Wasn’t sure where to put this, but I think of it as food/cooking related so here it went.
Anyway, I am no expert gardener, but I’ve had a not-entirely-unsuccessful container garden for the past two summers. Last year, I opted for a few perennials in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to keep spending money on the herbs every year. So, I am pretty much entirely unfamiliar with them.
I had thought that “perennial” meant that the original plant would green up and grow again year after year. However, my perennials look, well, dead. They aren’t greening up again. It has been a chilly spring. We had some hot weather towards the end of last summer so several of my plants shot up and went to seed before I could blink – these included both annuals (cilantro), and perennials (catnip). The lavender only gave me one damn blossom last year, so I was hoping for better this summer. The mint, as far as I could tell, didn’t go to seed, but it got spindly and woody after the hot weather.
On the other hand, despite the cold weather so far this spring, a couple plants have reseeded themselves and are producing as-yet-tiny shoots. The cilantro is identifiably cilantro shoots. I’m not completely sure about the catnip, but it definitely went to seed, and the baby leaves look generally like catnip leaves. There’s shoots growing in the lavender and mint container, too, but as far as I knew neither of them went to seed, and I’m not sure if the green stuff is mint or not (although it really doesn’t look like lavender to me).
So. Did I somehow screw up and kill my original plants, or are they really “perennials” because they’re good about reseeding themselves? Do I need to pull out the old plants – which would be difficult without messing up the new shoots, as the catnip especially became a giant monster with, I’m sure, a root system that fills the pot. Am I not supposed to let perennials go to seed, and that’s why they apparently died? Or are they still dormant just because we haven’t had warm weather until this week?
There are two kinds of perennials, woody perennials and herbaceous perennials.
With woody perennials, like lavender or rosemary, the whole plant above ground stays alive and starts to resprout at the tips of the branches. You can prune these to encourage bushiness.
Herbaceous perennials, like coneflowers or hostas, die back completely above ground over the winter, then start sprouting with warm weather. Some of these will also set seeds and start new plants that way – coneflowers, e.g. – but the root system survives as well.
Both wait for longer days and warmer weather to emerge from dormancy.
Plants that propagate themselves by seeds are annuals. The entire plant, including the root system, dies at the end of one season.
There are “tender” and “hardy” varieties of all of these – geraniums (pelagarium), for instance, are actually perennials, though they’re usually grown as annuals, and I keep plants going all winter by bringing them in and putting them in sunny windows. (Which reminds me, I need to get back them out on the porch this weekend.)
Catnip and other mints are pretty hard to kill. Keep them watered, and they’ll re-sprout from the roots. Later on, if (well, when) they get spindly and woody, you can trim them back to encourage new, bushy growth.
In fact, don’t pull out any of your old plants at all - you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised at what comes back for you once it’s gotten warmer.
And I’m confused from the other side of the fence. I thought annuals meant that you planted a plant, enjoyed it until it got cold, and then it would die. The next year you’d plant it again, which is why they’re called annuals.
Except…
It was a long, and fairly snowy winter, and when the snow receded, my poor fall pansies were pathetic little heaps on the ground. In the past few weeks, though, about half of them have perked back up and are happily enjoying the sunlight.
The part I don’t get is the petals. I can understand that the stems might have survived over winter, but when they surfaced, the petals looked very dead. So…they grew new ones?? Do annuals generally not grow new flowers the next year because the plant doesn’t survive, but if it did they could?
Edit: Just to clarify, I’m talking about actual pansies here, not their smaller perennial cousins, violas.
Pansies are one of the most cold-tolerant annuals; they might just perk up again. I have some perennials in my yard (Zone 3) that don’t go all the way dead in winter (being close to the house and in that micro-climate). Some die and come back from the root (eg. peonies), some sort of take a long sleep and start up again (eg. coral bells), and some are basically evergreens (eg. thyme).
I can’t keep plants alive in pots outside over winter here - the pot doesn’t offer the same protection that plants in the ground enjoy. I plant hardy perennials almost exclusively, and of the 10 or 15 varieties I planted last summer, almost all of them have come back this spring. I’m not a fan of annuals except for an occasional splash of colour - I prefer my plants to do my work for me.
What Cat Whisperer said - if you want to overwinter plants in pots, you have to either bury the pots in the ground or put them in a cold spot like a garage where they’re protected from a hard freeze. If you just left the pots outside unprotected, any of your perennials which didn’t reseed are probably dead. Wait until it’s really warmed up, and then see what you’ve got. As for the ones which did /survive/reseed and are now sprouting, I’d vote for just leaving them alone. Give them a good top-dressing of rich soil and let them do their thing. Just cut away as much of the dead plant stems as you can, for the sake of neatness.
Chicago. The pots are out on the back deck – it’s semi-sheltered out there, overlooking the alley and surrounded by buildings rather than looking out onto the street, but not completely so like a garage.
Thanks for the info. Between the heat and the rain this week the baby sprouts seem to be spreading, so I guess I’ll leave the plants alone for a little bit and see what they do.
BTW, I never saw seeds on the mint plant, and while I’ve got a couple bits of random clover in there, it’s like 98 to 2 with the other green things. I’m guessing it’s mint, but it’ll need to grow up more before I can be sure. The catnip pot has a green carpet in there now.
I’m going to need to get my tomatoes and basil soon, if I want to harvest this summer, so I was wondering if I needed to give up on the old perennials and get new ones, too. Here’s hoping.