Hi. I am new here and so glad I found this forum. This summer I planted some "hardy" perennials. Astilbes, Potentilla, Wegiela(I think that's how it is spelled!) bleeding hearts. 2 months later and it seems they are dying, or at least having a lot of difficulty. I used my compost that I have had for almost 2 years and it worked well for my tomatoes, and I tried to water every night or else every second night. I cut them back and I don't know how long I should give them before giving up. Can anyone help me?
what symptoms do they show ? watering every day or night is likely not a great thing. Depending on your soil drainage characteristics, frequent shallow waterings is a bad idea, infrequent, deep watering is usually better.
The dicentra may be going dormant if the old fashioned kind. Astilbes like water...potentillas not. I would leave them alone and way til next spring and see what happens then.
How am I supposed to know if this plant is the old fashioned kind and was it a good idea cutting it back?
Watering at night can encourage slugs, and the development of mold/fungus. As Jimmyq says above, your soil-drainage characteristics are important. And I agree with levilyla: perennials take a while to get established, so wait till next year and see what develops.
A rule-of-thumb you might consider.... at least it's better than watering every day!... is to water every 10 days to 2 weeks unless you have rain in the meantime, or unless the plants are showing stress (wilting... that is, once they get back to normal). If watering at night promoted mold/fungus, then rain at night would do the same and I've never seen it happen... this is yet another gardening myth. When the top growth of a plant is dead, it doesn't matter whether you cut it back or not... it's dead anyway. If a plant is struggling, I don't see why cutting it back is often advised... the plant is already stressed; stressing it further by cutting it down and preventing it from photosynthesizing doesn't seem likely to help things. If you planted the bleeding heart species in the photo posted by levilyla, then it is fairly normal that they go dormant when planted in sun or part sun. (However, in shade, they may persist through the season.) If your bleeding hearts are Dicentra eximia or Dicentra formosa cultivars or hybrids (also commonly-grown), then they would not normally go dormant; they should remain green all through the season. Are the potentillas you planted shrubs (i.e. do they have woody stems) or are they herbaceous (i.e. without woody stems)? Anyway, just leaving your plantings alone for a while would probably be the best thing to do. If it's very dry there, then water after another 10 days or so.
The poster mentioned watering nearly every night for 2 months. This is not a usual or normal rain pattern, at least not here in central Ohio. If I followed that watering schedule here, with my clay-laden soil---yeah, my flowerbeds would be an undulating mass of slugs. With fungus on top.
I think it's clear that the unusual thing in this case is that watering was done every day... whether the daily watering took place during daylight hours or at night is surely irrelevant.
My perennial garden, which includes, Astelbe, Bleeding heart and Weigela bush were all watered in when they were first planted, that was it, unless like the another posted mentioned the plants were under stress from lack of rain, I wouldn't keep watering them all the time, no need. Hopefully, the roots of your plants are not rotting and things will come back next year.
