Personally, I’d rather not see my beautiful perennials falling over in mid- to late summer, would you? It is so much easier to consider staking certain taller perennials in the early summer than it is when they actually fall over and many times, unfortunately, snap at the base. We frequently stake our Phlox, Monarda, Sidalcea, and tall Rudbeckia varieties to name just a few plants.

You can use a number of items for stakes- bamboo which comes in a natural taupe color or painted green is probably the most common staking device. It’s strong, inexpensive and will last a quite a number of years. Of course, you’ll need to replace the string around the plants every year and removing old string from bamboo stakes is not my favorite job. This year, we’re trying a new type of stake pictured here that is spiral shaped, made of steel and covered in green plastic. It literally takes less than a few minutes to install. The stake really blends in well to the plant so that you barely notice it once the plant encompasses it. Consider staking now while your plants are still a reasonable size to manipulate- or you might be picking up their floppy stems come one windy, rainy day in August.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Cynthia Druckenbrod, Summer Gardening, Summer Perennials, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.