Gardening with Gary

Gardening Advice from an Expert

Lemon Fluff

Nancy writes~ I have a few lemon fluff plants in my garden and I'm not sure if I need to deadhead, and if I do, where?

A. This is a very beautiful flowering plant. You need to remove any flower stalk which starts to turn bad. Do not allow to go to seed as that will slow the plant down and probably end the flowering of that particular plant. If you keep them trimmed off, or deadheaded, they will keep blooming since they want to produce seeds and set forth their own genes onto a new generation.

Armenian Basket Flower, Lemon Fluff Knapweed, particularly Bighead Knapweed Centaurea Macrocephala

Goldfinches love it! Seed heads are great for dried arrangements. Big plant with coarse leaves. Full sun. Height 3 - 4 feet. Perennial. Large, golden, ball-like blossoms and golden, papery seed head. A very hardy and unique variety that self seeds but is not invasive. It's like a straw flower gone awry!!! Drought resistant. Good as a dried flower.

Recommended site: sun. Soil: fertile mildly alkaline good loamy, well-drained, moist to dry-ish. Naturally occurring in subalpine meadows. Acidity doesn't seem to be much of an issue. Drought tolerant. Survive all sorts of neglect! Mature clumps will have more or fewer stems from year to year depending on the winter weather. Open, sparse foliage, coarse. Golden/yellow in fall. Large flowers are borne in a head for a few weeks in summer. Flower color: golden yellow. Thistle-like structure. Brassy-colored papery bracts showy in bud, flower, and seed. Some uses: Borders and Beds, Specimens, Cut Flowers, Dried Flowers. Good, bold background highlight for mixed border as single plants.

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca

Make a sharp, clean, straight cut right below the last of the flowers. If you can go lower without taking any good healthy leaves off, then do so, but do not remove any good foliage which would produce more food for the plant.