Penstemons - question.

Hi everyone, I bought two established penstemon plants today & I was just doing a bit of research on them. Apparently they are not reliably hardy & they don't like winter rain, they really aren't suited to being northern irish citizens at all:dh: I was wondering if it would be okay to plant them out now? And also if there are any steps I could take to try and increase their chances of survival?

 

To increase the chances of your penstemons surviving the winter, don't cut them back in autumn - instead leave everything on them (flower stems as well as leaves) until Spring when the danger of heavy frosts has passed, then cut them back when you see new shoots appearing at the bottom - the flower stems and foliage helps protect them. If you've got soil that drains well, they're also more likely to survive.

Penstemons are the easiest things in the world to propagate too and it's not too late to take some cuttings - I shall take a second lot from my plants this weekend.

There is one other possible thing you could try - it's worked for me in the past with 'delicate' plants.

I mulch around the base of the plant (straw, leaf mould etc), then make a circle of cheap wire netting, large enough to go around the plant without danger of 'hitting' its roots and sink it in the ground just sufficiently deep to hold it in place. Using pegs or a bit of wire, I fix a temporary 'umbrella' of clear plastic (my plants weren't too big so I used a freezer bag) across the top of the netting - you can bend the plants once they've died back so you won't need sky-scraper height wire netting towers. From there you can either wrap a bit of fleece around this cage-like affair, to keep them a bit warmer, or you can put another bit of polythene to stop the rain lashing at them - or both if you're really keen! Granted this isn't the most attractive of solutions, but it does keep the worst of the wet off.

Hope this helps and that they'll be applying for citizenship by next year :hehe:

 

Thanks so much for all the tips, very helpful! I might try and take a few cuttings before I plant them out, is there any special way to get them to root? Would just putting them in some compost in the greenhouse be suitable?

 

I take about 4" cuttings, cut off just below a leaf joint, remove all the leaves except those at the very top and the next pair down. I usually dip them in some hormone rooting powder but they probably wouldn't care if I didn't! From then on, it's a matter of choice really what you plant them in, (or whatever you've got laying about) I've used John Innes Seed compost or John Innes Cutting compost both mixed about 50/50 with perlite, but I've also used Homebase or Wicks own brands general purpose composts with and without perlite and get equally good results. Just stick the cuttings round the edge of the pot, water it lightly and let them get on with it.

You can usually get 3 cuttings in a 3" pot and as for 'aftercare', at this time of year I'm going to cover mine with a plastic bag and leave them in the greenhouse, I shall probably stand the pots on some gravel or sand - something I can keep just damp - and, making sure they're out of any direct sunlight we might get, just wait until you see tiny white roots peeping out the bottom of the pot, when I'll pot them on into individual pots. They don't need bottom heat or anything fancy.

Earlier in the summer when I took the first lot of cuttings I had 4 pots of them (each pot with 3 cuttings) so I 'experimented' a bit. 1 pot I left uncovered and just watered occasionally, 1 I stood uncovered in about 1 cm of water and kept it topped up at that level, 1 covered pot was left 'dry' as it were and the last, covered pot, was left to stand in water and guess what ..... they all grew at exactly the same rate!

Because it's getting cooler and the days shorter, I'm expecting the next lot of cuttings to take a bit longer to root but they're so easy that I think they'd probably root in anything, provided it's soil of some sort!

 

Thanks for the advice, I'll give it a go! :D