Hello there! Thought I'd join as I'm completely clueless when it comes to gardening! We've for the first time got a garden of our own and intend to do what we can (time-allowing) to make the most of it! We have a small patch of lawn and a stepped rockery with various weeds/plants growing. We also have some flower beds along the sides which we rescued from a gravelly grave. This year we planted some cornflowers and various wild flowers but now I dont know what to do with them! Should I dig the dead flowers out, or just trim them back down to the soil? (yep, I'm starting at Level 0 in terms of knowledge!) Thanks and hopefully I'll be able to get lots of tips from you greenfingered lot! Sarah x
welcome to ya Sara Enjoy GC Its the Collage of knowledge on here Right helpfull Lot i am in the same boat as your self the tips knowledge and exll Advice you will get on here is in valuble regards Nick
Hello. In an attempt to answer your question about what to do with the 'dead' flowers, you mentioned Coneflower. Would this be Purple Coneflower, aka Echinacea? If it is, its a herbacious perennial, which in English means the top growth dies in winter, but the roots survive (usually) and it will regrow in spring. You could cut off all the dead top growth and wait for spring, but in my experience, if you do that, then you forget where everything was, then when spring comes and you see new shoots, you can't tell the difference between them and the weeds, so I leave the dead bits where they are until the new shoots are well and truly on their way, so that last years dead flowers act as a marker. Of course, you could use actual markers, but that's too much like hard work for me
thanks everyone for the warm welcomes! I'll definitely be using this site in the future for all my (many) gardening questions. clueless1, I think that the ones I planted were Centaurea cyanus cornflower. I'll cut back the 'dead' shoots and we'll see next summer if anything appears! Thanks again everyone!x
Sorry, I misread your post. I see you said Cornflower, where I read Coneflower. That's an entirely different story. Cornflower is an annual, so it wont be coming back, unless it set seeds. Either way, I guess you can just pull out the dead ones, because if any seed was set, the seed will just sit on the soil anyway until the time is right.
Hi Sarah, welcome to Gardeners Corners:D Could you post some pics of your garden and then let us know in which direction your garden faces, and what kind of soil you have, as that would be a help when answering any questions:D
