How to Divide Flowers to Get More Plants – for Free!

Posted on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 · Leave a Comment 

I spend a lot in plant nurseries. At $10 or more a pop, it is easy to spend a hundred dollars quick as a blink. But I’m also a firm believer in dividing my perennials so that I don’t have to spend so much. Once you have established a good plant palette, you can increase numbers by dividing plants. Don’t be afraid to give it a try.

 

You need to learn a little about each plant in order to know if the roots can easily be separated, allowing you to divide plants. And although horticulturists may tell you that the time of year is important, in my experience you can divide most things anytime. Peonies are supposed to be moved or divided only in the fall after they have gone dormant, but I once moved 50 peonies for a client in June and they thrived.

 

One way to learn about propagation is by using a good text. My bible is Manual of Herbaceous Ornamental Plants by Steven M. Stills (Stipes Press, paperback, 814 pages). Although the publisher sells new copies at $58.80, used copies are readily available for a fraction of the price.

 

The book tells when to divide (spring or fall) and whether plants spread easily by seed. It also gives cultural tips about where and how to plant each flower. Most common and many unusual plants are included, one or two pages on each. There are drawings for each, with a few color photos in the back.

 

Don’t be afraid to cut through leaves or roots when dividing a big patch of daylilies

Another way to learn about dividing plants is to just do it. Dig up a plant and examine the roots. I use a drain spade to do this. A drain spade is a pointed shovel with a long, narrow blade (commonly 6 inches wide and 16 inches long). I plunge it into the soil and pry back a little. Then I repeat the procedure on all sides. When the plant is loose, I lift it out.

 

Some plants have long, deep roots. Others, such as peonies, have roots that look like tubers. Most have lots of string-like roots going in all directions. If the bed you are working in is full of weeds, it is important to distinguish between grass or weed roots and those of your plant. Observe the color and texture of the plant roots and remove any roots that are different. Daylily roots, for example are very distinctive in both color and shape.

 

Barerooting with a hose will ensure you have no weed roots

When dividing a plant, you may wish to actually bare-root it. Do this by shaking off any soil attached, or washing the root system with a hose to remove the soil. Weed or grass roots will be obvious when you do that. I normally do that for any gifted plants because I want to avoid getting any invasive weeds that might come with it. I learned that lesson the hard way, having accepted some nice iris plants that had goutweed roots embedded that then have plagued me for 30 years.

 

If all the roots are attached to a single stem, you cannot divide the plant.  But most plants are not like that. You can usually tease the roots apart, taking sections of the clump apart. Each chunk will give you a nice plant.

 

Hostas are common shade plants with lovely foliage. They do produce white flowers in mid-summer, but most people grow them for the foliage. Big clumps commonly are created as the plant expands, roots sending up new plants. Dig up a big clump, and you might get a dozen plants – or more.

 

Dividing hostas roots with a serrated knife is easy

I was dividing some hostas recently, and found some clumps hard to pull apart. So I used a curved, serrated knife to cut through some roots, allowing me to separate them. If you don’t have a garden knife, buy a steak knife at a yard sale or junk shop – on sneak one out of the kitchen – and it will work just fine.

 

And then I wanted to move some common orange daylilies. These send out long roots, which then send up new plants, so one plant can become many just in the time it takes to get a bottle of orange pop from the kitchen. Or a year to two.

 

With the daylilies, I used a shovel to cut through the roots between plants to get them into clumps of a manageable size. Don’t worry about damaging roots or leaves, these puppies are indestructible. Just dig up, cut apart and move.

 

For spring blooming plants, digging now may hinder flowering this year. For fall blooming plants, that is less of a problem. Some plants benefit by digging, dividing and fertilizing. Steven Stills’ book mentions how often to do that: for purple cone flower, for example, it is every 4 years. For Shasta daisies, every other spring is best. And so on.

 

Always choose a cool, cloudy day for dividing plants. Even a drizzly day. Plants can go into shock if divided at noon on a hot day. I like to do it in the evening when rain is in the forecast.

 

The great thing about digging up a big perennial is not only that you have more plants: your friends will, too. I often put a blurb in my town list serve offering free plants. I’ve made some very nice friends that way!

 

Henry is now teaching Zoom classes to gardening clubs and libraries. Contact him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is the author of 4 gardening books.

Filed under Article · Tagged with barerooting plants, dividing hostas, tools for dividing plants

Saving Money in the Flower Garden

          My house sits on a couple of acres, most of which is growing something. There is a big vegetable garden, some trees, berry bushes and decorative shrubs, a  little lawn and lots of flowers. I could spend a fortune, I suppose, if I bought flowers for every square foot of flowerbed that I have. Over the years, however, I have learned how to transplant small plants that started on their own from seed – “volunteers” – and how to divide existing perennials.
 
          Let’s start with the volunteer plants. The first thing one must do is learn to recognize the young seedlings – and not pull them as weeds. I do this mainly by the color and texture of the leaves, but shape is important, too. And of course, you can’t use bark mulch in the flower beds if you want volunteers. I grow perennials close together so that they shade out weeds, and try to pull any weeds that do grow before the go to seed.
 
          Twenty years ago a neighbor pulled up in front of my house and handed me a cardboard box with 8 candelabra primroses (Primula japonica). I accepted them with pleasure, and went directly to a good reference book to find out what they needed: rich soil, light shade, consistent moisture. I had those conditions under a small grove of wild apple trees, and planted them there.
 

Primula japonica

Now I have hundreds of candelabra primroses and many other kinds. Once I realized that one primrose would grow there, I tried other species, and all but one (P. vialii) have done well there – and spread. Most spread by seed, and one (P. kisona) by root, like a groundcover. I regularly dig primroses and move them or give them to friends.
 
Giving excess plants to friends, especially lesser known varieties, is a great way to save money. I find that if you give a person a nice clump of flowers, you are most certainly going to go home with 2 or 3 new plants for your own garden.
 
Dividing plants is easy, once you get the hang of it. But you have to know what kind of root each perennial has, and that generally means some experimentation. The only book I have found that describes dividing for most common perennials is The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting & Pruning Techniques by Tracy DiSabato-Aust. That’s a book that should be in every gardener’s library because it tells you how to prune, deadhead, get to re-bloom, divide and more. It’s in hardback at $34.95 (Timber Press, 2006) and worth every penny.
 
It is best to divide most perennials in the spring when the foliage is just 3-6 inches tall. Tough characters like hostas and daylilies can be done anytime, though preferably on a cool cloudy day if doing so now. I recently divided a few hostas and took off a section from a large bugbane or snakeroot (Cimicifuga ramosa), and none showed signs of stress.
 

Dividing hostas

You can cut out a section of a large hosta or daylily by cutting out a wedge with a spade or even a long knife. I sometimes use a serrated root knife I got from Lee Valley Tools. Tracy DiSabato-Aust prefers a non-serrated knife, so I guess either will work just fine. Get down on your hands and knees and try to see natural division points before you cut.
 
Alternatively, you can dig up a plant, place it on the ground and then use 2 spading forks to separate it. Just insert them into the middle of the clump, back-to-back, and work the forks back and forth. It’s a lot of work for a big clump of daylilies. I prefer just to cut up a clump with a sharp spade. The spade lets me stand on it with all my weight to slice through the tough roots. I once divided a 4-foot wide clump of Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum) and ended up using a pick ax to whack it apart. Not a pretty sight, but I was determined to remove and divide it.
 
Groundcovers send out roots and can be divided anytime. Just dig up a plant, sever the root from the mother plant, and move it to a new location. Easy.
 
Some plants have fleshy taproots that are easily broken, and these are not good candidates for division. Peonies, Oriental poppies, bleeding heart and pink mallow fit in that category. They should be divided in the fall –though little seedlings move easily, spring or fall. Siberian iris should be divided in fall.
 
Some plants go downhill and become less vigorous if they are not divided on a regular basis. Have you lost a nice Shasta daisy? If so, please try again – but divide it every 3 years. That allows you to add compost and slow-release organic fertilizer to the soil, which rejuvenates the plants.
 
The easiest, least expensive method for getting more flowers is just to save seeds and plant them. I plant when the seeds are ripe, just scratching them in where I want more plants next year. I do this with Jack-in-the-pulpit, annual poppies, foxgloves and rose campion, and they generally reward me handsomely.
 
So don’t spend a fortune. Divide, trade with friends, start things by seed. In no time you’ll have all the plants you need – even if not all the plants you want.
 
Henry Homeyer is the author of 4 gardening books. His Web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com.

Copyright © 2014 Henry Homeyer

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