Cutting Back & Dividing Ornamental Grasses 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 Competiti. Hello and welcome everybody to the Simple Garden Life Podcast.
I'm your host, to Competiti along with my wife Mary. And Mary
we're here today to talk about ornamental grasses, which have been a big part
of our life for a long time on the farm for landscaping. Yeah,
our old farm had hundreds and hundreds of ornamental grasses throughout, so this is
a topic that we know a lot about. Yeah, unfortunately, way too
much about when it comes to cutting them down and dividing them before we get
into that. As always, if you have any questions or ideas for podcasts
for future garden topics, email us at the farm at owgarden dot com.
You can follow us and sign up at Simple garden Life dot com or on
Facebook or on your favorite podcast app. We're on a all and I have
to say if I sound a little different today, it's getting to the spring
and it's getting the allergy season, and gosh, I think we wanted to
start taking something for this. It is. It's ourgy season everywhere, and
you know, it's one of those things that we fight every year, but
we get through it knowing what's going to be come up and coming garden season.
It's such a catch twenty two because we both used to take honey our
bees, honey, local honey, I know, and it works, it
works, wonders. You have to take it about a month in advance.
But then you know there's that problem of that honey has so much sugar.
It's just really it's really not fair, you know, you know it stings
getting all doesn't You're only old if you feel that way, right anyway,
I'll battle through it. We'll be fine. So, as we talked about,
today's podcast is all about ornamental grasses. You know, we talked when
we first started landscaping our original farm. Gosh, it's been thirteen years ago.
Ornamental grasses were a great way for us to landscape on the cheap.
I mean we could we had some existing in our house. We were able
to take divisions out there, and I think at one point when we left,
we probably had a little over what four or five different types of ornamental
grass all over the farm. We did, and we didn't pay for our
single one now, you know, and in our own mind, you know,
Mary and I try to keep things simple, hence the name Simple Garden
Podcast, Simple Garden Life Podcast. But we'd named them just what they were
after So, I know, my sister Judy gave me some grasses from her
place and they were tall and narrow. We loved them. I know the
real name, but we called them Judy grasses. I think we had those.
We had mound grasses. We had all kinds of names. We had
small grasses and medium grasses, large grasses, judy grasses, variegated grasses.
We think we had a bunch. So but the point is for us,
it was a really great way and there's a lot of good reasons for ornamental
grasses in the landscape. You talk about trying to save on water and trying
to save on maintenance. You know, they're drought resistant, their deer resistant,
which has become really big on our new farm because we have a lot
more deer here than we ever did at our own place. And they had
a lot of color, texture and beauty all the year round. I mean,
not just in the spring when they're coming up green, and not just
in the summer when they're bright and tall, or in the fall when they're
really beautiful and they have those plumes on top of them. But you know,
we leave ours up through the winter, and for a lot of good
reasons. I mean, they're fantastic just first of all and foremost for what
they do for the landscape. Yeah, they provide a lot of structure to
the landscape. They're a lot of beauty to the landscape. And honestly,
the birds love them as well. Well they are. I mean, it's
a great cover for winter animals. It's a great cover for the birds.
It's a great cover when they go to build their nests. So we leave
them up. But here's the thing. In early spring, actually even late
winter ornamo grasses for us, they start to have had a couple of snows
on top of maybe some ice. They start to fall over and it's time
to take care of them. And that's what we're talking about today, is
what do you do with your ornamo grasses in the spring? Again, you
can cut ornamental grasses back in the fall. You can divide them in the
fall if you really want to. Spring is the best time though, it's
the safest time. You don't have to worry about anything. And actually,
when I say spring, i'm talking about any time the ground can be worked.
It does not have to be forty or fifty degrees like we talked about
more planning and vegetables. You can be thirty five or I've been out there
many times cutting them down and we've been dividing them up as they're extremely hardy,
right, ordomo, grasses are very forgiving and can come back in almost
any condition. That's right. And like I said, anytime, really,
once the ground is warm enough, if you're gonna be digging them up,
if you're cutting them back, you can cut them back anytime in the winter.
I do want to get into one thing. We talk about this a
lot and people get this question. I know you're going to tell a story
and I can't help it. But should you not cut them down? Should
you burn them down? Oh? Yeah, yeah? Well so look,
just to be safe, just cut them back. You know, if you
lived out somewhere where there's no danger of fire and they're wide open and you
can burn them down. It does not harm the grasses. That actually is
actually fairly good for them. It burns them down, regenerates them. This
is that's something that occurs in the wild quite often with grasses and prairie lands.
However, I just want to say, you don't want to do it
when it's near a fence, well, not in near a fence, and
not in your pine trees or leaves that are stuck underneath them. So I
don't know if we want to tell this story right now or a little bit
later, but there's some stories behind burning grasses down. So it's best to
cut them. We don't do that. We don't do it anymore. I
did it for years, we had them away from places. Now that we
have a lot of wood structures, we just don't do it. Mary tried
it once on our own without your way. We lost. We lost a
pine tree. Let's just put it that way and all as well now.
So it was many many many years ago. No literally, I thought I
was going to have to call the fire department, and I thought the whole
neighborhood was going to burn out. Yeah, and I'll joking aside, that
is exactly why you don't do it. Cut them down. We learned our
lesson long ago. It's just better for everything all the way around. And
also we've noticed this too, when you cut them back versus burning, you
can cut them a few inches higher. It give us a little bit more
texture the landscape until they come through. And also that four to six inches
is we'll get into of leftover grass that you leave really helps them. New
grasses get a little bit stronger as they're coming up, especially for tall grasses,
so I think really quickly. You know, we talk about the benefits,
the low maintenance, the drought resistance, the deer resistance. They're also
past resists, fast growing. You can divide a grass every few years.
We've done it many times to develop into areas. It's just a great all
purpose landscape plant. If there's some ornamental grasses that you love and you want
to purchase them in the store, that is fantastic. Get them in the
ground and by the very next year you can dig them back up, usually
within two years for sure, and get at least four plants. Sometimes we've
been able to get twelve and sixteen pants from somewhere from our larger ones.
Yeah, and you know, ortamoto grasses do make great interest in the landscape,
but they also provide shelter for animals. They also provide a natural barrier
the things that you don't want to see. It's a great summertime plan to
have, and just being able to keep that interest in your landscape is important.
And great wind break in the winter. We've used them a lot of
times in some of our lines for snowbanks and wind breaks, so they're great.
So well, let's get to this right now. I think that our
question of the week this week is really big for us to talk about everything
we're going to talk about when it comes to how you want to dig them
up and how you want to divide, and it comes from I think Pete
descendso today. Yeah. Pete's from Wichita, Kansas. He writes to us.
When we purchase our house five years ago, we had a stand of
ornamental grasses that were beautiful. Now they're overgrown. It looks like they are
dying. Every summer they just fall over. Should I pull them out?
Or is there any way I can save them? I've been saving this question
from Pete for three weeks because I knew we were going to do a podcast
and Pete, the important thing here is they're fine. You're going to be
able to save these grasses. You always can. That's what makes ornamental grasses
so great. The falling over. When people don't like ornamental grasses, they're
like, oh, they fall, that just means they're way too old.
An ornamental grass should be a nice, tight stand that comes up plumes over,
maybe after a few snowfalls in the winter. But when they start to
get to the point where they're overgrown and big, that's when you have problems.
But that doesn't mean you have to pull them out and kill them.
We'll get into this in a little bit. But ornamental grasses grow from the
inside out, which means that inside section dies off the quickest and the outside
edges continue to grow out. So that's why the grasses get bigger and bigger.
You might notice that when your grasses get to this point that the center
doesn't grow at all. It looks like it's dead and it only the perimeter
grows. Yeah, and that's exactly what's happening. The center is dying out
and the plant continues to grow outward. Well, the bigger the plant gets,
the longer it's been in the ground, the more tangled the roots become,
the less likely those outer branches, because they're already leaning out, are
going to stand up. That's where you get your big ornamental grasses to fall
over, So regular digging up and regular dividing a keeps them much healthier,
keeps them much more able to manage from that fall over standpoint, and regular
dividing gives you a heck of a lot more plants to use in your landscape
around or to give to friends and family. So we're going to get into
that. First, we're going to talk about cutting them back, and then
we're going to talk about, you know, how to dig them up,
and we're to plant them and divide them and even when you have too many
grasses once you dig them up, what to do with those extras. But
first we'll take an ad break to help pay for this podcast, and we'll
be right back after this with how to cut them back the easiest way and
a couple of secrets and then how to divide them. All right, we
are back and had to laugh on our break. Mary did remind me that
although she did burn down a pine tree wants a very small pine tree,
that I burnt a pretty large section of our garden fence. It was smoking
for days and some grass. So one more reason we try to give real
world advice, and the real world advice is don't burn just not worth it.
Anything can happen. So let's get into exactly that's that's a great point.
So as we get back to it, let's first talk about cutting them
down and what you can use to cut grasses down. You know, I
see a lot of people out there with the little hand pruners cutting blade by
blade or look when you have a lot of grasses, even when you have
just a few grasses. We learned a couple of years ago there's a couple
of tools that can make all the difference in this first and foremost my favorite,
I'm going to go right to it. Battery powered headge trimmer. Oh
if you have them, even an electric I like the battery because you're not
cutting your cord. But the battery power. They've come so far and it's
a tool that everyone should own. We actually have a link on this podcast
with all the affiliate things on there for one that we like. Um but
you know what, you snap that battery and you go out and you just
for medium and tall size grasses seconds, Mary, I mean, it makes
it's you can do it very absolutely. And you know, for someone that's
not as strong as you are, having a battery operator or power operated tool.
Hedge trimmers is crucial to get this done. Yeah, and I you
know, we go out there and you don't have to worry about banning them
together. We just take them down there. You cut them right at the
base of where you need. We'll get to where hollow you should cut the
second. But by far, that is the greatest tool to use. Now,
if you don't have that, or if you just have a few grasses
and they're small grasses, pair of hedge trimmers, that's what you use.
It's it's perfect, and get underneath them. Even if a mounted grass cut
them back. That's a great hand tool to use. Don't use the small
printers. Its. Grasses are just like I don't think they're wiry. They're
hard to cut off. So you use a pair of headge tremmers or that.
Now you get some big monster grasses, you know, fountain grasses.
You can find some varieties that grow fifteen to sixteen feet tall, half inch
thick at the bottom. Forget all that, get yourself a chain soall battery
powered or gas powered, wipe them down. That's the quick way. Make
it easy. Grasses are only hard. And the last thing I'm gonna say
is always wear gloves and a sweatshirt or a shirt. I have had cuts
and abrasions. They'll they'll cut you up something fierce, So just remember that.
Put them on by protection. Very easy for those blades to get you.
So cut them down. Now. I know I have to wear a
long sleeve shirt because I get a rash from picking up the branches. The
same way for me, So I mean, yeah, definitely, but the
headge trimmers are the way to go. Now, let's talk about where you
should be cutting these at. I think this is the big misconception. I
see people cut them at twelve and sixteen inches high and leave them up.
It's okay, but it takes a long time to look good in your landscape
while things are growing. I also see people cut especially medium and tall grasses
right to the ground. Not a big fan of that for a couple of
reasons. Number one is I like to cut medium and tall sized grasses,
any grass that grows between two foot tall to up. Yeah. I like
to cut them four to six inches high level right across. And people are
like, well, why do you want to do that? You know,
I want them down so I can't see them until the new growth comes through
because that new growth needs some support and structure. We talked about things falling
over those old cane. Yeah, the old blades that are hardened actually provide
a lot of early support. So when those grasses start to grow, they
start to grow up straight. I love leaving that there, But more importantly,
you want to mulch around those And when you leave them in the ground,
first of it saves a lot on multch. You know, we might
have a flower bed with ten of those in them that are twelve inches to
eighteen inches around in diameter. I don't want to mulch over all that.
I want to multry up to them. When you leave it forward to six
inches, you see right where to go. But it gives that structure.
It also gives your landscape something in it when there's nothing else. When you
cut into the grounds, you have a giant thing of mulch and I just
have never liked that, right, And you know, leaving a little bit
of the stems are gives some interest. Still even the winter, you can
see where they're supposed to come. You're not going to plant something else right
there. And again you don't have a big better mulch, and you can
actually save money by not putting mulch over top of those. Absolutely, they're
going to fill in thick. So how far to cut back We talked about
medium to large for the smaller grasses that grow a foot or mounting grasses,
you know, I like to take those down to about one inch, just
up maybe two inches at the most. Just give them a little that quickly
grows through. I mean, when the new growth comes on, it's going
to cover them up very very quickly, and you're not really going to have
to worry about anything. But don't cut them flush the ground. It's just
it's far better to not do that. As far as we've already talked about,
like when you should cut them, you can cut them any time from
fall till spring, letting them through the winter, you know, to help
help wildlife, to help other things. But when they start to get ugly,
when they start to fall over, if you've had a few ice starts.
We've had that before. We've come down as early as the first of
January just because they've looked so bad and they're down, so that's not going
to hurt. And now and now, once you've cut them down, you
really have to think about how often should I be doing this? People ask
us like, if I don't want to have new plants, how long can
I leave my grasses in the ground. You know what my thing is that
inside outside growth. We talked about the inside dying off. That's going to
happen. Within two to three years, you're going to start seeing some fall
over from the outside edges. Me personally, you know this, three to
five years is pretty much my limit to really keep them, not just because
it really makes them look great, which it does. It also keeps the
roots healthy. But you're going to understand this when it comes to digging them
out. You wait any longer than that, it's very difficult. I mean
I've watched you. I've watched you come in and say I'm not doing it
right. No, it's best to do it when they're three to five years
old. That way you can actually dig the root ball out, divide it.
And you know, the key for keeping weeds out of your flower beds
is to fill your flower beds. Great point. And the more transplants you
can have, whether it's grasses or perennials, the more you can pack them,
and the more you pack them, the less like theres or weeds there'll
ever be in. And if you don't want any more ornamental grasses but need
to take care of yours, I'm sure family and friends will be glad to
take those off your hands. That's right, that's right. So once you
cut them down, pay attention to that inside edge. If you don't know
how what your grasses are, maybe you move to a new property. Maybe
you are like me, and sometimes you just forget when you really put those
in the ground. Take a look at that center. If that center is
starting to die out at all, you know it's time to pop it out.
And like I said, the quicker you pop them out, the more
often you pop them out, the less heart it is on you. It's
very fast. What do you use? You just use an ordinary spade shovel,
very very easy to do. You're going to go around the edge of
the grass. You're gonna be able to see where you've cut off. We
go about an inch and a half to two inches outside. Just trust me,
if you want to save your back, dig all the way around the
edges. Dig a second time, a little bit deeper, and then you
can usually get at the shovel underneath and it'll pop out right and it'll pop
out on one side and then you may need to go over the other side
and finish it off. And this is where a pick can come in handy.
If you have large grasses, the pick will go on one side.
You can dig it down and pop them out. We do that quite often
here with our large grasses. But dig around the perimeter, pop them out.
And then this is my final thing. When you're going to totally divide
and you're popping that plan out, flip the plan over. This is the
biggest little secret that people don't realize. I've watched people try to hammer through
the top and they can't see that bottom root structure. When you flip it
over, there's the dirt. It's right there. All the grasses on the
other side. You can take a shovel, you can take an axe if
it's a giant one. But you can split them into even sections from reversal.
We use this with all of our perimeters. It's just nice. Cut
them down, flip them over, and you can cut even root sections.
Right. You're actually you know, we're talking about cutting the root ball itself.
So once you have the ornamental grass out of the ground, you're talking
about the dirt. The roots that are at the very bottom, that's what
you're cutting. That's where you want to cutting. You slice all the way
through to the top where the grass was, and you have your set and
people ask all the time, like, I'm really worried. I think I
damage quite a bit of them. Ornamental grasses are like hostas and like daylilies,
very forgetting. You can't kill them, Okay, as long as you
dig them up, as long as you put them in soil that's not frozen,
and as long as you cover them back up, they're not going to
pass away. And a lot of people are going to ask about what size
should my new group ball be? Great point? Right, great point?
So common sense will tell you the size of your root is going to be
the size that comparable to the size of your plant. So if you have
an eighteen inch diameter grass that you dug out and you cut it into four
even sections, you're going to get a nice six to eight inch diameter plant
that year, and then it's going to grow in two or three years to
be that eighteen inch plant. Again, I like those sizes. I like
those sizes to keep in there. You don't have the dead middles you don't
have the worries. Sometimes we've had this before. You want a little bit
bigger of a screen area somewhere, I'll leave them big. So I might
leave a twelve inch cut in there, knowing that it's going to produce a
larger grass that year. So there is no wrong answer. There is no
wrong answer. A lot of people, whether it's daylily, these grasses,
anything, a lot of people just like I want a mass planting in small
plants or I want a big planting of three big plants. That's what you
do. You cut them to where you want them. And when you have
that, and we talk about how many plants you can get an average eighteen
inch grass if we pop it out for us, we usually probably get four
to eight plants from that, depending on how big you run them. We'll
cut them in quarters or eights and we'll take those plants and then we'll put
them out. So again, as far as replanning, gosh, you hear
us talk all the time about oh, you want to put composts. You
don't put worm castings and grounds, Yeah, you don't need any of that.
With an ornamental grass, you need to put soil around and they actually
do better with you know, regular soil and not special Make sure your souls
loose. That's the one thing I'll tell you. Know. You don't want
to plant it in hard clay and have water in the bottom of the hole.
But other than that, put that root in there. Bury them so
that the top of the root where the grass hit comes even with the grass,
not above, not below right, even put them in covered up forget
about it, and as soon as it warms up in a few weeks,
it's going to come out right. And you may see some initial dying off
just from dividing if your grasses have come out correct right, So just be
patient and they will come back. Yeah, And people ask how late can
I do this? You're really with ornamental grasses. It's not like anything else.
You need to do it right, you know, before they come out,
ever, which is the best time, or right as they're coming out.
If you wait until that grass is a foot tall and start splitting them,
there's a pretty good chance if the weather gets warm, you might lose
your grasses. So just remember that, get to them early, and if
you have extra this is my big tip of the week for extra plants.
We did this when we were kind of you know, really landscaping from scratch.
We'll do it again now with the new form, because we need a
lot more plants. Go create a little holding bed somewhere in a corner of
your property, in the corner of your garden, dig up a little space.
Put all these little extra spots. Don't space them like you would in
a flower bed. Space them a couple inches of heart. Just drop them
in there so they can start to grow. Middle of summer you make a
new bed, or late fall or even next year, boom, you have
ready to go plants. Your friends come over. Oh I wish I had
a grass like that. Here you go. It's a great way to landscape
on the cheet. Yeah. And last but not least, And we're just
about ready to wrap up here. I do want to cover one thing that
it's always so upsetting to me. In stores. Just be careful that the
grass you purchase is going to be a grass that can survive your winter.
I know you're growing area, and look at the back of the tag and
it will tell you where's a perennial what growing area is? I mean,
stores are notorious for, especially big box stores. It's a big sticking point
for me of I'll give you a great example. Here in Ohio where we
live, you will see purple fountain grass, which is beautiful. And we
do grow purple fountain grass here as an annual, not as a perennial or
we bring it inside. It is not It is a perennial, but not
here, and that happens a lot. So make sure your perennial that you're
buying is designed for your growing zone. Because what happens is people go out,
they buy these beautiful purple grasses, they grow gorgeous that year, they
freeze out because they can't handle it right. It's important to know what your
growing zone is and look at those labels and make sure it's exactly what you
want. Yeah, I'll I'll put a link on this podcast at the end.
We always have all the affiliate links and also particle or excuse me,
article links, and I'll put that on there. We have a great growing
zone article with growing zones on there and definder, so you can take a
look at that. But just always be careful. I hate, you know,
grasses are cheap thirty forty fifty bucks sometimes when you're buying the first one,
and I hate to see people spend all that money and then they die
out, because that can happen, absolutely, and it's so easy to divide
your own and once you have them established, you know, it's a great
way to get more and more for free. There's so many ornamental grasses out
there, from small grasses and big grasses. I don't yeah, I don't
really think there's a Judy grass. My sister Judy here's that. She's gonna
laugh. But but you know, there's just so many different varieties and so
many and I encourage you to put them in your landscape because again, you
don't have to water them, you don't have to do the thing you need
to do to all the other plants to keep them alive. And it's one
of the reasons we really like them so much. So I guess in conclusion,
let's just talk about really what you got to do. I mean,
it's about getting out there early late winter, early spring, cutting them back,
seeing if you need to divide. Once you see if you need to
divide, it's really about okay to have to pop this out and how many
plants going to get Obviously, always always throw away that centerpiece, right,
absolutely throw any dead pieces away. And when you are cutting your large grasses
back, cut them about you know, five to six inches above the ground
so you have that structure that support when they start to grow back. Absolutely,
and for smaller grasses you can go a little bit shorter, but Mary's
right, five six inches is perfect for the top. And then obviously just
repaying into your regular soil. You don't have to do anything crazy. Put
them in there and they're going to give you extra new plants for free.
So I think that's it for ornamental grasses. We've got some exciting podcasts coming
up in the next few weeks. We really enjoy everybody. We get tons
of emails and I love always hearing from you, so feel free to email
us at the farm at ow garden dot com with any of your questions or,
like I said, ideas for new shows, and we'll go from there.
Mary, I think it's time and remember, whatever you do, find
the fun and gardening and grow something beautiful. Until next week, everyone,
happy gardening. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. Subscribe to The Simple Garden
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Until next time, Thanks everyone,