Winter Daisies - NW Indiana - Zone 5

[Lorraine Lawler]

Four years ago we bought two plants at a local fall festival that the person called winter daisies (they had no plant tags). The next year they bloomed; the next two years, the plants would grow well, then individual stems would begin to die and by the fall, many of the stems that weren't dead were less upright as if the weight of the stem itself caused this. There were a few flowers. This spring I cut back the new growth like I do for the hardy mums, but this has had no effect and the stems are dying. Does anyone have any advice what we could do to save these plants? Thanks - Lorraine

[Doug Kanter]

First, let's figure out what general category of plant you really have. Sometimes the word "daisy" is applied to flowers that really aren't in that family. Are the flowers constructed like the ones in this picture? And, what color are your flowers?

big is the plant itself, in circumference? In other words, if you made a circle with your arms like you were imitating a hug, is the plant bigger than that circle, or???

[Lorraine Lawler]

Doug - Thank you for your reply.

Yes the flowers do look like the ones in this picture. Flowers are white with yellow centers. When I clicked on more detail for shasta daisies, it indicated that they bloomed June-July and longer if dead flowers were removed. While I can't recall exactly when they start to bloom since there haven't been many flowers in the last two years, they never bloomed in June. The plant is 24-30" tall and that wide.

Lorraine

[Doug Kanter]

OK. The reason I asked is that I was wondering about the growth habit of the plant itself. Many plants, including some daisies, need to be dug up and divided. In extreme cases, I've seen shasta daisies where the whole clump was 5' wide, and the center 50% was dead. It's hard to say how long it takes for a plant like that to need division. I suspect that if the planting hole was not well-prepared, the plant might need it sooner.

A google search came up with quite a few hits about how to divide shasta daisies. Even a very famous criminal wrote something about it: