SOS! Foxglove help!
I purchased a Foxglove (camelot) a few weeks ago. It was beautiful and already blooming. Within a week after planting, it was wilting and falling apart. The blooms are turning brown and so are a few of the leaves at the bottom. I've tried to read up on foxgloves, but I'm new to gardening and completely confused. How do I know if it's self-seeded? Do I cut the stems off with the wilting flowers to encourage new growth? Should I accept that its done for this season and cross my fingers that it comes back next year? Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me!!
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Bad luck! I wonder if your foxglove had been forced in very warm conditions, because it shouldn't really have been in flower yet. If so, the cold outdoors might have been too much for it. It won't have had time to seed itself, I am afraid. The best way with foxgloves is to buy a packet of seeds now and plant them this month. Thin out the young plants in autumn and next summer you will have a wonderful display.
It's so tempting to buy perennials that are already in flower, but you get much better value from buying smaller plants and letting them get settled in your border before they have to expend so much energy on making flowers.
Don't panic - the lower flowers will die off first - is the flower spike still pointing roughly upwards and has some buds on? If so that's great.
Don't worry about a few leaves turning brown - that's a bit of transplant shock. You can snip them off if you don't like the look of them.
What's the soil like? Has it been well watered? Or could it have had too much water?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Foxgloves are mostly biennials (taking two years to grow, flower, set seed then die) and usually form a leafy plant the first year and flower in the second year. They like soil to be well drained but moist, and being originally woodland plants like partial or dappled shade as well as sun. Usually very tough and I suggest you remove the brown leaves, make sure its in conditions it will thrive in as above and wait and see. Failing that find a neighbour/friend who is growing them and get some seed from them to sow, they produce literally millions of seeds like dust! Good luck and don`t give up.
Can someone tell me what's going on with my foxglove where the flowers were it looks like there getting ready to open bot have turned dark brown some feel hard should I take them off ?
I've transferred it to a large pot a few weeks ago all so didn't know you don't wet leaves just found out reading your blog. Have I over watered them I also see they can be dangerous to children should I not have put it in a tub as children are about
Thank you for any help
Annie
If you've had flowers, what comes next are seeds. When those pods are dry and brown, the seeds are ripe and can be scattered around to make more plants.
I don't know whose blog you refer to. Foxglove leaves get wet when it rains,
as regards danger. if the kids didn't eat them by now they're not likely to. It's not the sort of plant that looks edible
Panic about plants is the modern way but kids and foxgloves have co-existed since people evolved
In the sticks near Peterborough
Yes you can snip off the flower stalks when the blooms fade, it's unlikely they'll re-flower at this time of year, but the plant may produce a new rosette of leaves that will flower again next year.
Or it may die, but at least it'll be tidier.
Last edited: 01 September 2017 14:03:53
If you cut off the flower stem you won't get any seeds, they have to stay on the plant until they are dark brown/black and the seeds rattle. They are biennials, sow one year, flower then next, that's their lot.
The plants you get next year from the seeds may not look like the one you've got now, but if you're not fussy about colours, you will get thousands of seeds and it's worth a try.
Sowing foxglove seeds is one of the easiest and most rewarding autumn/winter jobs for me. They germinate so easily and often I end up with 100's of seedlings which I either give to friends, sell or plant out in our garden the following Spring. If you have children or grandchildren nanporter45, this is a great little project to try with them.
The seeds only take a few weeks to germinate and then the fun begins with trying to find enough pots and space to single the seedlings into.
Thanks Lyn. It wasn't my question but that is really useful. I did not know they are biennials.
I have a lot of this years seedlings growing in the bottom corner of my garden.
I also have some really posh culivated ones. Does anyone know if they have been hybridised so that they may not come true? Or not come through at all.
I will collect seed to experiment with.
'You must have some bread with it me duck!'
the posh varieties of D. purpurea don't seed true. they get closer to the species with every seeding. And much better for it imo.
In the sticks near Peterborough