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ID jit
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Moving Fox Glove ???

I have a dozen or more fox gloves to move, some or immature plants and some fully mature.

The times I have tried to relocate them in the past have been other than stellar-ly sucessfull.

Any tips on when to move them and how?

Thanks much.

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applestar
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Foxgloves are biennial, so the ones blooming this year will die down - not your fault if they didn't come back. Move the ones growing rosettes but no flowerstalks, and collect seeds to scatter or start more carefully. They need cold stratification so Wintersow if starting in containers.

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pinksand
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I second what applestar has said. I always have babies coming up in my path and have been able to successfully move them to more ideal places either in the fall or spring. Usually I'll move them to where my old plants are since they won't come back. The one I moved this spring ended up blooming in September instead of in the spring/early summer with the ones I'd moved in the fall.

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ID jit
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Thanks much.

I knew the flowered every other year, but didn't know they died off. So they are pretty much perennials with a short life expectancy?

If so they are a bad choice for what I was using them for. Am/was using them for row markers and dividers in a big flower garden full of bulb plants that don't show foliage all year.

What I have going on is a whole bunch of new light green plants, some larger dark green plants that did not flower this year and some larger dark green plants that did flower. So what I gather here, is replace the plants that flowered with the plants that haven't flowered yet and compost the older plants and the left overs. Sound reasonable?

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pinksand
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I think of biennials more as a long lived annual than a perennial with a short life lol... glass half full?

The first year they put all their energy into growing leaves and require a dormant period over the winter to then send up their flower spike. once they flower and go to seed, they're just like an annual in that they're done after that year. However, I often see them sold as "perennials" because they reseed so readily that they will seemingly come back... though technically it's a new plant. For this reason they can move around a bit, so as you said, might not be the best row markers, unless you are willing to move new plants into the place of old plants. I started out with one plant 3 years ago and now they're everywhere. They're easy to pull to keep in check though!

My guess is the new light green plants you have are new seedlings from this year's blooms. The larger dark green plants that didn't flower are likely spring seedlings from seeds that dropped last year so they have a head start.

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ID jit
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Thanks. That sort of explains how they seem to manage to walk around the garden...

The glass is TWICE AS BIG AS IT NEEDS TO BE... That half full or half empty stuff is all propaganda, double speak and psychobabble! (Not sure if that is a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half, though.)

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pinksand
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I don't know, I'd say the glass is half the size it needs to be to contain all those foxglove seedlings :wink:



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