Support your plants

[NightHawk]

I've started this new topic at the suggestion of George.

We've recently experienced some severe weather conditions in the south of England.  Very strong winds and heavy rain.

As a consequence we sustained some damage to our Dahlias and Cosmos plants that got badly flattened to the ground.
Some of the Dahlia stems had snapped and needed to be cut off, but the Cosmos faired slightly better without any stem damage.

Kathy bought some stake-rings to support them.  We're hoping this will be enough to allow them to recover.  We'll report back on that.

There's another severe weather warning issued by the Met. Office for this Sunday, when Hurricane Katia is expected to make landfall.  Although by that time they say that it will have reduced in intensity and would no longer be regarded as hurricane status.

We're still expecting some sort of garden damage though.

What do our other members advocate for their plants, particularly the long-stemmed varieties.  Do you stake these at the planting stage to give them a good start and, if so, what plants do you find really require being staked.

Laurie.

[ideasguy]

I have a beautiful Paeonia officinalis 'Rubra Plena' - described here on my top 100:
http://www.ideasforgardens.com/bestplantsl/top100gk.php
The original is under a large Rowan Tree (Sorbus) directly in front of our dining room window to be enjoyed on even the coldest days of spring. Traditionally  there are high winds when it is in full bloom, and since it has huge 5in blooms it can end up sprawled all over the ground.
This year Ive staked it and a few of its valuable "offspring" with steel rods about 10mm diameter - the reinforcing rods from a demolition job on reinforced concrete. They are the best stakes Ive ever used. I cut them to about 30in long and closely surrounded each plant with 5 or 6 rods.
Advantages:
they could be hammered into the hard ground with a mallet.
they were almost less conspicuous than a heavy stick that would have been necessary to do the same job
absolutely rigid support
reuseable

For the first time ever, I had a brilliant display from these fine plants.

[NightHawk]

We've managed to escape the worst of the recent bad weather storm, with Hurricane Katia veering northwards and predicted to hit Northern Ireland, north Wales and north-west Scotland/northern England.
Fingers crossed for any of our members living in those areas to come through it safely.

We caught the edge of it, experiencing strong winds and rain but our plants that got flattened previously got through it unscathed.

The metal half-rings that we staked up the Cosmos and Dahlias with seem to have worked well.  The plants have recovered and continue to flower.

Next year we'll make sure that the stake rings are in place earlier to give the plants chance to grow around them better and disguise them.

So, all in all pretty resourceful and hardy plants, and we've had no other plant damage.  Phew!

Laurie.

[Eric Hardy]

Glad to hear that you have not had too much damage, Laurie. Our main casualties have been hollyhocks which had pretty well come to an end anyway. Our record hollyhock was 12 ft 6 ins high (measured after felling  )