flowers

nikki 7

Hello folks
Do I cut down my crocosmia Lucifer foliage after flowering, or leave it to die back?  I've had an excellent display, but at present it just has seed heads on it.
Many thanks for replies

Alan Clark2 in Liverpool

I don't know why you would want to remove the leaves! Leave the foliage alone till it dies back so that it can continue to feed the bulbs. Remove the seed heads, unless you want the seeds.

Buttercupdays

The leaves will stay through the winter and though brown can look quite good and give shelter to wildlife. I then cut them down in the spring.

nikki 7

Many thanks for your replies folks.  I shall leave them till the spring and tidy them up then 

Buttercupdays

You don't need the seeds! The clumps multiply really fast and you need to split them after a couple of years as they get too congested and don't look as good. I've done this so often now that I have run out of places to put more clumps. It's such a dominant colour that you don't need too much of it, and I have now resorted to dumping my excess with the garden waste, which seems a shame. Pity you can't eat it!

Nanny Beach

Pity you don't live near me.all these things I hear spread, like this and the Japanese Anemones,they don't spread in my garden! 

Ergates

When is the best time to split the clumps? I have a patch that has deteriorated over the years, but I haven’t ever done anything with them. I’d dearly love to set up some more colonies of them round the garden. They seem to grow like weeds round here, not only in gardens but along the roadside as well, but the ones in our garden are pretty pathetic.

nikki 7

I suggest splitting them up, when the foliage has died down in the early spring.  (Though I have dug them up and shared them with a neighbour, while they are i still bloom)!

Fairygirl

You can divide them any time really. Just replant, or pot up clumps of corms to grow on for another site.
You may be confusing the common montbretia with the better behaved cultivated varieties.  The garden varieties are more easily controlled. They need dividing now and again though, like most perennials, to keep them vigorous.
Montbretia spreads everywhere. I built an extension over some. 5 years on, it still appears from under the edges....

Ergates

Lovely picture in my mind of your extension sitting on a bed of montbretia, Fairygirl!
Putting some in pots could be a good idea, I can work out where to put them later on. Thanks.

Fairygirl

@Ergates - I have it along the outside of my back fence too, where there's a bit of wall below it,  and a tiny gap of a few inches of soil at most. I don't mind it out there, as it's just our car parking area, but it still sneaks through into the border on the inside, popping up in tiny little sprouts. Easy enough to pull those out though -as long as I see them in time.