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Grasses
I have a few grasses in the garden, some like the carex I have given a hair cut to (new C. pressie of topiary shears really good for this job)
I have also cut down my calagmagrostis x acutifolias 'Karl Foerster'. Once i did this I wondered if I was correct.
Before I do anything to the other grass - Stipa Gigantea - I thought I has better check.
The last 2 were planted during last year
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I only rake out the dead bits on my stipa but Verdun will know what we should do
In the sticks near Peterborough
Easy, evergreen ones should only have dead stuff raked out of them. Deciduous grasses are chopped to the ground, I usually do ours in February, but this year I did it in October as I got fed up of bits of them blowing all over the place.
Great thing is, that it really does not matter, they recover whichever way you do it.
Do you think I could do my miscanthus now Berghill?
In the sticks near Peterborough
Well, I have cut down our huge clumps of Miscanthus hybridus at this time of year for the last 10 years without damaging them.
I will then, thank you Berghill. I often end up doing them when they've started their new growth for the year.
In the sticks near Peterborough
since seeing it done on an edition of GW, I burn my deciduous grasses in March ( providing they're fairly isolated from other plants ) Do not try this on evergreen grasses or they'll die.
I won't try it on any of them. Something will die. I have seen whole areas of garden fired, sounds very damaging to wildlife.
In the sticks near Peterborough
That's a pretty comprehensive answer Verdun, thank you.
My panicums seem to just fall apart at the end of the season ans I clear up with no cutting.
The Stipa gigantea seems to do OK with neglect, all other stipas have died except Stipa arundinacea which also is neglected, I treat that as a sort of bi/triennial, it seeds about, gets scruffy eventually and I discard the oldest. A bit like Helleborus foetidus.
I think I'll experiment with the miscanthus, cut some this week and leave the rest for a while. One of them hasn't had last spring's cut yet.
In the sticks near Peterborough