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#1
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Question about my heuchera
I've just planted about 9 heuchera plants and 3 tiarellas (foam
flower) in the north side bed of my house. Do the heuchera need to have their crowns exposed? HOw about the tiarella. The T seems to be doing fine, but I just wanted to check about the heuchera. TIA, J in Chicago |
#2
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Question about my heuchera
Coral Bells? I don't think you need to have their crowns exposed. I have
several and none of mine are. Bebra NE PA zone 6b "Jen in Chicago" wrote in message om... I've just planted about 9 heuchera plants and 3 tiarellas (foam flower) in the north side bed of my house. Do the heuchera need to have their crowns exposed? HOw about the tiarella. The T seems to be doing fine, but I just wanted to check about the heuchera. TIA, J in Chicago |
#3
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Question about my heuchera
In article , "Barbara Yanus"
wrote: Coral Bells? I don't think you need to have their crowns exposed. I have several and none of mine are. Bebra NE PA zone 6b "Jen in Chicago" wrote in message om... I've just planted about 9 heuchera plants and 3 tiarellas (foam flower) in the north side bed of my house. Do the heuchera need to have their crowns exposed? HOw about the tiarella. The T seems to be doing fine, but I just wanted to check about the heuchera. TIA, J in Chicago The typical recommendation for alum root is to plant them as deeply as possible & still have the rootcrown of stems exposed. There's nothing special about it not wanting to be planted deeper than that -- more plants would than wouldn't suffer if the lower stems were buried. Some species of heuchera when rather old will have built up a woody crown that sticks pretty far above the ground, & it would do no good to bury that, as it's predominantly a dead part of the root. Such specimens usually don't grow well but show many signs of old age, mainly poor leafage or dead center. Such old woody clumps can be dug up, the centermost bits discarded, & the younger edges replanted as deeply as possible without covering the crown. It can take a couple years for the saved bits to develop nicely, so it's not something that should be done until tired old age is obvious. Most heuchera are very winter hardy & keep part or all their leaves in winter as a sort of self-mulching feature (on some the winter leaves turn striking & odd colors before spring). But if grown in an area where it is quite cold & the plant dies back to the ground, it may actually be necessary to mulch completely over the bared part of the root or the root will die during winter. Though closely related I don't think tiarellas ever really develop a woody center. Some of them spread by surface-creeping stems so I imagine they would be very delicate in extremely cold winters & need mulching, but where I live "bad" weather is almost never below 20 degrees F., & the tiarellas don't need any special protection. In Chicago I imagine they'll need winter mulching. Newly planted Tiarellas establish more swiftly than newly planted heucheras (depending on cultivar & species, but as a generality that's so). If it has seemed to you that newly planted tiarellas are doing better than newly planted heucheras, it's likely because heucheras are more easily shocked & slower to recover. On the other hand, there are more garden-critters that like to nibble on tiarellas, & tiarellas suffer more from drying out. Once established the heucheras are often better, & the coral bell types tend to be quicker to establish than the fancy-leaf types that only have crummy little white sprays of flowers & are totally reliant on leaf appearance to be successful. They're all of them all but impossible to kill, but they don't invariably become as wonderfully leafy as they were fresh from a greenhouse production line the day you bought them, & can be a disappointment especially their first year getting settled. I almost started hating a couple of my heucheras until their third year, when finally they started to get really nice. -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/ |
#4
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Question about my heuchera
Wow, thank you both for such great replies! I really appreciate it!
J in Chicago |
#5
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Question about my heuchera
Wow, thank you both for such great replies! I really appreciate it!
J in Chicago |
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