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New lavender plants gone woody

libroselibrose Posts: 4
in Problem solving
These lavender plants were in pots until the spring when we planted them in soil. They have grown nicely but have gone a bit straggly and also woody at the bottom. What would be the best way of dealing with this?

Posts

  • LynLyn Posts: 23,190
    Take some cuttings and dump the main plants, they grow easily from seeds so you could wait until those heads have dried right out in the plant them dump them. 
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

  • NollieNollie Posts: 7,529
    They are simply dying, I’m afraid. Lavenders need plenty of direct sun, a good, free-draining soil and newly transplanted plants need a reasonable amount of water at the roots to settle in, especially during a hot summer. Conversely, if you have a heavy, poor draining soil and they get too much water, they just drown and keel over.

    Your soil does look a little inhospitable there for lavenders, but difficult to know from a photo of course. In my rocky, clay soil, for example, I have to plant lavender in raised beds, having dug in vast quantities of grit and compost - and only tough, Lavender x Intermedia types survive, the rest die on me!
    Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
  • libroselibrose Posts: 4
    We have very clay-y soil and where they are they don’t get full sunlight so perhaps that is the problem. I will take some cuttings and move them somewhere a bit more sunny
  • FairygirlFairygirl Posts: 55,117
    If you have clay, you'll probably need to amend it a bit as @Nollie describes. It will be heavy and claggy in winter. 
    It's the reason they usually look awful here and don't last long. 
    It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....



    I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
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