Now that the tall plants are tall and the shade plants are dead, I'm at last able to see what's growing under everything. And so I found my globe thistles, all still alive, but none more than 5" tall. There is one rogue among the flax, the first-born off to one side, and three in a clump about one inch apart. So I decided to try transplanting them together with the geranium and the lily. It's my pot of indeterminate perennials, that may or may not live until next year.
I dug my trowel into the soil about two inches on each side of the clumb of globes and it came out of the ground in one nice cohesive root ball, with about three inches of soil. I don't think that's a really good sign, because a perennial should have a lot more root by now; on the other hand, that means I didn't do them any harm. But while digging them new digs (haha, a pun!) I hit the root of the lily. The good news it, it look very healthy. The bad news is, you're not supposed to ding roots with a trowel.
Later that day, I looked them up in Lois Hole's Perennial Favorites and found that they're supposed to spread 18 to 24 inches, and they're supposed to make a really long taproot. Also, they bloom the second year.
Hmmmmm...
I suspect that if I'm gonna have any success growing perennials, I'm gonna have to mend my ways and stop crowding dozens of seeds per square inch. Annuals can live like that and they'll soon be dead anyway; perennials can live a long time and become quite large plants, if I'd only take care of them.
What I don't get though, is why if you break the taproot, the main plant dies, but if you try to get rid of the plant and leave some of the taproot in the ground, a new plant comes up. Why does it regenerate one way and not the other? Or is it only the weeds that can grow from a chunk of a taproot, and the desired plants that die when you break the taproot?
Who knows these things.
I dug my trowel into the soil about two inches on each side of the clumb of globes and it came out of the ground in one nice cohesive root ball, with about three inches of soil. I don't think that's a really good sign, because a perennial should have a lot more root by now; on the other hand, that means I didn't do them any harm. But while digging them new digs (haha, a pun!) I hit the root of the lily. The good news it, it look very healthy. The bad news is, you're not supposed to ding roots with a trowel.
Later that day, I looked them up in Lois Hole's Perennial Favorites and found that they're supposed to spread 18 to 24 inches, and they're supposed to make a really long taproot. Also, they bloom the second year.
Hmmmmm...
I suspect that if I'm gonna have any success growing perennials, I'm gonna have to mend my ways and stop crowding dozens of seeds per square inch. Annuals can live like that and they'll soon be dead anyway; perennials can live a long time and become quite large plants, if I'd only take care of them.
What I don't get though, is why if you break the taproot, the main plant dies, but if you try to get rid of the plant and leave some of the taproot in the ground, a new plant comes up. Why does it regenerate one way and not the other? Or is it only the weeds that can grow from a chunk of a taproot, and the desired plants that die when you break the taproot?
Who knows these things.
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