In Focus: Splitting polyanthus

After a few years in the ground Polyanthus need to be divided, for a few reasons really. Polyanthus spread a lot in the right conditions and tend to take over the ground they are in with their fibrous roots, also the flowers tend to not be a good and rather a poor showing. A section of my front garden has many Polyanthus as you can see from previous posts. So the time has come to split them up and give everything else a chance, so after digging around that area I am left with a lot of plants and what to do with them all. 

So here I will try to explain how to split and make the most of the plants that we have dug up, rather than just throwing them away. In the tray above you can see some of the plants that I have removed from the garden. Firstly I will separate the clumps apart to see what I can get from each clump. Then I remove all the dead leaves and flower sprigs from the clump I will separate first.

In the picture above I have tidied up the first clump ready to separate out, Polyanthus are quite hardy and are quite able to handle being handled a little bit roughly when separating. Work out how you will separate them, the best way is to look for the new sprouts coming and the split accordingly

Above the clump has been separated into three smaller plants, do not be afraid to pull quite hard to separate. The plants will recover quickly and will be just fine once potted on

Above is another example of the splitting just so you can see it in finer detail, not the two buds where I have split it, both plants have a good root system for each and that is the key, Ensure there is a good root supply to the plant to give it the best chance of survival.

Planted up and ready to leave to grow on for itself. 

Out of the small amount of plants in the tray I managed to get 43 plants in total, so think to yourself how much that would cost to buy from the shops or garden centre's. i am sure you will agree it is worth the hour It took me to do them all.