Multiplying Perennials

Can you get more than one plant from a one-gallon perennial? You bet. "Don't just think of one plant as one plant," says Steve Brigham of Buena Creek Nursery in San Diego. Brigham takes a one-gallon container of shasta daisies and separates the roots into individual shasta daisy plants. Rather than one plant, says Brigham, "I'd rather have a big mess of shasta daisies by summer."

Breaking apart the roots on a shasta daisy requires very strong hands; to make the process easy, Brigham uses a screwdriver. Sometimes all that's necessary is to get the root ball separated in halves; breaking the remainder apart into individual plants can then be done by hand.

Brigham manages to get seven individual plants out of the one-gallon container and, with a trowel, he installs them. "This covers an area that would have required three or four nursery plants if we hadn't divided this one-gallon plant."

There are a lot of perennials that are just that easy to divide, says Brigham, so divide and conquer!