We have a pot bound Gerbera daisy. It seemed to have 3 separate crowns over the summer. Now, there are at least 6 distinct crowns, and the root area is a solid tangle of roots. I could just slice thru the crowns and roots to divide the plant, or hopefully learn somthing here as a better way to divide the plant up. We liv in the Chicago area and will use growing lights over the winter to keep the plants healthy.
Help!!!
For Chicago it's probably a little too late for dividing daisys, better to wait until early spring. Right now remove the plant from the pot and heel it into the ground and place a few inches of mulch around. Once it leafs out in spring dig it up and carefully separate the crowns by hand and plant them wherever. If you separate them now they'll probably not establish a healthy root system before the ground freezes. For me daisys are the one plant that doesn't belong caged in a pot, daisys need to be free, plant them in the ground. And the critters don't eat daisys. For fertilizer feed them deer poop or obama
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I think if you do this you'll lose them. They're tropical and it just gets too cold, at least here in southern Wi. Probably Chicago isn't much better, despite global warming causing the winters to be less severe.
Most people around here just let them freeze and buy new ones every year. But this will be the third year of overwintering gerbers in my sun room. It's great having a bit of color mid winter. I just potted them up last week and they're looking good. The first summer I stuck pots and all in the ground, but this year I put them in the ground last spring and dug them up last week. A couple do indeed now have multiple crowns but I didn't try dividing them. Just got a bigger pot. But if you really want to divide them slicing sounds like it should work. I've noticed moving them in and out of pots that the root systems seem pretty tough.
I do the same with my cape daisies and have cut them when repotting. They bloom especially well in winter cause they seem to like the sun room's bright days and cool nights. They don't like the hot summer and quit blooming in July. Also potted a couple of them up last week and they're blooming nicely again now it's fall. good luck
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Yeah, we overwintered them in our south-facing kitchen bay window last year and they did great this summer, that's why I have to split them up. Will take a knife to the plant tonite. If anything interesting happens, I'll post back here. No news is no news.
*** Pray, what does "heel it into the ground" mean?
TIA
HB
and place a few inches of mulch
Higgs Boson wrote:
You couldn't have much experience gardening, "heeling in" is very common Gardening 101 nomenclature; it's what plant nurseries do with unsold merchandise at the end of the planting season, and what home gardeners do with plants that for whatever reason they haven't decided on a permanent home. In this case even though Gerbana daisy prefers a warmer clime it can survive a cold Chicago winter when properly heeled in and covered with lots of mulch. Where I live winters are frigid, temperatures often drop into the minus 20s, even minus 30s. Plant nurseries dig a deep trench to place the balled and burlaped stock into at an angle (heeling), then cover with a mountain of organic mulch, no soil is necessary with balled and burlaped, the roots are already in soil... the decaying mulch generates enough heat over winter to protect the root ball... potted plants are treated the same minus the pot but leave the roots undisturbed with the potting soil. to make it easier to retrive in spring wrap the root ball with a schmatah. And you embarrass yourself... you're also a net newbie... any five year old nowadays knows how to put into a search engine, had you lookerd it up you wouldn't look like such an ass. Methinks you're simply too preoccupied/blinded with trying to catch me in some error... don't strain your pea brain, will never happen, especially now that you've proven how little you know about gardening, the net, and anything else.
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A sharp large kitchen knife cut the clump in two, and each half was divided again. So I potted up all four plants in four plastic pots and they will spend the winter indoors in a sunny garage window. It isn't heated, but it is well-insulated and never goes below freezing due to the house around it and a southwest exposure.
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A sharp large kitchen knife cut the clump in two, and each half was divided again. So I potted up all four plants in four plastic pots and they will spend the winter indoors in a sunny garage window. It isn't heated, but it is well-insulated and never goes below freezing due to the house around it and a southwest exposure.
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good to know. I'll be braver about cutting mine now.
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