Gardening 101: Passalong plants

NORTH TEXAS (CBSNewsTexas.com) – Success in your garden can be shared. And should be.

Some perennial plants can crowd themselves out. Roots from new sprouts spread into the same space with established roots and the plant becomes "root bound." Nutrition, oxygen, and water can have difficulty getting distributed though the tight community of plants. 

Help it by dividing the plant, basically, cutting it half. Depending on how well the plant is growing, this should be done every three to five years. Cut it with a sharp shovel spade or with a large (and sharp) hand spade. Go all the way through the root crown and below. Re-fill the hole you just created, then water and feed the plant to help it recover quickly. 

Give the part you took out to a friend or neighbor. In other words, because of your success, your perennial is now a pass-a-along.

There are several plants that make great candidates as passalongs. Day Lilies are easy to divide. If they are grown in a good spot, they spread out rapidly. You can cut into one of the bigger clumps and divide the plant in half. You can take the new half and fill out your existing bed or start a new bed.

Or wrap the plant in wet newspaper and carry it over to a friend or family member. Passalong.

Canna Lily are even easier to divide because they spread out through rhizomes. They create separate plants that can get easily overcrowd your established bed. Dig them out and share. There are so many different colors and patterns of canna lily, swapping them with fellow growers is a great way to expand your show of color without buying several varieties.

Steve Huddleston of the Fort Worth Botanic Garden sent me a list of his favorite passalong plants. They all share a need for occasional dividing to keep the plant vigorous and are easy to transplant. They also are plants that do particularly well in our area.

This is by no means the complete list, just the better candidates:

1. Iris
2. Daylilies
3. Bulbs - daffodils, oxblood lily, etc.
4. Inland seaoats
5. Southern wood fern
6. Summer phlox
7. Turk's cap
8. Coneflower
9. Black-eyed Susan
10. Ornamental grasses
11. Fall Asters
12. Violets
13. Red Yuccas

In:
• Gardening

Jeff Ray

Jeff joined CBS 11 and TXA 21 in December 2010 as a staff Meteorologist. An avid gardener, you can catch his weekly Gardening 101 series on Fridays on CBS 11. Born in Lubbock, Jeff received his bachelor's degree in broadcast meteorology from Mississippi State University. He also holds a master's degree in science education from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Jeff's broadcast career spans over 35 years.

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