Chop Sticks?

I really must stake all my lovely tall growing plants like my hollyhocks and delphiniums to help them keep shape and hopefully withstand the battering of the winds that invariably catch me out at some point and flatten everything.

The veg seems to get all my staking attention leaving the plants in my garden to fend for themselves but being imaginative with bamboo canes is the order of the week.

I would prefer some nice pliable hazel or birch really but I as I have a rather invasive bamboo plant that gives me a ready supply I feel I should use it as much as I can.

As an alternative I might try performing the Chelsea chop (so called because it is usually done around the time of the Chelsea Flower Show). This is a pruning method which involves literally chopping back your perennial by about a half or third, this will stop the plants from becoming so leggy and tall and will keep the plants more compact with flowering delayed until later in the summer.

You could try cutting back some and leaving others so you have a prolonged flowering time. Some plants respond better to this method than others try it on any of the following: echinacea; phlox; sedum; heleniums and solidago.

Bulb Business:

I love the spring bulbs but when they have finished flowering I have to stop myself from just hacking off the unsightly yellowing foliage, its better to leave them to die back naturally, add a bit of liquid fertiliser around the base and if possible and as long as you don’t have a whole field full, deadhead faded flowers to prevent them forming seed.

Bulbs will produce natural offsets, or baby bulbs next to the parent bulb, you can remove these, and either replant straight away or they prefer to be potted up, stored and planted out in the autumn.

They may take a couple of years to flower from offsets so don’t be alarmed if you don’t see them come up the first year.