Plants You Should Not Divide

[Tumbleweed]

Most of you have already started dividing your plants but I thought a list of the plants you should not divide should be made available so you don't waste your time only to be dissapointed in the end.

Here is the list of just of few that I know of. I'm sure there are many, many more but these are the most common ones:

• Baby's breath - Gypsophila
  
• Butterfly Weed - Asclepias
  
• Candytuft - Iberis sempervirens
  
• Columbines - Aquilegia
  
• Christmas Roses - Helleborus
  
• False Indigo - Baptisia
  
• Gas Plant - Dictamnus albus
  
• Globe Thistle - Echinops ritro
  
• Windflower - (Japanese) anemones
  
• Lavender cotton Santolina chamaecyparrus
  
• Lavender - Lavandula angustifolia - I've heard some folks have no problem with dividing these and others say, not don't do it.)
  
• Lupine - Lupinus
• Oriental poppies - Papaver orientale (If you want try, do so when they die back in the mid to late summer.
  
• Oriental Poppy - Papaver orientale
  
• Peony- Paeonia (It is very difficult to have success dividing.)
  
• Rosemary - Rosmarinus officinalis
  
• Southernwood - Artemesia abrotanum
  
• Spurges - Euphorbias
  

I'll add to this. I have a list I got from some garden club from years ago and it is just a matter of locating it.

[barb]

That explains why my peonies which my mother had all my life died when I tried to divide them. The few that were left were really weak and scraggly.

I killed off Irises also. Any idea whether that is what caused them to die or whether its the brown thumb I assumed caused that and the peonies?

[Tumbleweed]

I just have to brag a little bit here.....People used to stop to take pictures of my bearded irises at my old house. They were lavendar and just so pretty! (I'm sure I have pictures of them somewhere.)

I do know that the mistake people make are planting them too deep. They just need to sit even with the surface of the ground or just a hair below it.

It could have been the wrong time of the year you divided them. It could be that you accidently broke off the roots on the rhizomes or didn't spread them properly. (Need to be spread on a mound of dirt.)

There are a number of other reasons they may have not done so well. In my case I was always fighting a bore that would eat the inside of the rhizome making it hollow. The other thing I fought was bacteria soft rot which is treated with a water/bleach solution. The ratio I don't remember off hand.

Other problems could be the soil drainage, the soil didn't have the right PH balance. Too much water, not enough water, lack of sun, etc...

For some of the above reasons, it could be that, what you thought should produce a plant, was actually an already dead or in distress rhizome.

[barb]

If I remember right, I buried them so the squirrels wouldn't eat them. I thought I was doing it about the same depth as the plants were but I do remember covering them with a layer of dirt.

Its also possible I did it at the wrong time of year. I knew less about plants then than I know now and I still don't know much.