3rd week of September:
I notice you've cut down irises already. Is that okay?
- S.J. -
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It's perfectly okay. Irises, peonies, coneflowers, daylilies, we're cutting at will, now. Some for their health, most for our visual pleasure.
Some perennials, including peonies and iris, are better cut early than late. When we remove iris foliage from the bed after early September, we're also fending off next year's pests by removing iris borer eggs laid on those leaves. We cut peonies early to stay ahead of botrytis, a leaf disfiguring, flower bud killing disease. By October what were just purple-brown blotches on the leaves and stalks at Labor Day may have traveled down the stem and infected the crown, ready to start trouble in the new year.
Compare this photo to the one below: Do you miss the whole peony (A) and faded bear's breeches stalks and leaves (B) that we cut from this scene? We don't! We do like that it's created a cleaner view of the bear's breeches' unexpected bonus bloom.
A peony and other plants have been cut out of this garden long before frost. One reason we cut out the peony was to control the very common disease, peony botrytis. We don't miss its presence. Compare this image to the one at the top of this page to make up your own mind.
Pest trouble aside, we don't cut gardens down all at once in late fall. It's too depressing to go from merry fullness to moonscape in one day. Instead, we cut a bit at a time throughout fall. We're not out to scalp anything, just take away all the tall stems and debris. Perennials that develop a basal rosette for winter keep that nice looking new foliage. Others produce some new growth after the cut, which is not a loss to the plant and can even refresh a late fall scene.
We've been doing this ruthless cutting for 30 years without ill effect, ever since it occurred to us that Ma Nature does the same thing in our region when killing frost comes earlier than usual, in September. That the plants survive this means they must be capable of early check out. And why not? By Septemebr they've had a 5 month growing season, and that's plenty.
Ma Nature's killing frosts can start cutting things down in September in our region. So we have no qualms about cutting early.
- Janet -
Since we no longer admired this Russian sage (A, Perovskia atriplicifolia), we don't miss it after the cut. (About "B" - we cut down those daylilies six weeks ago when they were tatty and brown. We like them better with new foliage.)
If a perennial's no longer attractive in fall -- brown or just blah -- we take it out of the picture.
Places like this bearded iris patch in the last half of September are where Steven's photographer's motto applies perfectly.
"If it's not contributing to the scene, it must be detracting."
We do make exceptions. We ask ourselves before the cut: