On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:27:29 +0200, downholme
wrote:


I have a 3 foot high flax in the garden of the house we've now lived in
for 5 months- thus I haven't watched it perform yet! It's not the red
one, it's a greeny/yellow with wider leaves. We are in Hants.

It hasn't been well looked after; it needed a lot of cleaning up and the
old flower stalks have mealy bug evidence.

Thing is, should I, by mid April, be seeing signs of new spears forming
inside the crown? The existing leaves are wind-browned around the edges
or where bent, but not dry or brittle. Is it still viable??

I am thinking- perhaps madly- of moving the whole thing 3 metres or so
as the space it occupies could be way better used but I don't want to
either waste my time IF it's effectively dead or reduce its chances of
survival to nil!


Only two of our phormium (seven in number) are showing any signs of
producing new leaves at the moment here in south Devon, but everything
seems to be about three weeks later than normal this year. Three of them
did suffer quite a lot from wind damage this winter and I have cut all the
damaged leaves off and they still look reasonable. If all the current
leaves are unsightly you may as well cut them all off now, at the base,
before any new growth appears, give it a good feed of liquid feed and hope
for recovery. They are quite tough plants and it will probably produce
new growth. I am due to 'downsize' a 2 metre tenax this weekend by
rigorous cutting back with a view to splitting it later.

We have moved a metre + size plant 3 years ago with some inevitable root
damage but it survived and is now a really good plant - it may be a bit
late in the year to move yours - better to move it in the autumn or early
spring.

--
rbel