King David Phlox

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I have a couple of these phlox, several years old. I thought they would spread, but reading today about them, I have to dig and divide them. Does anybody know? If I do divide them when is the best time? I would like to use them as a border on the garden, which they are now, but too many weeds, and I am moving the border of the garden. I like them so much that I may buy more next spring.

 

[flowerbug]

i'm not familiar with this particular plant but i'll just write up what i can guess at. take it with grains of salt.

i've only grown a few kinds of tall phlox and one of them is the wild kind which is purple, pink and white, gets plenty of seeds and spreads around wherever. the goldfinches love them, eating the seeds as they form and ripen. the other type of phlox we grew is a tall pink kind which was supposed to be red, but never actually flowered at all, we've never gotten flowers on it and after about 10 years we tried to dig it out, i'm not even sure we got it all nor do i really care. it was not easy to dig out. and seemed to come back from bits of root if they were left behind (for all i know we were sent a weed).


so my guess is that you could divide it and i would do that in the middle of spring after the ground has thawed enough but before the main growing season has started for the plants. since i've not dug one up in ages i can't say how i would divide it, but usually a larger plant can just be cut into two, three, four, etc. parts as long as each section can have parts of the growing active budding area and some roots (you can examine plants now and into the fall to see what they look like as they grow and how they are formed, what the roots are like, etc.).

i'm generally pretty fearless when it comes down to dividing plants and have reasonably good results - but it is funny and coincidental that the plant that i've had the hardest time with propagating here is some creeping pink phlox. it just does not like clay at all and where i tried to move it was just too heavy and too dry for too long so it did not continue and in the moving i killed off quite a bit of the creeping phlox and i was really hoping to get it to grow. luckily the creeping thyme i've since put in has done the job and it doesn't mind the rock hard clay at all. it may take longer to grow to cover the clay, but it won't die off.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

They were in pots when I bought them and just put them in the ground. I am not sure when they start getting leaves in the spring. I think spring is best too. I do not have their new place ready, so when spring comes I will get their new place ready and wait for them to get new leaves. I think I have them in some pretty sorry ground. They get watered but the dirt is not soft where they are. They sure smell good. Probably what I will do in the spring is wait for things to sprout and then move them. I have hollyhocks, cone flowers, bee balm, delphiniums, and some Maximilian sunflowers that are going to have to be moved. I have always wanted a border around the garden of flowers and I might get it done next year. I am getting excited about this cardboard and newspaper idea.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Well, here it is almost 4 years later and I am paying attention to the poor David phlox. I bought a phlox at a plant sale the other day and realized she was digging up starts from her garden that had spread from seeds. I started wondering about the white phlox I have and went out and because of weeds I can see where the seedlings would not be able to survive or I did not know there were going to be little seedlings and pulled them up with weeds. I only have one now and I started looking around the plant and I found 2 little phlox seedlings. I dug them up and I put them in pots. I am going to put them in a better place in the garden where I can keep an eye on them. I pulled the weeds around the white phlox and I planted the new phlox in a different location. I will try to get a picture this year of the white David phlox.