Cutting Back Perennials in the Fall 🌿🍂✂️ // Garden Answer

hey guys how's it goin Laura with garden answer in today's video I want to talk to you guys about what you need to be doing with your perennials in the fall so basically whether or not you need to be worried about cutting them back now or waiting until spring and there's really not a whole lot to it you guys basically the only perennials you need to be worried about cutting back in the fall are those that deal with insect and disease problems so let's talk though about perennials that you don't need to worry about cutting back so when I'm talking about perennials I'm talking like echinacea is gaillardia is coreopsis day lilies there's just so so many and most of these perennials if you leave it alone leave the tops on the plants they'll provide food and protection for wildlife mainly birds in your garden a lot of them add a really pretty visual interest to your winter landscape so like ornamental grasses sedum echinacea seed heads rudbeckia or black eyed Susans seed heads look really beautiful in a snowy landscape and then when you do leave the tops on the plants it also helps protect the crown of the plant so a lot of times in those old branches there'll be fall leaves kind of catch in there and that helps moisture and it creates a layer of insulation over the crown of the plant especially on those prints that are kind of marginally Hardy so if you were to live in his own v like I do and plant a zone 6 just and I like trying to fudge the line if you wait to cut that back to spring it has a much better chance of surviving because of all that extra protection on the top there are also a lot of perennials that are semi evergreen or evergreen like lamium heuchera as I've got some couple hookers around me right now dianthus they're just ones that you don't really have to worry about doing anything to except for in the spring just tidying up usually around the base of the plant they'll have some old dried-up leaves that you can clean up but they'll already have beautiful leaves and they look beautiful all through the winter as well and the best way to know what kind of perennial you have is first of all read the tag or ask somebody at your local garden center before you plant it but the very best way in in my opinion is just to plant it see what it does leave it through the course of the first winter that you have it and see what it looks like like if you plant a hooker and notice that it just keeps its beautiful leaves and it looks great through the winter time then you know it's one of those plants as a semi evergreen and you don't have to worry about cutting it back much so let's talk about the perennials that you do need to worry about cutting back in the fall and there's not that many of them like I said it's just those that you deal with insect and disease problems with so I'm sitting in back of a big hosta right now that's not looking super great anymore but these are notorious slug attractors and the slug eggs like to Harbor over in old foliage so if you remove all that foliage in the fall then you just help not perpetuate that insect problem same with any kind of disease or fungal problems if you deal with powdery mildew on any of your perennials make sure to cut those ones back so I deal with powdery mildew on monarda or it's also called bee balm phlox and peonies in particular so I make sure that I cut all of those back and discard the foliage and if it's diseased from this year I don't put it anywhere that I'm going to save anything or compost you want to make sure that you either throw it away or burn it because you don't want any of that stuff hanging out for the following year and the other perennials that you can cut back in the fall if you want to or just those that don't add anything visually to your garden so there are some perennials that turn mushy or they just get really black and just don't look pretty at all go ahead and cut those back if you don't want to look at that through the winter time it's not going to hurt anything and I used to be in the camp of cleaning everything up in the fall because I worked full-time at the garden center at that time and so I didn't have time to do a huge massive spring cleanup when I was also working at the garden center so it was better for me to do a fall cleanup when I had more time if that's your situation don't worry about it just go ahead and clean your garden up just know that on anything that's marginally Hardy make sure to leave those until spring just kind of be a little bit selective and I'm kind of 1/2 1/2 now I clean out about half the perennials and I leave half now because I do care about the birds in the wildlife and I want them to be in my garden so if that's something that you want for your garden then make sure to leave some of the perennials and so that your birds have cover and food for the wintertime ok so now I'm going to show you how to cutback perennials it's really easy so what you want to do is just gather your plant up into kind of a bundle and then oh and look at that you can see I've got slugs here so this is what we're trying to eliminate in this spot and then just make your cuts about anything sore so above the surface of the soil so then I'm gonna put them here in my bag this is a kangaroo pop-up bag I love to use these out in the garden but I'm gonna make sure to actually throw these leaves away I'm not going to keep them for compost because they may already have slug eggs on them and I don't want to perpetuate the slugs so this is what it should look like and the reason why I leave a little bit of stem is so that next year when I'm out here working I can see where my plants are so it's really not necessary to leave those stems because the new growth comes from underneath it doesn't come from the old stuff but it is nice to be able to see exactly where all your perennials are so that's basically it you guys I'm gonna be working in this area a little bit more I've got some lungwort that looks still pretty nice really pretty one right here I've got some heuchera zin here that I will leave until spring and then I'll just clean them up a little bit because these are a semi evergreen and then there's just a few other things some vinca asters that are blooming Tradescantia and a daylily just a random assortment of perennials that all still look pretty good except for the hostas that are behind me so all of these right here I'm going to be working on cutting back everything else in this place in this space though I'll probably be leaving until spring so if that's it guys I hope this video was helpful to you and we will see you in the next one bye you

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 343,605

Rating: 4.9341793 out of 5

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: 5HEhm-f4_G0

Length: 5min 55sec (355 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2017