Kitchen Garden Forum

Have grown these for the first time and wonder what I should do with them now the leaves are turning pinkish after their spring flowering. Are they supposed to be cut back to ground level or do they start sprouting fresh growth next spring from existing stems?

I always leave the old leaves on, Primrose, because they will act as protection to the new growth in spring. By spring time they will be quite loose and you can pull them off whereas now you would have to cut them and they would just leave ugly 'spikes' sticking up.

Aquilegia can stay in the ground all winter,by now they will have dropped their seeds and you should have seedlings coming up all over the place in spring.
Bren

Thanks both of you. I did collect all the seeds after they'd flowered. Is it too late to sprinkle them around now in the hope they will germinate and over winter, or should I wait until spring?

Hi Primrose,
You are a tad late now so may I suggest that you scatter a quarter of the seed now and save the rest and sow under heat January to March next year.
The normal times for sowing are May to July just normal sowing, January to March under heat and some Aquilegia seeds need special treatments and that should be done July and August.
If you sowed these last year then they will not be a type that requires any special treatment.
JB.

Thanks Johnboy. Will hang on until Spring.

Primrose,
My only experience of sowing Aquilegia seeds was not what I expected!
My brother once at some show, bought a rather nice very large flowered yellow.
When I said how good it looked, he said he would keep me some seed from it.
I sowed the seed and got loads of plants which flowered quite quickly, but all turned a small flowered horrible double purple, what a disappointment.
His plant did not survive the winter.
The same thing happened with Hollyhocks,we had a nice peach lot growing in the works gardens, the gardener keep me lots of seed from them.
After waiting 2 years for them to flower, they "ALL" turned out a washed out lilacy colour!

The joys of being a gardener, sometimes!!!

Cheers!