All right, everyone, until next week, Happy gardening everyone.
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